Original title: La obra me curó : A Case Study of Las Curanderas Teatro and Their Theater Healing Praxis in Guatemala
Las Curanderas Teatro is a group of Maya Kaqchikel women in Guatemala who make theater in response to gender-based violence. Their work draws on ancestral healing traditions and medicinal knowledge. They describe a cycle: identify wounds, release and transform them, then restore life. The article argues that this shared practice supports cultural memory and is also a form of political action.
Imagine a group of neighbors gathering after a painful event to talk, tend to one another, and decide how to rebuild. It is hard to address a shared hurt if people are left to carry it alone. In this paper, that gathering maps to theater-making rooted in ancestral healing: the women name wounds, work through them together, and seek restoration.
Gender-based violence harms people and communities, and responses do not have to focus only on individuals. This case shows how Maya Kaqchikel women connect theater, ancestral healing knowledge, and collective care to address those wounds and keep cultural memory alive.
The abstract describes one case study, based on seven semistructured interviews and multisited feminist ethnographic research conducted in 2019–2020. It does not report measured outcomes or establish how the approach works in other communities or settings.
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La obra me curó : A Case Study of Las Curanderas Teatro and Their Theater Healing Praxis in Guatemala — Nathalia P. Hernández Ochoa — Latin American Research Review — doi:10.1017/lar.2026.10161
Abstract licence: CC BY
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