• A world in which women’s worlds can have a place and expression;
  • A world in which women’s rights to equality, dignity and social justice is recognized and respected;
  • A word in which the experiences, visions and perspectives of women (and gender sensitive men) regarding the centrality of a paradigm of caring of life can have political expression and possibilities of affecting human structures, their interactions and their relationship to other forms of live in the Planet we inhabit.
  • A world that promotes and creates spaces of dialogue in equal terms and where information flows with integrity and respect, where each part is recognized as a subject with value, and where diversity and democratic participation is honored.
  • A world in which conflict is faced from a feminist ethics which expresses that “the personal is political”; that is capable of` creating spaces where vital powers can be shared together with caring for each other while exchanging energy, knowledge and affection;

My mission as a book:

Contribute to co-create and strengthen interactive:

  • Processes and actions that connect artistic expression, knowledge and feminist activism;
  • Spaces and organizations where women can experiment, render visibility, build and strengthen their paradigms of caring for life, equality and justice while challenging themselves personally to deconstruct the patriarchy within and in others;
  • Spaces for their socio-political creations stemming form an autonomous feminist epistemology and its interaction with other proposals and movements that promote transformative politics towards egalitarian, just and an ecologically healthy world where conflict is faced with a feminist ethics.

My intentionality as a book:

My intentionality as a book is to become part of the feminist processes and actions of popular education, resonances and the butterfly effect that integrates feminist epistemology with historical actions and contributions of women’s knowledge in all disciplines and walks of life, especially when those experiences and proposals that affirm paradigmatic approaches that reclaim the centrality of caring for life and justice.

Political actors in me: Women, but also men who are willing to challenged their gender construction and paradigms from a feminist perepective.

My audience and public: Women, men and children in all the diverse expressions be it age, ethnicity, nationality, sexual preferences, bodily abilities and disabilities, etc.

My background:

  • I was born out of a series of interviews and reports all over the world by Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) gathering voices, experiences and perspectives of women who have hardly been heard and taken into account.
  • Those interviews and others collected by Maria formed part of her doctoral dissertation at the University of La Salle between 2003-2006 under the title Women at the Cutting Edge of Paradigm Shift.
  • In 2007 part of her dissertation was edited into the book Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect published in 2008 by Editorial Farben/Norma in Costa Rica.

These constitute my first metamorphosis: from radio, to dissertation, to book, to becoming this web page… and many more changes to come as I am an open and expansive book that like the women within me, will continue to live and grow if you help me develop my vitality by interacting with me.

I want to be quoted:

I want to be quoted for conceptualizing that paradigms are “mental codes” because that is one of my specific contributions to the never ending discussion about the nature of paradigms and I am trying to be simple and to do it bilingually so that what I say in Spanish and English have some commonality – at least epistemologically – for the sake of bridge building.

I also want to be quoted as stating that looking at epistemology is very good and necessary, but not enough. How we know what we know is very relevant but it does not necessarily lead to social change because there is a missing link between knowing and acting in the world. Political solutions to power differences - whether they be based on gender, class, ethnicity, disabilities, nationalities, age, etc. - do not come about only from knowing better, rendering visibility, or recognizing others as humans, etc. The recognition of all as political subjects in their interactions is crucial for social change. This is one of my strong critiques to postmodernist stances, especially when I am about recognizing women as political subjects of lost paradigms, not only victims or survivors that are "subject to rights" alone. Women’s contributions are more than that. Furthermore, women will barely change patriarchy by approaching it as an issue of power in isolation, of equal rights in isolation, of epistemological frameworks in isolation, of historical retribution in isolation. We will do so when we connect these to the mental codes (paradigms) that are behind those factors and their interrelations in transformative practice. What I claim as a book is that we have to look at all factors in their interactions, and this can only be done by political subjects, not by “thinking and feeling” alone.

I want to be quoted with my name and my author’s name when you use me to produce other stories, songs, or plays, or whatever. You and the women you know who have made significant contributions to a change of paradigm can become a part of me if you write about them to me or simply resonate with them in your own way. I will give you credit if you let me know in my blog, just as I am asking you to give me credit.