Amate Cecilia Pérez

Amate is the founder and director of the Latinx Racial Equity Project and Decolonizing Race. She has worked as a racial equity consultant for 20 years. Prior to becoming a consultant, Amate directed a number of prominent organizations and has held senior positions in civil rights, national and international policy groups including CARECEN SF, Presente.org [https://presente.org], and Global Exchange. Prior to her social justice non-profit experience, she worked as a print and radio journalist and worked for KALW radio, Latino USA, and wrote for multiple print outlets including the Progressive Magazine, the Los Angeles Weekly and the San Francisco Chronicle. Amate is a queer, Nahua Pipil decolonizing indigenous person from Cuscatlan (El Salvador), who fled the civil war as a child with her family. She is a social justice warrior and a writer, a martial artist, and a mother who lives in Oakland, California, on occupied Ohlone land.

From Amate: “I am constantly bombarded by the undeniable examples of racism and inequity in our country and my work feels overwhelming and never ending. Coming to Mesa Refuge provided me the sanctuary I needed. Sitting by the Bay, in the middle of a beautiful garden, I felt I could finally breathe. My nervous system settled and I felt my spirit expand. During my stay, I was blessed by being matched with two other Indigenous fellow writers — we held prayer rituals at sunrise and understood that writing is not an individual act but the act of channeling ancestral wisdom. All of this, while honoring the Miwok People of Point Reyes, praying to the land, the Bay, the ocean and expressing our gratitude to all the other living beings that were contributing to our experience at Mesa and our work. Mesa Refuge helped me come home to myself again.”