Radio Internacional Feminista - FIRE

November  2006

 

Before and after Oaxaca: AWID´s Movements and Money

 

 by María Suárez Toro, FIRE

23 de noviembre 2006

More than 350 feminists active in transformational politics in social movements, non governmental organizations (NGO) that promote women’s rights, and  allied funding institutions, all met in Queretaro, México this past November 9-11 for the event “Money and Movements.”

They had been convened by the NGO Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), to hear and discuss the results of their three year study about funding for women’s rights coordinated and written by   Just Associates. 

Originally the gathering was scheduled to take place in Oaxaca in southern México.   However, circumstances that were already tense since May had worsened there during the months of September and October, which led the feminist organizers to conclude that it would be almost impossible to hold the meeting in the original site. Therefore  they moved it to Queretaro in the northern part of the country.

During this time at a national level, all of México’s social movements and some political parties took to the streets challenging the legitimacy of the results of the latest electoral process in September. One young middle class Mexican woman, who works in public relations for what some call  transnational “logo companies”, told FIRE last September during mass mobilizations in the capital city that she was in the streets “because the companies cannot end up owning our country, we need government and we need movements to stop that possibility from happening.”

While México City’s streets were occupied by protesters, major sectors of the Oaxacan population had already been in the streets for  some time. The conflict in Oaxaca had started even before the national elections.   During the month of May, teachers organized a peaceful protest demanding better salaries and an end to corruption. The teachers were repressed and imprisoned, but the protests became stronger as other social organizations joined in, among them the Oaxaca People’s Popular Assembly (APPO), demanding the resignation of the governor and all State powers in Oaxaca.

On June 14th, the governor of Oaxaca issued a police order to repress the protests with little success. But meanwhile, thousands of outraged women, organized under the Coordinadora de Mujeres Oaxaqueñas, marched against the governmental and police repression.


Women in Oaxaca demanding peace.


AWID´s banner for Money and Movements.

Again, on August 1st the women marched through the streets of the town banging their  pots and pans and  demanding an end to the governor’s mandate,   as they headed for the local TV station and some nine radio stations  -- the Oaxaca Radio and Television Corporation (CORTV) belonging to the state government. Some entered the studios to request 10 minutes to read a statement. They came out irate and angry when    officials from the media denied their request . The crowd became even more upset and called for peacefully taking over the stations. And so they did. That day, Radio 96.9 FM, 680 AM, and TV channel 9, broadcast, perhaps for the first time ever, the voices of the voiceless in Spanish, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Mixe and Chinateco indigenous languages. Women became the engineers of the stations and opened the microphones to all sectors of   Oaxacan society, inviting them to come and speak openly and free of censorship.

Once more, on September 15th, Independence Day in México, the women’s movement in Oaxaca opened their umbrellas, dressed in their best and liveliest colors and took to the streets to celebrate in protest. 

On October 24, Feminist Non-Governmental Organizations dedicated to advocating for   gender equity, such as the Consorcio para el Diálogo Parlamentario y la Equidad, quickly adapted their agenda by organizing a feminist caravan from México City to Oaxaca in solidarity with the women and their communities. They were joined by feminist legislators such as Maricela Contreras. They heard the testimonies of the women in Oaxaca, joined the protests in solidarity and disseminated the information of what they had witnessed.

                                                    

Oaxaca at AWID

But if AWID could not go to Oaxaca, Oaxaca came to AWID in November. The women of Oaxaca came to the meeting on movements and money.  These women are among the poorest of the poor and they have forged some of  the most highly dynamic and organized women’s movements in the region if not the world, capable of articulating and responding quickly to the signs of the times.  They  helped create the kind of networks that take the   risks necessary for promoting real transformation, taking them without much calculation of anything else other than the fact that there is very little left to lose   in their present context.  As such they  are determined to recover lost ground.

When they presented their case at AWID on the 9th, they showed us videos with ample evidence of the fact that at this point in history, these women and their communities have been dispossessed of almost everything.  They showed us a government that no longer governs, but has dedicated its mandate to serve corporations rather than people and to usurp the public patrimony and common good  that belongs to all of Oaxaca and México for the benefit of the few.  

In this effort, the women denounced companies in the region, such as Chedrahui and Tubos y Conexiones, Gugar, as well as particular entrepreneurs that have collaborated with government forces responsible forrepressing   people and their movements.

“Advocacy alone is no longer enough for feminism – Marusia López of the Consorcio told FIRE – while we lobby, others are stealing our resources, repressing people who protest and are dismantling the very State with which we interact. We have to develop more holistic strategies and agendas, and join social movements to become part of them.”

According to the Oaxacan women   interviewed by FIRE, the dismantling of the assassination of teachers and incarceration of men and women were the tipping point, the “drops” that made the glass overflow, in moving people  beyond isolated “advocacy” and the promotion of women’s rights agendas and actions. “How can we claim women’s rights and lobby government for rights when we are being left without government at all? - asked Consorcio´s Ana María Hernandéz  - we had to use our leadership capacities to rise above our own agenda  and with it,  take up transformational politics with other social movements. If we do not have government that serves us, we cannot have any rights. We will have to create government ourselves.”

Although there were no more than fifty women from the AWID event listening to them that night, it was suggested that the women of Oaxaca present their statement to the final plenary session on the 11th, so that all could hear the case and hopefully adopt the resolution  which occurred at the conclusion of the gathering. (See resolution in AWID´s page at www.awid.org)

On the other hand, as is very common in many ways in these kinds of events, many threads among women are woven outside of the main activities, outside the    panels, official dialogues, plenary, etc.  Such a process happened at AWID between the women of Oaxaca and the 26 Mesoamerican women’s organizations (of all kinds) and the Just Associates initiative “Observatorio Feminista de la Trangresión” (Feminists Transformational Politics Watch) when They decided that their next joint endeavor following the “Women’s Observatory Mission to the Nicaragua Elections” in November 5 (see www.fire.or.cr), will be a “Feminist Observatory of Women’s Resistance” in Oaxaca the upcoming year.

The international Urgent Action Fund was also able to respond to the immediate financial needs of the Oaxaca women by approving a quick grant to them so that they can document, publish and present publicly the testimonies of the violations of human rights and women’s human rights this coming December 10, International Human Rights Day.

These are but two examples of the many ways in which the   current historic moment and   women’s leadership at this juncture   are challenging all of us to reassess where we stand regarding the potential political divide   between different types of feminist action strategies, organizing efforts,   and roles.Advocacy on one hand, movement building on another, and agenda setting through??? funding, can no longer be fragmented tasks.  And most certainly, none are the specialized role of any specific type of feminist organization.

 

Oaxaca mirrors all of us

The Sunday following the end of AWID´s meeting, the women of Oaxaca occupied the Cathedral in the Zócalo of Oaxaca with their hands painted in red. Emilio, a member of one of the Human Rights Commissions in México stated that day in a   Radio program by journalist Carmen Aristegui, that if the priests would stop using the pulpit to do politics in favor of the government, then women would not feel  the obligation to use the church for the same purposes. He stated that the previous Sunday, the priest had used his sermon to call the police to act in Oaxaca against its protesters.

Oaxaca is a mirror of what we are all facing globally. It seems that we have come to the time when the gap between the above tasks and strategies no longer holds validity for any of us.

In a dialogue conducted by Joanna Kerr of AWID during the event, she asked mewhat I thought the problem   with international NGOs was.   I cannot remember exactly what I said, but what I want to say to all of us who were there and those who were not, is that we ALL have the same problem:

  •  A global model that is shrinking the space and time for human/ecological development and the creation of alternatives -- in the name of modernization   technological power  dominates. (Main claim: Neo-liberalism is the only way, so we might as well adjust to its trends while demanding it become slightly more humane and ecological when, in reality, it cannot.);

 

  • A relational paradigm that is based on the market, not on human rights or the wellbeing of the whole, including the Planet. (Main claim: What you negotiate is what you get, regardless of anything else, (what do you mean here??)  1) in terms of fund raising or more broadly 2)such as the crucial need for more equitable distribution of resources and relationships that foster the common good.  If you do not get it, it is because you do not negotiate well.);  

 

  • A promotional paradigm that believes that anything can be “marketed” with a good strategy and good strategists, regardless of whether it is advisable    at all. (There is a TV add in Costa Rica that I like for this one: “Not everything in life can be bought, but for everything else there is CREDOMATIC.” I like it. It reminds me that not everything that is good is in the market, matter of fact, it reminds me that the best things in life cannot be bought, although we all need some resources to fight for their livelihood, not the other way around!) 

 

Wherever we are we all confront the same set of problems. And most certainly, none of us can face them or solve them in isolation from the social movements that are in the forefront of transformational politics. Bottom line, whether we engage in transformational politics becomes an issue of political choice.

And like the women of Oaxaca, we do not have many choices left, with or without funding, and sharing what little or more we have.

Either we all take on transformational politics or we will be left with very little or nothing.  We all have choices, with our money – lots, little or none - and our politics.  To confront the challenges of this moment, we need to put our money and resources where our politics are, not viceversa.


Ana María Hernandez of Axaca at AWID.

 

 

What to do with $20 million

At some point in the same dialogue hosted by Joanna Kerr of AWID and shared with Joanne Sandler of UNIFEM, Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women´s Global Leadership, Jessica Horn of the Sigrid Rausing Trust and Roxanne Murrell of Oxfam Central América , I was asked what FIRE would do with $20 million.. 

An underlying assumption, expressed explicitly in the dialogue was that women find it hard to decide about such amounts of money, for one of the following reasons:

a   because our reference is scarcity of money, not abundance.

      b.  because as women, we are afraid of money.

      c.  because women have a short sighted mentality regarding money due to the previous two. 

 

While these are good points, there more to that than meets the eye. When I raised the “d” choice, a wave of applause inundated the plenary. Why? I never asked, but maybe it was because we too often forget that in everything we do, we are making political choices!

Let me clarify -- I do not mean what you may be thinking. Scarcity, of course, is not our choice. But what I do mean is those who know what to do best with scant resources, and that is certainly women worldwide, might know what to do with an abundance of resources. Except we might  choose different approaches and priorities given autonomy... or taken (as nobody gives it to anyone else)! And that is what I mean by political choice.

When used with autonomy and solidarity: women try to make ends meet; women use resources for individual and community survival; women tend to share them so that everyone can eat what little or lots there is; women invariably save whatever minimal surplus is left for rainy days; women send some funds back home  when, in the modern day Diaspora, they leave their countries to   support those dispossessed of livelihoods back home; etc.

Furthermore, the world desperately needs  women’s “know how”  . We cannot give it up to fuel the market trend!

Does anyone really believe that we live in a world of abundance? Really? While it is true that there is lots of money around, perhaps more than ever before , the fact is that there is a growing tendency to have nothing much else left, perhaps like no other time in history.

We have depleted the Planet’s resources to the point of almost no return for the survival of  human and other life species   on earth , according the James Lovelock’s latest and challenging book, The Revenge of GAIA (2006). In the face of this trend he recommends “sustainable restraint”. That is restraint for those who have resources. Yet it is oftentimes people who do not who are the ones who know how to live more sustainably. And that definitely means most women among others.

So let’s give the money to women because women might actually have the “know-how” and vision to turn that trend around. Here are a few examples:

 

  • If you fund the democratization of media and women’s media, women’s groups would not have to seize the media to get a simple statement to the public! They would be able to present ideas on their own terms and expand the range of voices at the table of public debate and decision. By the way, media and communications in the hands of women ranked very high in all regional strategies designed at the AWID meeting, yet it is one of the invisible activities in the study regarding money for women’s rights.

 

  • If you fund gender in initiatives of democratic development and women’s political participation, you will inevitably have to address how to fund women leadership in political parties and government in ways that challenge and transform current power dynamics so that alternative forms of leadership and power can be forged, something that is gradually being supported as a necessary step towards good governance and social change, an urgent necessity if humanity is to take seriously a restraint from present global trends that are threatening all. 

 

  • If you fund women to counteract the connection between religious and political fundamentalism, women will not have to take over churches or temples to stop the repression, but will be able to exercise their spirituality or faith free of persecution, and so will everyone else.

 

And, women, let’s negotiate and take the money with autonomy and solidarity so that we do not do it the same old unsustainable way .

INICIO

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Fuente: Radio Internacional Feminista/www.radiofeminista.net
Fotos: María Suárez