The New Mexican Woman: On Being Latina in the CBD World
To be a Mexican woman is as vast, intricate, and as complicated as the universe itself. We are delicate yet built to last, we are brown, black, native and güera. Our appearances and sexuality falls on and awakens the full spectrum.
Why the Mexican Woman?
When we talk about women’s rights, needs, and desires, Mexican women are often left out of the conversation. Both Latinas and other marginalized groups of women have been overexploited, overworked, and overlooked in modern society.
Xula (pronounced chula), a feminine term of endearment and the namesake of our brand—is a direct response to the absence of Mexican, and other BIPOC people in the cannabis space. With approximately 5.7% of Latinx founders in the industry, Xula was born out of the need to represent and redefine our narratives. Through the reclaiming of marihüana as an indigenous herb, we honor not only what it means to be a Mexican woman, but what it means to be a feminine being in the scope of the cannabis industry.
To be a Mexican woman is as vast, intricate, and as complicated as the universe itself. They are delicate yet tough, brown, black, native, and güera.
Mexican women are ambitious critical thinkers. We are nurturing caregivers. We are bitches, soft-butches, and angel babes ready to change the gaze of the cannabis industry and the gaze the consumes our bodies.
The criminalization of marihüana has caused a major disruption to our ancestral connection to herbs and plant medicine. Its criminalization has imprisoned Mexicans, Latin Americans, and African descendants for marijuana possession at rates much higher than white people—though they use it at the same rates. The war on drugs has increased our migration population, continuing to divide homes, families, and communities. We say enough is enough and as a culture of Latinx peoples, we intend to use healing herbs to repair our collective trauma, build communities, and spiritually heal ourselves.
The Farse of White Wellness
It is clear that herbal medicine has been used around the world within indigenous communities for a millennial. Herbal forms of healing are not new, it is not trendy, and certainly not exclusively for the white and wealthy.
“Wellness and well-being should not be based on European social constructs of beauty. Our wellness is based on herbs, foods, and millennial-old indigenous rituals of healing.”
Indigenous wellness has informed most of what we now know to be the modern holistic health movement. Curanderos, (Spanish:
When cannabis arrived in Mexico, it quickly was accepted and adapted as plant medicine by native Mexican communities—appreciated for its value and medicinal potency. Now for generations, we’ve witnessed cannabis used in topical mixtures rubbed on the chest of sick children, on grandmothers with joint ailments, and mothers with headaches. It’s been woven into a well-known tradition passed on from generation to generation.
Yet somehow, we’ve found ourselves in a hypermasculine society tell us that we’re not good enough as we are. We are sold products that tell us be more white, more skinny, and less connected to plant medicine and the natural world. It is a lie that with time has created a hardening. One that has generated a competitive and aggressive dynamic between ourselves and other women.
Being a woman can be painful; our menstrual pain, our menopausal pain, joint pain, child-bearing pain, and emotional pain. Through cannabis, we have the ability to ease these pains and stress with other herbs and practices that gives us a chance to return back to softness, arousing femininity into life and society.
CBD a Shift to Soft Femininity
If CBD can soften hair, skin, anxious nerves, cramps, and adversities to sleep, it can crack open a world of softness in the way we treat our family, friends, children, and ourselves. When we feel well and balanced, we can be more compassionate and engaged individuals. Cannabis forces us to slow down, and take a step back to sit with and witness what’s important in life. Arriving at a more gentle existence is a gift that men too can embody, desire, and express through femininity–encouraging a more balanced yin and yang approach to our lives.
As activists, we commit ourselves to changing the perception of marihüana in Mexico while merging ancestral herbal knowledge with the most advanced scientific developments on the medicinal use of this beloved plant. Cannabis sativa’s array of beneficial cannabinoids has created a global shift in the perspective surrounding the way we heal.
The products we create are an ode to the people and practices that have come before us. Despite big pharma and mass colonization, we are in awe of the preservation of this knowledge and our access to global indigenous forms of plant medicine. To this, we are deeply and forever grateful.
