this article is based on a paper that I presented during the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP), as a keynote speaker in the Coss Dialogue sessions. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that most participants of SAAP use the term “American” in its con- tinental, rather than in the US-centric sense. I am glad that many of the philosophers of this community of knowledge have opened their dialogues to the voices and experiences south of the Río Bravo. We are living during very difficult times in which cultures and practices of violence, as well as ag- gressive exclusion and intolerance, are affecting our communities on both sides of the border. In this context of multiple violences, it is urgent to open spaces of interdisciplinary dialogue, like the Coss Dialogue sessions and this special issue of The Pluralist, to build bridges between different disciplines in the effort of confronting the pedagogy of death that is navigating across our continent. Please consider this article as an invitation to continue building and promoting bridges of solidarity between our communities of knowledge.

In this essay, I would like to address two experiences of activist research that have taught me very important lessons about decolonizing my own feminism and rethinking my anthropological methodologies from a dialogical perspective. In order to effectively convey the evolution of my perspectives, I would like to share some of the genealogy of my life experiences with you.