Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba

The Gunaa Rucaalu Collective (GRC) was formed by feminist Zapotec women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. Witnessing a lack of programing that centered the experiences of youth in their community, GRC developed a culturally relevant emancipatory menstrual education set of workshops composed of informative and art-based activities. The work of GRC is one example of numerous efforts across Latin America and the Caribbean to continue with community-based emancipatory menstrual education. Despite these efforts, there is a continued lack of sustained support towards collectives doing menstrual education, as most efforts happen on the periphery of academic and health institutions and depend on the efforts and resources of individuals. Additionally, there is limited published empirical research that systematically examines the experiences of people who engage and participate within emancipatory menstrual education programing. This limited literature is even more scant among Indigenous and rural contexts. Therefore, this project will examine qualitatively the experiences of people who participate with GRC’s menstrual education program to have a more nuanced understanding of how narratives about menstruation may change or not. Findings from this research have the potential to contribute to broader anthropological literature interested in furthering our understanding of menstruation as a complex biocultural process.