ATLACHINOLLI: Keepers of the Fire & Water

by Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez, Texas Folklife Community Folklife Fellow

ATLACHINOLLI: Keepers of the Fire and Water is an archival offering and autoethnography documenting Queer Matriarchal Ceremony Keepers, Elders, and Traditional Culture Bearers in the Yanaguana (San Antonio), Tza Wan Pupako (Austin), Ajehuac Yana (San Marcos), and Saxōp Wan Pupako (New Braunfels) regions of Somi Se’k territory, commonly known as Central Texas.

In the 20 + years of devotion to ceremonial communities in this region, I found that the historical presence of Queer Matriarchal leadership was rarely documented or passed on in our community. We’ve either had to push back against the patriarchy in traditional spaces for visibility, acceptance and protection and/or had to dig deep to find the elders and key people that preserve these traditions in ways that are safe, inclusive and celebrate us.

ATLACHINOLLI is an offering for us! All those that built a strong foundation for those that are here now or will be arriving to have the ability to be their full authentic selves in ceremonial spaces, so that they may know the Keepers and the Fire and the Water that made it possible. This work is important because an influx of interest in our traditions has birthed a new generation that has yet learn about the trailblazers paved the way. Wisdom and transmission of knowledge pertaining to fire and water in ceremonies comes with the time it takes to build kinship or apprenticeship with elders, ceremony keepers, knowledge keepers in ceremon; this happens in third spaces, in each other’s homes and through relationship, a process that is decreasingly held with the value it deserves. I hear our elders express a sense of solitude and abandonment. The utility of traditional knowledge becomes transactional instead of relational and my hope is that by archiving the stories it bring us close to knowing how deep this love and sacrifice has been and serves as data sovereignty. We have laid down prayers, intentions, and offerings as ways of knowing. ATLACHINOLLI allows us to reference the names, faces, stories, and contributions of the lineages that are ignited everytime prayer in our community is needed. So we may recongnize fire and water ARE us and that we have role in keeping this relationship with the elements held in a sacred way within a community.

Atlachinolli, as a word, derives from the Nahuatl language. Typically post-colonial sources associate it with war and sacrifices, as is common with colonial depiction of our spiritual teachings. In kinship with the elements, in particular with fire and water, oral history teaches us that Atlachinolli is a vibration created when water comes in contact with the heat of the heart of Mother Earth, it is the breath of life itself. In this way, documenting my community is the breath of life that I hope gives meaning to the importance of the knowledge transmission through building relationships by taking time to listen to each other’s stories. Centering relational kinship is the thread of knowledge transmission. This is data sovereignty. Through this relational way of being we rekindle the flames of our ancestors and awaken prayers encoded in the water, giving us hope and guidance. We need stories about us, by us, and for us to be shared so that we are not further erased from the landscape of Folklife Arts and Traditional Culture.

This fellowship gave me the ability to begin the archival process as a form of data sovereignty allowing me to explore technical frameworks as a folklorist and archvist. It allowed me to rekindled a beloved friendship with Chaka, creative director at DAWA Studios in Austin. When I reconnected with him and shared my vision for this project, he shared the work of DAWA and their dedication to supporting BIPOC community through their recording studio and connected me with their tech lead Ever who was a tremendous to help in documenting my elders and peers. I am so grateful to the DAWA fam!

I started by documenting my elders Nana Yvette and Elder Ari Chagoya. Nana Yvette is a gem! Her trajectory as a fierce Mexica-Chichimeca or Aztec Danza leader alongside her duality and our ancestor, Manolo Sanchez, impacted hundreds of dancers in the Texas region when they moved to Texas in the 1990’s, they were known as Grupo Teokalli. Nana Yvette eventually stepped away from the danza but her calling and ancestral connection to the waters led her to officiate Water Ceremonies around the world, including the US, Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. Nana Yvette vividly shared her initiation as a Water ceremony keeper, “coming from a Tradtional culture of animism.. I’m Mescalero Apache… I’ve had incredible experiences that are not average… since I was a child. I was given a gift, a birthmark of a fish and a turtle.” She went on to share that much later in life she came across the same exact symbol as her birthmark when she traveled to Annishinabe territories in so-called Canada and visited a sacred site where low and behold this symbol was engraved into a stone on a sacred site. She then found out that her people, the Apache, had origin stories that documented their migration from that area to the territories that we now know as Apache territories in the Southwest. In deep reverence she explains the visiones of being visited by water relatives that gave her the vision for the Water Ceremonies she now holds that center the safety and sacredness of women and LGBTQ2S relatives. “During the Exxon oil spill, I was called by the spirit of a Grandmother Turtle that lived in the ocean… of the Texas Coast. I saw this whole ceremony and she asked me to pray for the Ocean, for the Water and gather women from the Four Nations..taking care of the Altar.” Her water ceremonies are just that, a gathering of women and queer centered portals that call in healing and deep transformation in our relation to water as kin.

I also interviewed Elder Ari Chagoya, a lesbian elder that has held our community with the fire of transformation and healing through her work as a mediator, healer, bodyworker, doula and domestic violence coach. Her lifework has led her to be known for holding spaces for accountability processes, healing, and transitions for families, men, women, and infants healing intergenerational trauma and violence. As the co-founder, alongside her partner Jennifer Alvarado, of 7th Generations Birth Services, their work supports working class poor families in navigating birthing, parenting, and healing from trauma. Ari states that what she has seen is that “the fire is there always.. the things that are in the dark that are coming out now, have certainly fueled that fire… in general there is this anger, to me that is part of that fire but we are taught not to relate to it… but it also is about our ganas.” Ari spoke of need to look deeper into the perspective of what the erotic, ganas, and anger have in common in relation to fire and what happens when that connection is severed, she believes, “we lose connection to the wishes, dreams, and desires we have.” This connection to fire was a deeper dive into posing many questions for the future of our community. Ari’s work has taught many of us how to hold the discomfort of confronting the fire within, and getting to know the anger and rage that forces us to ask, “how are we going to deal with this rage?”

The next set of interviews I did were with some of my comadres and peers in the Danza community. I was so thrilled to sit down and talk to our Kalpulli’s Cihuapahtli (Medicine Woman) Irasema Mazacoatl Reza-Bailey. Irasema is one of the first fire keepers of Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin, the Traditional Danza group I co-lead with my spiritual family, Luissana & Madelein Santibañez. We met with our long time comadre, Jefa Xelina Flores of Grupo Xinachtli, a Traditional Conchero group in the Danza community of Central Texas, that was one of the first to be formed in the US. Xelina shares a childhood recollection of being asked to carry the water by her teacher Capitan General Andres Segura (ninkanka), who initially brought Danza to Texas in the 1970’s. “I didn’t understand the value of that, I was clumsy, maybe 7 years old. He came up to me cuz he saw that it was beginning to spill and he said ‘Mijita the entire water of the universe is in that vasito, don’t let it spill.’ And that was the seed of realizing what all the elements of our ceremonias were.” The idea that we hold entire universes, humanity, and each other when we are holding these sacred elements of the water and the fire are essential teaching that we learn in community, not in isolation or online. We talked about the potential loss of the transmission of knowledge when we solely focus on learning it outside of the deep relational experiences of being in ceremonies together. For Irasema, she felt that when she started doing birth work it helped spark the understanding that she had inherited from her family as a birthworker and her path as a Matachin dancer who later learned Mexica Chichimeca Danza. “The elementos really came to life in the birth space.. the fuego that is within the birthing person as they’re going through that trabajo… the waters, the embiotic fluid, the waters that you are crying.. that are coming out of the body, creating this steam… creating new life. It got me thinking… how the harmony resonates… when tending to the fuego that is within and what it means.” Both of these comadres are birthworkers and transmit knowledge through the intentional care that being in ceremony has given them as fire keepers and water carriers. In this way, they ensure that traditional birthing, medicine and teachings, like the rebozo, are transmitted through the leadership of women and queer tradition keepers, both in and out of ceremony.

To wrap up my interviews, I sat with Grandmother Emma Coyote. Grandma Emma and I have frequent platicas where we talk, sometimes craft, or just drink cafecito or tecito together. She is a cherished elder to our family and community and her interview is highlighted in my podcast. Her storytelling is held with high regard in our community and beyond. What I really loved about my time with Grandma Emma is that her most memorable encounters with the fire and water, were her childhood memories, living in traditional ways of making food and caring for family. She talks about the fire that her mom would light outside to warm up water for washing clothes by hand, and the fire her dad would make to cook beans. Grandma Emma also talked about how colonization shifted the way our communities honored Matriarchy. By documenting her life story, along with everyone else I interviewed, I hope to be able to leave behind an archive of Martriachs and Queer community fire & water keepers that can inspire future generations into perpetuity.

After these interviews, I held my community workshop alongside member of Tlanezi Teartro Ritual – a project I created in 2021 for the 500 year anniversary of Indigenous Resistance on this continent of Anahuak. With additional support from Alternate Roots, my workshop explored fire and water as living guides for healing and transmission of knowledge through community ritual, ancestral music, somatic dance, choreography, body paint and adornment. Our guests received cultural knowledge shares as part of the foundational teachings we pass down through oral tradition. We explored our connection through story circles, somatic dance, and artistic exploration. I felt that it was important for me to facilitate this space as an artist, not only as a Traditional Culture Bearer, highlighting the contemporary ways that we can create art as a community while simultaneously being accountable and respectful of protocol and tradition. Doing this, while celebrating the duality and queerness of traditional knowledge and artistic exploration has been a journey I have been on for decades before figuring out how to share it responsibly in community, and it was important for me to share that the work I produce as a performance artist is deeply rooted in learning, healing, growing, and being accountable to a lineage of teachings that pushed against the grain to reach this iteration. As a community, this allowed us to show up authentically, joyously to connect with the sacredness of our own dualities and the duality of the fire and the water.

I am so grateful that this fellowship gave me another tool for archiving the traditions I am close to, especially the stories of the Matriarchs and LGBTQ2S folks who make the transmission of teachings possible in our community in safe, loving and accountable ways. To do this work justice, I plan to release additional episodes of Atlachinolli after launching this first episode with Grandma Emma. I am applying for opportunities to support the continuation of this work. As an alumni of the Intercultural Leadership Institute, I will be releasing the video interviews I did with Nana Yvette, Ari Chagoya, Irasema Mazacoatl, and Jefa Xelina later in the year as well as continuing to write about this work on www.weareili.org. This project really inspired me to continue archiving and I hope to incorporate this framework to the youth work that I do with Circles in the Hood as well as the microschool that I will be launching in the fall of 2026, Calmecac In Lak’Ech. Our Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin Instagram page is a good way to stay connected to the work that our community is doing or for reaching out for updates or support for this project to continue. IG: @ayolopaktzin

Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez (she/they) is a detribalized Queer Mexican-born Xicanx community scholar, researcher, narrative & cultural strategist of Tepehuan, Guachichil Chichimeca, and mixed lineage trained in educational pedagogy, circle keeping, performance art, and cultural organizing. They are an alumni of the Southwest Folklife Alliance, Intercultural Leadership Institute and Highlander Research & Education Center as well as a member of Xinachtli Comadres Network, Women of Color in the Arts, Alternate Roots, Southern Movement Assembly and Wind & Warrior Institute focusing on participatory action research, popular education, and traditional healing arts.

They co-lead Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin, an Anahuaka ceremonial group dedicated to re-tribalizing families through Anahuaka teachings, Mexica-Chichimeca danza, traditional medicine, & kinship building. Laura is a veteran Bgirl, Wife, Mami, Tia, and Madrina passionate about healing intergenerational & colonial trauma through Matriarchy, Cultura Cura circle keeping and folklife preservation. Their life work holds the tension of change, grounding in collective liberation as an Afro-Indigenous futurist.

www.inlakechschool.com

https://weareili.org/people/laura-yohualtlahuiz-rios-ramirez/