The Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra – CPT) will continue their initiative from the previous year, From Banzo to Healing: Facing Pain through the Eyes of Women. Over one hundred women from eight traditional communities accompanied by the CPT in Maranhão are participating in this initiative. The latter is a caretaking process that embodies and extends the CPT’s healing and transformative work, strengthening women’s community, autonomy, and resistance. As COVID continues to affect families in the territory, it is important that psychosocial health workers and healers support women facing violence with compassion and non-judgement and with respect and knowledge for the collective lived experience.

CPT accompanies peoples of the land and waters of Maranhão, Brazil as they engage in collective struggles for land, territories, and human rights through sustainable food production and organized resistance. CPT supports the communities’ political formation by centering participants’ motivation, values, and spirituality, and celebrating their successes in struggles against injustice.