Press
Release # 14
July 1, 2004. San Juan Puerto Rico. Women's Press Team of CEPAL/RIF-FIRE (María Suárez
Toro) Translated by Claudia Anfossi
“The debate of the X Encounter is going be about the type of feminism that we
want, the roads that we want to build for feminism in Latin America
and the Caribbean, and the answers that we have for many
problems and controversies in the region,” Dulce Xavier of Brazil told Radio
International Feminista (FIRE) .
Dulce is a black woman activist, from the Feminist Reproductive and Sexual Health Network
and Catholics for Free Choice of Brazil. She spoke as one of
the organizers of the 10th Feminist Encuentro of Latin America and the
Caribbean, which will take place in October, 2005 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Dulce said she decided to
participate in the organization of the Encuentro ”because these
encuentros offer an opportunity to empower ourselves and construct in our lives equality as citizens. Even
though organizing of these encuentros is challenging, it is for the
feminist movement that we will accomplish equality, because women need
to personally empower ourselves to fight these battles, to never
accept violence, to change our living conditions and contribute to changing our communities and societies.”
An organizing commission for the Encuentro has been formed in Brazil, which has the mission of making “the
Encuentro represent various feminist perspectives of the Latin American and
Caribbean region,” according to the first information update sent out this month.
Dulce added, “That is why we created an organizing
commission and some consultative committees as part of the organizing
process. And we also have begun a political debate forum in the
Internet, to provide a space to collectively construct the political
framework for the encuentro that will also respect the diversity of thought of various feminist
perspectives and various sectors of society.”
The Organizing Commission is made up of women who were present at the IX
Feminist Encuentro, who are Brazilian feminists with an historical
perspective, but also others from
various sectors of the Braziolian women's movement: black women, lesbian
women, women who work in health, and women who hold political office.
Dulce herself has only participated in the VIII Feminist Encuentro in the
Dominican Republic in 1999.
About the debate topics of the upcoming encuentro, the Brazilian
activist said that feminism and the radicalization of democracy in Latin
America and the Caribbean will be the first debate topic. “It refers to the issue of the impoverishment of women;
about the doubts about public policy that get stronger each time.
Also to be debated are issues of fundamentalism, respect for diversity and
various expressions of sexuality, along with issues related to daily
life.” The organizers are hoping for the contribution of
feminists and women´s groups who have been doing this for years.
The organizers want to build a space in the 10th Feminist Encuentro for
designing strategies. “The great challenge is how to create a
methodology that makes this debate possible, for us to respect our
differences, but to be able to emphasize some common points and rethink
a feminism that will address these common issues, preserving the
diversity of thought and differences that exist. One thing that we have
in common is the battle against the current dominant economic and political model that
forces us all into impoverishment and that turns invisible any public
policy and even democracy itself, ignoring the sovereignty of our
countries.”
Also to
be debated among feminists themselves are issues related to the integration of agendas and visions that are
now fragmented, and also the advance of legal rights in the face of the macro-economic
context, and to the recent
emergence of fundamentalist women's NGOs (non-governmental
organizations) who
call themselves "feminists of the complementarity" and who dispute their space in the heart of civil society itself, which was the
recent case in Mexico during Beijing + 10 and now in Cairo + 10. Dulce
said that " these issues are extremely important, because the consequences of
the economic model and equality of women are indissolubly
tied. In addition, we do not live life piecemeal, with sexuality on the
one hand, work or employment for another, relationships, political participation,
etc. "
Dulce added that the fundamentalist conservative talk that women raise
in the name of feminism is a great challenge because now the fundamentalists
are trying to take our flags from women themselves.
The fact that the 10th Feminist Encuentro is going to be in Brazil is very significant
for the women of that country and for those of the region because Brazil now
has a populist government compromised of social movements,
which have constructed, together with women's movements, the
possibilities of public policies that could change the lives of women.
There
are big expectations in the region in relation to this populist experience and
the World Social Forums that have taken place in Puerto Alegre, as spaces of
social mobility and movements. Dulce said that this context can be
advantageous for the 10th Feminist Encuentro to promote plurality and democracy and
to guarantee that the
spirit of the Feminist Encuentro of 1985 can be well remembered on this
occasion, "which was memorable ".
In
this sense, the stage of Cairo + 10 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which
this interview about the Feminist Encuentro was made, contributed to the
organization of the event in several ways. First of all, because the
feminists created an electronic forum in preparation
for their participation here at Cairo +10, which helped to inform the NGO Forum to
the extent that the agenda of the Forum was organized from that Virtual
Forum.
Likewise, the feminists’ battles in the
CEPAL in Puerto Rico which took place on the stage of many religious and political
fundamentalisms have raised many challenges for the future
about how feminists will work to face the obstacles that these powers
create.
The
Women's Press Team in CEPAL includes: María Suárez
Toro (RIF-FIRE), Margarita Melgar of Puerto Rico, Ana María
Pizarro (SIMUJER) of Nicaragua, María Eugenia Chávez of SIPAM,
Mexico and Alejandra Fosado of GIRE, México.
For more information visit www.radiofeminista.net
or www.fire.or.cr
or write to oficina@radiofeminista.net
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