Lourdes Garcia at ON THE FRONTLINE: Women & the Struggle for Liberation

Direct Action Seminar ON THE FRONTLINE: Women & the Struggle for Liberation Saturday Mar 27, 2010. Speech by Lourdes Garcia, Centre for Latin America Studies & Solidarity, Mexican activist recently returned from Mexico.

When we look to the situation of women in Latin America today, the scene seems both encouraging and disgraceful. It is true that in different spheres women had succeeded in achieving both professional and political recognition. Many top professional are women, and we even have female presidents, like Michelle Bachelet, Cristina Kirtchner or the recently elected president of Costa Rica. For the urban middle classes, access to tertiary education and paid professional job have dramatically increased in the last 40 years. However, the highest proportion of people living under the poverty line are women and their children, the majority of the people displaced for internal conflict, like the case of Colombia, are women; women continue to be brutally killed in the northern and southern border of Mexico in some of the most cruel expression of hate against women. All the mentioned situations are aggravated for the fact of being poor, black or indigenous, and for being women. In most countries, abortion continues to be penalized, women have little decision making power over their own bodies and lives.

 


In the briefly mentioned context, the discussion about feminism, about women liberation should be a priority. We could spend entire seminars discussing the different tendencies and paths the feminist theories have followed, particularly in the western world, but for us, the discussion is focused in the distinction between what a bourgeois feminism opposed to a socialist feminism mean for the women in Latin America and in the Third World. The first mentioned, in very general lines, advocates for our right to continue to be part of a system of exploitation, to be CEOs in multinational companies, or to participate in genocidal wars against other peoples. A feminism that show us that Margaret Tatcher, a woman, can be as neoliberal or more than her counterpart Ronald Reagan, that she is capable of leading to unemployment of thousands of workers, regardless their gender. A feminism that portraits 

Lynndie England torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

On the other hand, a socialist feminism, or movement for women liberation, that fights for human rights, for cultural and economic rights, for the protection of the environment and for a life free of violence of all kinds.

I will now comment on four experiences that, in my opinion, mark a tourning point in the women liberation movement in our continent: 

Building equality in the resistance from below

In the eve of 1994 in the mountains of southern Mexico, an army made up of indigenous people took several municipalities demanding to be heard. The fact that an army of indigenous, generally ignored and minimised along 500 years of colonialism got together was already surprising; more surprising was the fact that a high percentage of them were women, including an important proportion of their central military command.

Soon after we learnt that since March 1993 the Zapatista women came together and moved forward the Revolutionary Law for Women’s Rights (LEY REVOLUCIONARIA DE MUJERES), approved by the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee (Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena (CCRI)), the highest command of the EZLN army:

They demanded their right to participate in the revolutionary struggle, their right to paid work with adequate wages, their right to decide when and who to marry. They demanded a right the rest of women of Mexico don´t have: the right to decide how many children we want to have and can look after.

In the zapatista communities, women run a big proportion of the production system and the economy, not only domestic, but community wide. In the Zapatista communities, young women are free to decide what they want to do, and how they want to be useful for their communities. Women are elected as representatives. It has been a long struggle to change cultural and patriarchal patterns, to change centuries of repression, exploitation, illiteracy. Those women, wearing or not balaclavas, stopped with their hands the army coming into their communities, held arms during the upraising and most importantly, are building their communities together with men and children. Women like Comandanta Susana, our beloved Comandanta Ramona, or Comandanta Esther, who was the first indigenous women in talking in front of the racist Mexican parliament and in national TV. Imagine the image of a short, dark, indigenous woman, wearing her traditional costume, addressing the Mexican people in a Spanish with the accent of her people, talking about the indigenous right for sovereignty and a better society for her people, for the Mexican people. 

Socialism is not possible without the indigenous and women

Bolivia is another case that illustrates the exemplary struggle of women for their sovereignty as Bolivians and as indigenous women. It has been recorded, since the war of independence 200 years ago, that Bolivian women fought on the frontline, alongside men, but once the war was over, the equality in the frontline did not transform into political representation, education or economic opportunities. But the Water War in 2000 and Gas War in 2003, both against privatization of resources by foreign corporations, had been a turning point in the women struggle, that show us that feminism should be anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist. Since Evo Morales and the MAS came to power, the role of women had been crucial. Women are not only in the frontline of protests, but they are now 30% of parliament, and heads of trade unions and half of Evo´s cabinet; they are part of the decision making and the transformation of Bolivia. This has not been the result of positive discrimination, but a result of empowerment of women by being part of the struggle. They have fought illiteracy and continue to fight starvation.

Senator Gabriela Montano says: “This is the fruit of the women’s fight: the tangible proofs of this new state, of this new Bolivia are the increasing participation of the indigenous peoples and the increasing participation of women in the decision-making process of this country.” 

Women resist State Terror and build a new society in Colombia

In a civil war situation, women and their children are the ones that suffer the most. Women become military targets, as the state forces abuses their vulnerable situation to terrorize and destroy communities. But on the other hand, women have found the way of resisting the fierce State Terror that has characterized the 50-year long war in Colombia by being part of the civil and armed resistance.

Poverty and marginalization, not only in Colombia but in Latin America, perpetuate the oppression of women, who in the country side, in the communities built by displaced people and in the misery belts around the cities are more prone to exploitation, rape, lack of opportunities and condemned to have many children that will end up begging on the streets or displaced by the war.

But in the mountains and the resistance, they fight alongside with men, regardless of gender or ethnic background, they are building a new society. In the last few years, up to 60% of the new FARC recruits are women. These women, escaping from their impoverished communities find a space where their voices are heard, where they can decide over their own lives, where they can learn to read, to debate, to fight, where they don´t have to stop being women. In the armed and political struggle, women have earned leadership in the military and community structures by working together to change their reality.  

A revolution within the revolution: the Cuban experience

When the Granma disembarked on the shores of Cuba and the open war against Bastista started, there were no women in that expedition. The traditional patriarchal costumes dictated that only men could fight in a war for national liberation. Soon after, women like Vilma Espín, Aleida March and countless other carried out decisive military operations that led to the victory of the Cuban revolution.

Within the revolution, Cuban women have organized to be part of the transformation, of the construction of their new society. They have demanded equal rights, now warranted in the Constitution, and it is state policy to make sure equality is real.

The victories that Cuban women have won within the revolution are expressed far beyond political representation in local and national bodies. Cuban women have full access to education, full access to employment opportunities, equal wages, equal jobs. More importantly, Cuban women are protected by a universal healthcare system, they have the right to decide when and how many children they can to have and can look after. They enjoy a childcare system that ensures women can study, work, be part of all developments, while the whole community helps them raise healthy children, looked after the community and the State.

Cuban women are doctors, work in construction, in the art industry. Cuban women are parliamentarians, teachers, and builders of their own future. 

Similar to the case of Bolivia, Cuba show us that the advancement of women struggle and their role in leading a revolution cannot be the product of the so-called “positive discrimination” or setting quotes of representation in bureaucratic positions, but by women fighting for their right to education, to decide over their bodies and lives. It is based in women having equal access to work and freedom of speech and opinion.

The examples of the Mexican Zapatistas and the brave Colombian guerrilleras, although illustrate the exemplary struggle in resisting and building better communities, their achievements are unfortunately not enjoyed by the rest of their fellow conationals. In Mexico, women continue to be sexually exploited, murdered in the borders or put in jail for having an illegal abortion. In the rest of Colombia, women continue to be massively displaced and condemned to poverty and suffer under State Terror. These great achievements have change and improve the lives of many women, and set examples to follow, but all Mexican, all Colombian, all Latin American women deserve to have a life with dignity, and this is only possible when the socialist feminism we have discussed is an essential part of the national agenda of the Latin American states. We, the Latin American women deserve and are fighting for real equality, for real political representation, housing, food, education, and against the current capitalist system.

 

 

Direct Action Seminar
ON THE FRONTLINE:
Women & the Struggle for Liberation
Saturday Mar 27, 2pm
Direct Action Activist Centre,
Victorian Trades Hall, 
cnr of Lygon and Victoria St, Carlton
DA centre is located next to New International Bookshop in the basement of Trades Hall, entry via Victoria St.

Everywhere women are bearing the brunt of the global economic crash and increasing social inequality - wars & occupations, lost jobs, more discrimination, and an unrelenting cultural tide aimed at reversing the gains of the feminist movement.

But women are not simply on the frontline of government and corporate attacks, they are also on the frontline of resistance - leading major struggles against war, occupations, poverty and discrimination.

This seminar will bring together feminist activists to discuss these experiences of resistance and consider ways of reinvigorating the struggle for women's liberation.

The keynote speakers will introduce the discussion by drawing on their specific experiences with various resistance struggles including Palestine, Latin America and Australia.

Speakers Include:
Kim Bullimore, recently returned from working in the Occupied West Bank as a human rights volunteer, Direct Action journalist.
Lourdes Garcia, Centre for Latin America Studies & Solidarity, Mexican activist recently returned from Mexico.
Zely Ariane, National Network for Womens' Liberation (JNPM) in Indonesia & Committee of the Politics of the Poor–People’s Democratic Party (KPRM-PRD), touring Australia.

For more information:  Tel 0439 454 375  or 0403 943 529
www.rsp.org.au
www.directaction.org.au

 

 

Contact Jorge Jorquera ::: jorge @ sharingplanet.net HOME