Dayanara Marte: The Power of Casa Atabex Ache


Some of the women who run Casa Atabex Ache.
Daynara Marte has been executive director of the “House of Womyn Power� Casa Atabex Ache in the South Bronx of New York for four years. She came to Casa in 1999 as an intern and has stayed and moved up in the organization ever since.
“Casa” in Spanish means house. “Atabex” is one of the many names for the Taino goddess or earth mother of Puerto Rico. Taino are the indigenous people of Puerto Rico, and other islands in the Caribbean. “Ache” means power in Yoruba, the language of a West African ethnic group.
Between 30 to 65 young women learn about self empowerment through cultural and indigenous rituals, spirituality, and social justice at Casa Atabex Ache at any given time. Currently, Dayanara is working on outreaching to the large Mexican immigrant community living in the South Bronx. Many fear entering community establishments and being asked for their immigration papers.
Here’s Dayanara…


Casa Atabex Ache provides programs for both young and adult women?
Our herstory is that originally we had two programs: a young women’s program and then an adult women’s program. But right now, which is an accomplishment for us, we’re putting together an alternative health and healing empowerment cooperative. It’s an alternative health center that provides holistic, cultural, natural, mind/body/spirit healthcare to the community.

What are some examples of the types of services this center provides?

This has become an intergenerational space, so we still do work with young women. We have people come in and do trainings or workshops with them on body image, healthy eating, reiki, acupuncture, massage therapy, yoga, different alternative fitness classes, natural medicines—so they learn how to prepare their own medicines at home. In addition, they learn what is political about doing self healing and emotional relief work to cure different diseases that women of color go through because of internalized oppression and different forms of violence they experience in their community and in their personal life.
It’s not about just giving a service to the community but really having a dialogue about why a space like this needs to exist. What is really happening to immigrant, poor, working women of color in our communities that has many of us dying from cervical cancer, breast cancer, having depression, trauma, high incidents of infant mortality rates—not to mention our reproductive healthcare system sucks. We just have a tremendous amount of disease in our bodies and a lot of that comes from what is happening externally and the lack of resources that we have access to. So, we combine all of those components to then provide a space where women can do work on different traumas, make relief and action plans, use their own experiences for healing work, and use their cultura [culture] to start reclaiming their bodies, their minds, their spirits, their cultures, to be able to do the work that they need to do in this space.
How do the young women respond to these types of alternative healthcare and messages?
Well, at first, they’re like, “What the hell is this? You all are crazy. We’re not witches.� Because we do a lot of altar work—we do earth-based spirituality, goddities, Chinese Five Element Theory, aromatherapy, and other things like that. So, at first, they are resistant to it. But our work is to show them that another world is possible and to reclaim what our indigenous ancestors used to live and to be one with the earth. There’s also the “I’m not doing it attitude.� Or, “I don’t need it. I don’t have any problem. I never experienced racism or sexism. My life is fine the way that it is.� But eventually without them even noticing it, they do start going through intensive training that’s very experiential. They learn how to instead of smoking weed or having unsafe sex, they learn how to start going home and taking wonderful baths and creating affirmations for themselves and building their own altars in their homes and living their lives with serious intent.
They also start really getting informed about their bodies. We take trips to the GYN. They start learning about different types of self mutilation, how to own [this self abuse] and use this space as their journey to basic self awareness.
We talk about how to break down guilt and fear, gossip and drama, and going against each other on the street—where all that comes from and how to start letting them go and gaining other tools to deal with life other than the violence.

Would you say that violence is the top issue that a lot of the young women in the area face?

Yeah, most definitely. We just started a campaign—a couple of young women who have been with me since I got here eight years ago and have grown up with me—finished a documentary on the impact of child abuse and different forms of child abuse in their lives and then being resorted to having to go to five or six foster homes where they experienced rape and sexual assault and different forms of sexual violence that they otherwise had not experienced in their [birth parents’] home. We have a lot of young women with that particular story.
We also have a lot of adult women who walk through our space who have that story but now are realizing the impact that that trauma and violence has had on their lives as adults and the choices they made because of it. For example, they’re still in very destructive, unhealthy, violent relationships. They’ve self mutilating themselves, whether they’re drinking or not achieving their highest potential. At the end of the day, at the core of the work, whether it’s young or adult women, there definitely is the issue of the impact of child abuse in all its forms.

What are some of your most memorable moments at Casa Atabex Ache?

With the young women, I think the most memorable moments are always when a young woman walks into this space and is just like, “There’s something in my underwears! What is it? What do I need to do? We need to go to the GYN!� It’s something that she otherwise would not have had any awareness of unless she was in our program.
We’ve also sent a lot of our young women to college and definitely saw them go from the space where—“I can’t dream. Somebody took my voice away. Somebody took my ability to dream a long time ago�—to, “I’m going to college. I’m going to do this for myself.� Whether they follow through or not, I think it’s a big success for us.
And definitely young women who have had children in this space and were going to call their child “Alize� or some other type of liquor or rum or car—seeing them go from wanting to do that to calling their children “Precious,� or finding a really intent-filled, beautiful name for their children.
With the adult women, we’ve had adult women here who are 30 and have never looked at their vaginas. This is the space where that moment gets to happen. It’s like, “Oh, my God, I wash it. It’s there! I’m sexually intimate with people, but I don’t want to look at it. I’ve never seen it.� So, to have sisters take a mirror up to their vaginas and apologize to it for whatever reason, or to reclaim it and actually see it, is a big success for us.
We do a lot of retreats in the space. We teach women for three days, outside of their environments, to really do intensive healing work. To see sisters together in a space where they’re not hiding or gossiping, and they’re really learning how to take care of each other and themselves. Seeing sisters be able to come back [to their lives] and be new, be a wonderful mom or a wonderful partner, be better at their jobs with more strength, or learn different ways of taking care of their bodies or how to let go of different addictions. That’s definitely a success in this space.
We’ve had sisters come here to volunteer. Or participants who end up becoming volunteers of this space or becoming staff. Or end up taking another role in another organization and doing very similar work. Or who are now reiki practitioners and are doing alternative things in their homes. Those are all wonderful successes for us.
What are some issues you think are pertinent to young and adult women’s lives that presidential candidates should keep in mind and consider while on the campaign trail?
One of the impacts that we’re feeling is the reduction of the budget and the decrease of resources in an already decreased-resourced community. [Laughs] Communities that do not have [many resources], and didn’t have, now have less. In particular, the women in this community. We definitely have a big influx of teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and asthma because we have four incinerators that are around this community. We also have about four youth jails surrounding the community; it’s really ridiculous the way our children are being brought up right now. And all these different laws coming up around child abuse; all different types of ways to criminalize our communities. But definitely, I would say, more monies into our communities, especially for reproductive healthcare for the women and safe spaces for the youth.

What do you personally hope the young women get out of the work that you do with them?

Continuance healing and possibility. To be able to integrate the politics so that it’s not that you’re going crazy, or that you’re going through this by yourself. The war that is happening abroad still has a very big impact on our lives right here, right now. We internalize that war. We don’t need presidents and judicial systems any more to punish us. We do that to ourselves in our own way. We need to start healing from internalized oppression.
So, I’m hoping to create a space where as the world changes and we continue there is a space for young and adult women to heal. Heal in the midst of all the violence and to dream big that anything is possible. But first you need to really look into yourself and put yourself into a context that is not individualized from everything else that is happening.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Just for people to know that we exist. Sometimes we think that a space like this doesn’t exist. [Laughs] But it does. And it will only sustain if women need it. We do not plan to be here for a hundred years because our hope is that at some point we will stop needing spaces like this because the world is going to be just fine. But in the meantime, we need women power to sustain this space. We need spaces, and we actually need to create them ourselves. Nobody is going to do that for us.
And I hope women take part and enjoy the journey of creating safe spaces for ourselves. I think the stand that Casa has taken is that there has just been too much energy exerted into fighting the system and so we want to start creating our own. This year we’re going to start creating our own healthcare system and stop fighting all of these other institutions. That’s just way too much energy that occupies us. What’s wrong with the education system? Well, let’s create our own. And that is what I think we do with the young women’s program. These are the things you’re not learning in school. These are things we think are important in understanding that you’re Latina or that you’re African American or that you’re South Asian. This is what we think you need to know in order to survive this world. We make it happen in the programs. Whatever they don’t learn in school, we make sure that they learn it here. And that they’re informed. So, I think we’re just taking a stance to stop fighting against institutions and to start really creating liberated autonomous zones where community has control, power and governance over itself.

Join the Conversation