Healing Heritage:
The Spiritual Path of Muisca Women

A story of pain

Dozens of women embrace around the fire. The spiral of white smoke rises above them. They have come out of the Cusmuy, the common sacred house where they shared medicine and spirituality to make offerings to the lagoons. They are Indigenous Women descended from the Muiscas. They look into each other’s eyes: they play maracas and drums, they see themselves as weavers or goldsmiths. Dressed in white, they hold in their hands the sacred antiquity of the Eastern Andes in the center of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.

As part of the Muiscas, they, their sisters and brothers, or their ancestors have experienced multiple forms of violence forced displacement due to armed conflict or the consequences of climate change and pollution; territorial dispossession by extractive companies or real-estate speculators; racism, denial, or cultural appropriation; gender-based violence inside or outside their community. Alone, or scattered, Muisca Women have not been able to confront these violences.

The return to their ancestral territory, and its recognition through collective struggle, has allowed them to find strategies to confront abuse and strengthen their identity. as Indigenous People and as women.

The struggle for territory

For over ten years, the clans gathered within the Muisca Council of Bosa have fought and negotiated with the District of Bogotá so that their ancestral territories may be recognized in the face of urban expansion and illegal occupations.

Today, the Council is a special-status organization recognized by Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior The clans that make it up are original inhabitants of Bacatá, the Indigenous name for Bogotá. An ancient people in which men and women worked the land and fished, when the territories were vast and fertile, and the river waters were not polluted.

Recognition of the Council allowed its members to promote activities to recover memory and ancestral knowledge Traditional practices are carried out there to reclaim their culture, education, medicine, economy, forms of government, and their own justice systems. In this way, the legacy of the ancestors remains alive in the blood of the different clans that make up the Council. Gathered in talking circles, elder men and women share their stories and knowledge so the whole community can put them into practice.

The Muiscas, guardians of the seed, uphold a form of organization in spiral, in which the man is at the tip, but the foundations and continuity belong to the woman. This is seen in the Myth of Bague, which says that in the beginning only Bague, the Grandmother Mother, existed. When she cried out, the gods, light, plants, animals, and the Muiscas appeared. For Muisca women, they were sown like stars in space. Even after the Council was recognized, self-determination has remained a difficult process for them, because their daily lives are governed by the laws of family clans.

Healing through the word

“Before FIMI’s support, Muisca Women did not know how to identify the wounds caused by the lack of recognition of their role as women within the community; they felt that their word had no value, that they were not enough”, reflects Diana Cobos. This community leader coordinated the project Being an Indigenous Woman in Search of Healing, supported by FIMI’s Ayni Fund and since then, she confesses, her chest has been lit with joy.

Of the 115 women who began working on inner healing, 95 completed the year-long process that helped them in their journey Dropout was minimal, because each gathering always offered new discoveries through ritual, cultural, and psychological practices. Diana explains that it served as a transition in which knowledge keepers, midwives, and women leaders participated. Together, they grew and released the burdens they carried individually, within their families, and collectively: “This project empowered women. We moved from an internal process to one of integration, where we discovered ourselves as part of a collective, exposed our vulnerabilities, and became strong; we left abandonment behind.”

Carmen Elena Neuta, a participant in the project, says: “These gatherings gave us the opportunity to unburden ourselves, to get to know our companions who are living through tremendous grief.” She happily shares that she carried out a purification ritual: she bathed twice in crystal-clear waters, and was able to forgive others and forgive herself.

Olga Pinto feels liberated: “I learned to let go of hatred, to think about myself, to understand that at home one thinks about one’s husband, one’s children, but never about oneself, and these workshops have taught us that, to recognize ourselves.” She wrote a letter to herself in which she discovered her strengths and capacities as an Indigenous Woman.

The consolidation of the Women’s Council

“With these gatherings, we identified ourselves as large families; we realized how big city dynamics had separated us; meeting one another allowed us to heal, the women spoke with others from other clans, and from this we were able to strengthen the Women’s Council; we women leaders managed to come to an agreement,” claimed Diana Cobos The collective impact of FIMI’s support moved from a space of holistic healing to a women’s movement that re-signified their role in the world, she explains.

The Muisca Council went from having 20 women who sometimes attended assemblies to make decisions, to consolidating a Women’s Council now made up of 50 women leaders It was both a symbolic and a real awakening, to the point that after the first project began in January 2025, one year later they are still asking for that space to share again.

“The women say they want to carry this process out with their daughters, that it should extend to other Muisca Women, to other clans, because by having holistic and ritual healing, and adding psychosocial support, they are able to identify and harmonize deep imbalances,” explains Diana Cobos. She adds that they even managed to overcome the obstacle of not having a large piece of land to hold the activities, because the women’s drive was stronger than the lack of a big house.

Rituals of integration

The mark left by one hundred women crying, enjoying themselves, and coming to know themselves through the financial, human, and material resources made possible by the Ayni Fund also left its mark on the governance of the Council. Diana says the authorities were strengthened to the point that they discovered there are other ways to raise awareness in community processes and build a larger, more integral movement..

“The project contributed to reflection on how spirituality gives the Muisca Indigenous Woman security, but it also left us important tools within the Council; the project with FIMI gave us the possibility of addressing biases, because sometimes the authorities are always the same, and here all of us women were able to participate,” says Ivone Mateus, surrounded by her daughters and her mother, who also lived through the healing experience.

For Amparo Ochoa, integration was the most important thing, more than going where the rituals took place, because in the gatherings she found peace and silence amid her everyday problems. For her, it was not only about embroidering or playing, but about connecting with her culture, self-care, and self-love.

Rebuilding one’s own history

The women sing on the banks of the Tunjuelo River, forming choruses; others have stopped crying. They have strengthened their self-awareness. Se ven a los ojos y no saben qué sonido produjo cada una y cómo, pero están juntas hablando de sus usos y costumbres, la religión enseñada y transmitida desde el interior de las familias, las danzas rituales, la práctica oral de sus clanes, el respeto por sus mayoras y mayores.

Diana has had family problems these days, but she knows she has a community of women who shelter her, women who learned to heal and to heal themselves. She says they can do so because Muisca Women are rebuilding their history. Now they are full of other women who shared their wounds; they are like little fiery stones thrown into a stream, leaving their ashes in the passing water.

The Council is now a peaceful place of low houses with red earth and green plants. An elder wise woman takes mambe, a toasted, ground, and sifted powder made from coca leaves mixed with yarumo ashes, brings it to her mouth, and mixes it with her saliva. Smoke permeates the bodies of the women, who sing happily with their eyes closed.