Healing Historical-Intergenerational Trauma and Colonial Soul Wounds with Ancestral Healing Practices and Psychosocial Limpias: An Ofrenda for the Salvadoran Community

Author

• Joanna d. Beltrán Girón, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Michelle Fine

Committee Members

Michelle Fine

Jason VanOra

Desiree Byrd

Subject Categories

Community Psychology | Personality and Social Contexts | Social Psychology

Keywords

Art-based Healing, Critical Participatory Action Research, Decolonial Feminisms, Healing Circles, Liberation Psychology, Non-verbal/Beyond-the-verbal Testimonios

Abstract

In 1992, the United States-backed Salvadoran military and the leftist guerrillas signed the Chapultepec Peace Accords, which put an end to a 12-year war in El Salvador that resulted in 75,000 deaths, 12,000 forced disappearances, and half a million internal displacements. Around 85% of the reports made by survivors of the war attributed the violence to state agents, paramilitary groups, and death squads.While taking into account this history of state violence, this dissertation is interested in the psychosocial aftermath of the war and in how survivors integrate healing practices in their lives in response to the painful memories their bodies carry. My dissertation presents three healing-centered and trauma-informed “offerings” that facilitate personal and collective healing among war survivors and their adult children: Healing Circles for Justice (a project by the Mauricio Aquino Foundation/Our Parents’ Bones), Creative Writing for Healing Justice, and daughtering as a form of personal-collective repair. Salvadorans carry the sequela of the war, and we also carry wisdom and medicine that can transmute our collective ruptures into repair. State violence as an expression of colonial violence is inherently ableist. Thus, I propose the framework of Non-verbal/Beyond-the-verbal Testimonios (NV/BVT) as a disability justice-oriented praxis that facilitates emotional processing and healing among survivors of colonial and state violence. This dissertation posits that the collective radical imagination and self-expression of Salvadoran survivors serve as portals through which we can heal from our past and envision liberated futures.

Recommended Citation

Beltrán Girón, Joanna d., "Healing Historical-Intergenerational Trauma and Colonial Soul Wounds with Ancestral Healing Practices and Psychosocial Limpias: An Ofrenda for the Salvadoran Community" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6778