Feminist International Radio Endeavour- FIRE/June 2004

Meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America
San Juan, June 28-30, 2004

Brazilian Feminists Announce 
the 10th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist
Encuentro

Cairo + 10

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.

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