Keys to Psychosocial Accompaniment (2 ed.)
The series “Keys to Psychosocial Accompaniment” is a collective product. In early 2014, Aluna Psychosocial Accompaniment convened a small group of human rights defenders who accompany victims of sociopolitical violence in Mexico to conduct study seminars on the psychosocial approach. In workshops, we considered concepts, context analysis, examples, and tools of psychosocial accompaniment to address acts of political repression and fear, forced disappearance, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, torture, and sexual torture. In addition, the strengthening of those who accompany was also included.
Knowledge and tools emerged from these exchanges, but so did questions and challenges about psychosocial accompaniment: What is its scope and limitations? What preconceived ideas do accompanists have that limit the process? What is our role in political projects of social transformation? How do we adapt our work within the context of the current social and political violence in Mexico? How do we contribute to a social psychology that liberates rather than controlling and dominating? We extend our warm thanks to the participants of the first cycle of the psychosocial accompaniment workshops—held between 2014 and 2015—for accepting our invitation to reflect, share, debate, and build around our work.
The growth and consolidation of Aluna has involved great contributions from each of the people who make up the organization. Through their practice and commitment, they have provided feedback on these reflections and contributed to the psychosocial accompaniment model. In 2021, as a work team, we tasked ourselves with editing these booklets to incorporate some theoretical and practical keys that have complemented Aluna Psychosocial Accompaniment’s journey with political subjects throughout our first ten years, both in accompaniment processes and in educational spaces and workshops within Latin America and transnationally.
We hope these efforts will contribute to political subjects’ struggle to achieve justice and reparation, that it contributes to social transformation, to strengthening hope, and to encouraging more people to do accompaniment work and build more and better bases for psychosocial accompaniment together.
Aluna thanks all those who have supported the development of the previous editions of this series of booklets with commitment and solidarity.
We dedicate this work to the victims of sociopolitical violence in Mexico, Latin America, and other parts of the world. They have allowed us to accompany them in their pain and anger and let us witness the transformation of ignominy into struggle, solidarity, and hope. We have shared this transformation by recognizing and experiencing the impacts as well as by putting the multiple and diverse ways of coping with the damage of sociopolitical violence into practice. Along this path, many of these people and collectives went from being victims to positioning themselves as political subjects.
Finally, we would like to thank our partner organizations for the support they have offered to this collective work called Aluna Psychosocial Accompaniment. Over the years, their valuable contributions and the involvement with many organizations made this new edition of the themed booklets possible. Without collective work and the lessons of those we are close to, collectives, local communities, and psychosocial accompanists in Mexico and Latin America as well as the constant dialogue with partner organizations in other continents, the development and consolidation of our “Keys to Psychosocial Accompaniment” contained in this new edition would have been unthinkable.
