Braiding Mynopantla (menopause) in Community
Ceremonial Sacred Art de Cuerpo y Tierra
Saturday, May 23rd, 2026
10:30am -12:30 pm
at The Goddess Mercado Bazaar
424 W. Whittier Blvd, Montebello, CA 91804
Drawing from "mynopause" (menopause) and the vision of Las Maestras Center, this MyNopantla ofrenda brings together Xicana/ x Indigenous knowledge, body autonomy, and ancestral wellness.
Tickets: $20.00 -$52.00
Limited Seating. Reserve your space today!
*This is a special offerings from our San Diego spirit comadres. They are travelling to the Los Angeles area to offer this. Please support as you can.
*Open to people in all stages of life (not just menopause)
Drawing from Elisa Facio's concept of "mynopause” and the vision of Las Maestras Center, under Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Cherríe Moraga, our “mynopantla” ofrenda braids Xicana/x Indigenous wisdom for body autonomy and ancestral wellness. This interactive workshop honors Indigenous approaches to bodymindspiritheart sovereignty in order to address the gap via Xicana/x decolonial feminist queer approaches to reproductive health and justice. Together, we aim to co-create y entrezar “Xicana Teo(tl)ría,” inviting participants to ground themselves in sacred art practice, culminating in a collective art expression as a transformative rite of passage.
ABOUT YOUR GUIDES:
Alicia Chavez-Arteaga is an artist, educator, and community practitioner whose work spans performance, arts education, and organizational leadership. She is Co-Founder and Director of Operations of Izcalli, a San Diego–based cultural arts nonprofit dedicated to integrating arts practice, education, and community engagement. With more than 25 years of experience, her work centers culturally responsive approaches, collective storytelling, and service to historically underserved communities.
A founding member of Teatro Izcalli, a nationally touring Chicana/o performance ensemble established in 1995, she develops original, community-based work rooted in the cultural traditions and sociopolitical experiences of Chicanx/Latinx communities. Her contributions have been recognized with honors including Artist of the Year by the San Diego Union-Tribune Latino Champions Awards. She is also a Fellow of the California Arts Council/CORO Southern California Arts Leadership Program and serves on the advisory board of the National Comadres Network supporting culturally grounded leadership and collective healing initiatives.
Irene Lara has been a professor at SDSU’s Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, and an affiliate of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Latin American Studies for 20+ years. Aiming to take a decolonial healing, liberatory feminist, “bodymindspirit” holistic approach to all she does, Irene’s scholarship, teaching, and gender affirming mamihood is inspired by Xicana/x, Indigenous, Women of Color feminist knowledges, Anzaldúan thought, Curandera Praxis, and living in the Borderlands. Irene established CuranderaScholarActivism, a community engaged research and femtorship program, convenes community dialogues as a co-founder of Panocha Pláticas: Healing Sex and Sexuality in Community and Xicana/x San Diego, and facilitates Conocimiento Walks. She is the co-editor of Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women's Lives and Women in Culture: An Intersectional Anthology of Gender and Women’s Studies. Currently, Irene is co-editing Conocimiento Pedagogy: Teaching~Learning Con el Corazón con Razón en la Mano, and co-creating “MyNopantla” with her comadre-colleagues as a “sitio y lengua” for decolonial feminist queer reframings of mynopause, and also having fun gathering inspiration for her novella, The Incredible Misadventures of a Xicana Wannabe Romance Writer
Dr. Patricia Herrera is an educator, scholar, and artist who cultivates spaces of healing, justice, and collective power. Her work inhabits the in-between—between history and truth-telling, scholarship and creative practice, memory and imagination—tending to stories that must be heard and seen while opening pathways toward more just futures.
Born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, she was shaped by Puerto Rican and Caribbean cultural rhythms and continues to deepen her connection to her Afro-Indigenous Ecuadorian roots. As a first-generation scholar, she learned to navigate across languages, communities, and ways of knowing, grounding her work in listening, relationality, and decolonial feminist praxis.
Her scholarship and creative practice center performance as a site of memory, resistance, and possibility. Her first book, Nuyorican Feminist Performances: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater, and her co-edited volume Sound Acts reflect her commitment to embodied, collective knowledge.
Since 2011, she has collaborated with artists, scholars, and community partners to document Richmond’s histories through the Civil Rights and Education in Richmond Documentary Theater Project, which led to The Fight for Knowledge, a digital archive. She has co-created exhibitions and performances addressing gentrification, education, public health, and migration. Her recent interdisciplinary work bridges decolonial feminism and climate justice through performance and film across Puerto Rico and Virginia. She currently serves as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging and is a Professor of Theatre at the University of Richmond. Across her work, she approaches storytelling as a practice of healing, connection, and transformation.
María Figueroa is a professor of English Composition, Literature and Humanities at MiraCosta College. Maria’s origins traverse the borderlands of Tijuana, Juarez y California rooting themselves in Santa Ana-tierras indigenas de los Tongva- where four generations of her ancestors rest. Maria has dedicated her professional career of 28 years to teaching 1st generation working-class Raza and other students of color about the importance of embracing, honoring, and amplifying their cultura through narrative prose and counter storytelling. She is founder of Moon Monologues, an interdisciplinary praxis rooted in Xicana Indigenous epistemologies that facilitates platica and writing as ceremonial conocimientos aligned with the moon cycles. Maria’s work has been published in various anthologies including Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Fleshing The Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives, edited by Elisia Facio and Irene Lara, Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices and most recently in In Search of Our Brown Selves, a transdisciplinary reader designed with Chicano/a/x students in mind. Her community work spans over 30 years predominantly in the area of cultural preservation and performing arts. She is co-lead of Danza Coatlicue a traditional Aztec Dance group and serves as the President of the board of the Centro Cultural de la Raza. She's the proud mother of Cuauhtemoc and Esperanza and partner to Manuel Velez. She enjoys long spiritual runs along the Kumeyaay coastal lands.