Here, we can also fight.
En los márgenes de una de las ciudades más ricas del mundo, mujeres que cruzaron fronteras cargando traumas invisibles encuentran en Mixteca algo que pocas instituciones les ofrecen: un espejo cultural que las reconoce. Lorena Kourousias, psicóloga mexicana que limpió casas antes de fundar una organización sin fines de lucro en Brooklyn, ha convertido su propia vulnerabilidad migratoria en una brújula terapéutica. Su trabajo nos recuerda que sanar no siempre comienza con un diván, sino a veces con la masa del maíz entre las manos y el humo del copal en el aire.
- Miles de madres inmigrantes viven en albergues de Nueva York donde la violencia sexual, las cámaras de vigilancia y el miedo a la deportación se han vuelto parte del paisaje cotidiano.
- Desde 2022, la llegada masiva de migrantes enviados en autobús desde Texas desbordó un sistema de refugio ya frágil, dejando a familias enteras —incluyendo niños de tres años— expuestas a condiciones que nadie debería normalizar.
- El cierre anunciado de cincuenta y cuatro albergues para junio amenaza con arrojar a la calle a familias que ya no tienen adónde ir ni redes de apoyo que las sostengan.
- Mixteca responde con una terapia que no pide a las mujeres que abandonen su identidad: talleres donde hacer tortillas o sembrar maíz abre puertas que el consultorio tradicional mantiene cerradas.
- El estigma cultural alrededor de la salud mental en comunidades latinoamericanas cede cuando la sanación se ofrece en el idioma del cuerpo, la tierra y las prácticas ancestrales.
Lorena Kourousias llegó a Estados Unidos con dos maestrías de la UNAM y terminó limpiando casas por cuatrocientos dólares a la semana. Una mañana, en el sótano donde dormía, la presencia inesperada del hijo de sus empleadores le provocó un miedo que no supo nombrar de inmediato. Ese instante de vulnerabilidad se convirtió, con el tiempo, en el núcleo de todo lo que construiría después.
Hoy dirige Mixteca, una organización sin fines de lucro en Brooklyn que ofrece terapia grupal alternativa a familias inmigrantes. Lo que comenzó en el año 2000 como un servicio para personas con VIH se transformó, especialmente desde 2022, en un refugio para madres solas que llegaron sin nada: pidiendo pruebas de embarazo, pañales, fórmula. Muchas han sobrevivido violencia sexual —durante el trayecto migratorio o dentro de los propios albergues municipales donde fueron alojadas. Treinta y cinco mil familias permanecen aún en ese sistema. Una niña de tres años que asiste a las clases de arte de Mixteca dijo un día que estaba triste. Nadie sabe del todo qué ven los niños en esos espacios.
Kourousias entiende que la migración rara vez es una elección libre: cuando los recursos se concentran en un solo lugar, partir deja de ser una opción para convertirse en una necesidad. Las mujeres que llegan hoy, dice, enfrentan condiciones aún más precarias que las que ella vivió, agravadas por la ausencia de redes de paisanos que antes facilitaban el primer empleo, el primer techo.
La respuesta de Mixteca no es clínica en el sentido convencional. El ochenta y cinco por ciento de quienes acceden a sus servicios psicológicos son mujeres inmigrantes, y el abordaje mezcla consejería individual con talleres donde hacer tortillas o plantar maíz baja las defensas lo suficiente para que el dolor pueda nombrarse. Una curandera codirige grupos donde las prácticas indígenas y la psicología se entrelazan sin jerarquías. La pregunta que articula toda la filosofía del lugar es sencilla y radical: ¿por qué encender copal no puede ser también salud mental?
Frente a la amenaza de deportación, el cierre de albergues y la imposibilidad de trabajar sin exponerse, Mixteca sostiene un mensaje que es, a la vez, terapéutico y político: aquí también se puede luchar.
Lorena Kourousias was living in a basement with no street-facing door when she first understood what it meant to be a migrant woman in America. It was 2010. She had left Mexico after sixteen years building a career as a psychologist, treating survivors of gender violence. But in New York, she cleaned houses for four hundred dollars a week, ate when her employers ate, slept when they slept. One morning, a son of the family came downstairs in his underwear. She felt afraid and asked herself why. That basement room, that moment—it became the seed of everything she would build.
Today, at fifty-four, Kourousias runs Mixteca, a nonprofit in Brooklyn that offers alternative group therapy to immigrant families. She sits before two computer screens, her calendar dense with the work of healing. Fifteen years have passed since that basement. The vulnerability she felt then has become her compass.
Mixteca opened its doors in 2000, initially to serve people with HIV during the height of the crisis in New York. But in recent years, especially since 2022 when Texas began busing migrants who had just crossed the border to New York, the organization has become a refuge for single mothers and women who arrived with nothing. They come asking for pregnancy tests, diapers, formula. Many have survived sexual violence—during the journey from their countries, or worse, inside the shelters where the city has housed them. According to municipal data, thirty-five thousand six hundred forty families remain in New York's shelter system. The organization's mental health coordinator, Aldonza Buerba, twenty-six years old, describes the violence as pervasive, layered with the acute stress of political uncertainty and the threat of deportation.
When Kourousias first arrived in the United States, despite her credentials—a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees from Mexico's National Autonomous University—she found only live-in domestic work. In Mexico, she had earned three hundred dollars a month as a psychologist. Street harassment was constant. She decided to migrate, she says now, because all migration contains an element of force. When resources concentrate in one place, the choice to leave becomes less a choice than a necessity.
After her early experiences of vulnerability, Kourousias began documenting the invisible violences that migrant women faced while seeking work. She became an accompaniment worker for survivors in the Bronx, gathering stories. What she learned shaped Mixteca's approach. The conditions facing mothers who have arrived in recent years are, she believes, even more precarious than what she encountered. Women in shelters report people trying doors while they shower. They describe feeling exposed to security cameras. A three-year-old girl who attends Mixteca's art classes lives in a shelter. Recently she said she was sad. No one fully knows what children witness in those spaces.
Many of these mothers arrived with no networks, no one from their town to say, "Come stay with me, I'll ask my employer if she needs another cleaner." That absence of kinship networks makes finding work nearly impossible, even for those with work authorization. The city announced the closure of fifty-four shelters by June, adding another layer of precarity to lives already stretched thin.
Mixteca's approach to healing is rooted in culture. Eighty-five percent of those accessing the organization's psychological services are immigrant women. They receive individual counseling, trauma-healing workshops, training in preventing domestic violence, and parenting tools. The workshops use creative activities—making tortillas, planting corn—to lower people's defenses. There is enormous stigma around mental health in Latin American communities, and these activities create space to talk about healing without the threat feeling so direct. One coordinator, asking a simple question, captures the philosophy: "Why, if I speak of using palo santo or burning copal, is that not mental health?" The organization runs groups led by a curandera, a traditional healer, where indigenous practices and psychological care interweave. These are spaces where women's identities genuinely resonate.
Kourousias knows the women who come through Mixteca's doors are in an impossible position. They must work to feed their children while risking deportation to countries many fled. The organization's message is clear and defiant: "Here, we can also fight."
Notable Quotes
I believe everyone who migrates experiences some element of forced migration. When economic resources concentrate in one place, there is something forced in our decision to leave.— Lorena Kourousias
Why, if I speak of using palo santo or burning copal, is that not mental health?— Mixteca coordinator, on integrating indigenous healing practices
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made you decide to document the violences instead of just surviving them?
When you're in that basement, you think you're alone. But then you meet other women, and you realize the pattern. The vulnerability isn't personal—it's structural. I needed to name it.
The mothers coming now seem to be in a different situation than you were.
Much worse. I had no children depending on me. These women are making impossible choices every day. Work or safety. Stay or flee. And the shelters—they're not safe either.
Why does Mixteca use tortilla-making and corn-planting in therapy?
Because our grandmothers knew how to heal. We don't need to erase that knowledge to be legitimate. When hands are busy, the mind can speak what it couldn't before.
You mentioned there's enormous stigma around psychology in Latin communities.
Yes. But if I call it what our ancestors called it—sanación, limpia, ceremony—suddenly it's not threatening. It's home.
What do you tell a mother who's terrified of deportation?
That her fear is real and reasonable. And that here, in this room, we are building something together. That matters.