Aisling Walsh

Accept or reject: the matter was always in your hands. You could have said no from the first day I arrived on your terrace. The sun was beginning to set behind the neighbour’s mango tree, the sanates were screeching their evening chorus and exasperated rush hour horns blared from the periferico. You were half-sitting, half-leaning, against the flat roof of the downstairs bathroom with a glass of beer in one hand and a joint in the other. I sat opposite, on a white, plastic patio chair, thick ...

CW: emotional & physical abuse, absent fathers, cancer, grief, codependency
There is a photo of me sitting on a low wall in front of the solid black brushstrokes and grey smudges of Joan Miró’s Oiseaux à la naissance du jour. It was taken at Fundació Joan Miró in early January 2019. My head is turned to the side as I pretend not to notice you approaching with your phone out. You rarely take photos of me and I wonder why you have chosen this moment, my puffy eyes still smarting from the previo...

My grandmother and I were sitting in her living room a month before COVID-19 became the only thing that mattered, flicking through her free cable service for something that might appeal to us both. Given that her TV diet consists of reruns of ‘90s quiz shows and True Movies (Ireland’s version of Lifetime), this is not an easy task. She settled on the BBC’s latest period drama. When Suranne Jones appeared on screen, complete with top hat and waistcoat, I realized we were watching Gentleman Jac...

Aisling Walsh profiles La Kenefic: the Irish-Guatemalan Actress Starring in Golden Globe Nominated La Llorona.
I heard of ‘La Kenefic’ long before I ever met her. Actress turned guerrillera, turned Tai Chi instructor, turned film star, Margarita Kenefic has a reputation for creating epic drama on stage and screen. As she inches towards 70 her first foray into film, in Jayro Bustamante’s award-winning film La Llorona, has won her international recognition for her role as the inscrutable wife o...

Analysis: Cacao ceremonies has hit the mainstream, especially with lockdown-related woes increasing its popularity, but the uncritical embrace of it – explicitly marketed as Mayan – is deeply problematic.
A heart opening mirror to the internal world, a sacred space full of flowing energies, and a powerful plant medicine to release your trauma and embrace healing are just some of the benefits promised by the purveyors of the latest new-age trend in spiritual awakening: cacao ceremonies.
For th...

I was 13 the first time my mother threatened to kick me out of her house. I wanted a tattoo for my 14th birthday and she pulled the ‘not under my roof’ card. This became a regular threat of hers in response to my teenage capriciousness, but one that I was inclined to pay heed to. And, it turns out, I was right to believe in the strength of her resolve. Only she waited another four years, until ...

By Aisling Walsh

A spiral of vultures, a gyre of mourning, descended from the sky, flew through the undergrowth, alighted on a flattened shack and began its festival of flesh…

The Vultures, Luis de Lión, Guatemala, 1966

A man with blazing white eyes makes his way down the stairs. His gaze penetrates, not just through the wall of my bedroom, but through the walls of my soul. I feel a thump on my chest and I wake gasping. My nightshirt is soaked through.

It’s dark in the room, nothing moves, th...

The argument that we should be able to separate art from the artist and not let the actions of the latter dictate our judgment of the former has been increasingly challenged as our tolerance for acts of violence and expressions of hatred by once-loved artists and creators dissipates. When it comes to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s most recent anti-trans tweets, trans women, Potter fans, and Potter actors including Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe have condemned Rowling’s latest attacks ag...

When the patrol car pulled to a stop on the dirt road two fields away and three Police officers piled out, we never imagined they were coming for us. A common sight anywhere in Mexico, the appearance of la poli that Saturday afternoon, merited no more than a passing comment from my friends as we rambled over the countryside looking for a shady spot to escape the midday sun and eat our freshly harvested Pajarito mushrooms.
It was a humid July day amidst the sub-tropical hills of Veracruz’s Sie...

The end of the world was far less interesting than anyone had ever led me to believe. Watching it all unfold from behind my computer screen and from the safety of my bed, I felt cheated that the doomsday scenarios of fire and brimstone, promised in biblical verse, did not come to pass. And disappointed that I was neither obliged to ride across deserts looking for a drop of fresh water, nor sail the oceans looking for a fabled scrap of dry land as the epic 80’s and 90’s movies of my childhood ...

Article for Dismantle Magazine on the new-age phenomenon of cacao ceremonies which delves into question of cultural appropriation/exploitation, healing and the new-age hustle that preys on indigenous spirituality.

“The first day we shout out our pain and courage, the second day we share ideas and experiences, and the third day we shout out our joy and strength!” With these words, Comandanta Amada, masked with the emblematic black Zapatista balaclava, welcomed some 4,000 women to the second-ever Encuentro de Mujeres Que Luchan, the “Gathering for Women Who Struggle.”
The Encuentro took place at a Zapatista community known as a caracol, in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, from December 27-29, 2019. The ...

Violence and discrimination are routine and many die in childbirth from largely preventable causes
Guatemala is marketed across the globe as the “Heart of the Mayan World”. Photographs of spectacular jungle pyramids and smiling indigenous women, carried on Piccadilly buses in London and splashed across screens in new York’s Times Square, promote a tourism industry worth almost $3.4 billion (€3 billion) a year.
On arriving in Guatemala, it is easy to recognise the vivid colours of Mayan tradit...

In the remote highlands of Guatemala, one of Latin America’s poorest countries, midwives work tirelessly to help indigenous women for whom the pregnancy mortality rate is more than double the national average
Graciela Velásquéz lights three candles and places them at the foot of the altar in her living room. She gives thanks to the four elements and welcomes us into her home by inviting us to light our own candles.
Graciela is a “keeper of time” – or Mayan spiritual guide – a human rights def...

A 30-year-old Indigenous woman from a rural community uses her personal experience and passion to champion the rights of Indigenous people, women, and activists against violence and corruption.
Jovita Tzul Tzul was just 8 years old when she won a village competition to become a “judge for a day.” It was her first taste of the legal system, and from that moment she knew she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. Now, at age 30, Tzul Tzul is one of Guatemala’s youngest Indigenous women defendi...