Bolletin 10 October 2021

From the Americas they leave to transform

Communication team meeting of the Americas: :
Rocio Alorda, Helenea Zelic, Corina Muñoz, Marilys Zayas S. Natalia Blanco y Alejandra Laprea

The Regional Meeting of the World March of Women of the Americas began on September 10 with the analysis of the regional reality. 
From our reality
During the reading of the Context of the Americas, special emphasis was placed on the challenges imposed by the Covid 19 pandemic, which has caused the death of thousands of people on the continent. 
Covid-19 has served as a screen for the indebtedness of governments with international banks, adjustment measures, company closures, massive layoffs. As well as, for right-wing governments to strengthen alliances with transnationals, militarize and give up territories and sovereignty. The pandemic has been seen by capitalism as an opportunity to further oppress the people.
In countries like Brazil, the neoliberal measures against health and life of Bolsonaro's genocidal government have generated mobilizations and rejection. In Central America, governments are making use of the militarization of territories and countries such as Honduras to maintain the highest poverty rates and inequality in Latin America. 
Cuba and Venezuela suffer the grip of the blockade and the coercive measures of the North American government and its allies, thus making it difficult for the people to access medical supplies, vaccines and care for the pandemic. 
The north does not escape this reality that suffocates the people. The US has sustained the economic crisis that fundamentally affects Black working-class population, indigenous people and migrants; in Mexico, territorial dispossession, the installation of mega projects and drug trafficking continue, and Quebec has high rates of domestic violence.  
The people confront all of the above with street mobilization, social outbreaks, promoting new correlations of forces. The popular feminist movements have marked in this time, the constituent process in Chile, the victory for safe and free abortion in Argentina and the arrival to the presidency of a peasant teacher in Peru.

Our resistance

In the face of the crisis of the system and its exacerbation during the Covid pandemic19 we see the responses of movements and organizations in the region, alliances between women's organizations and feminists that have specific expressions in the territories such as: community gardens, common pots, health days for the prevention of covid, distributions solidarity food, among others.
The World March of the Women of the Americas has stimulated monthly meetings, the creation of various working groups to carry out projects and continental actions such as the activities for the 5th global action, activities of the Forum of the Americas, virtual workshops with thematic such as the context of a pandemic, the sustainability of life and the dynamics and challenges of movements. 
The bulletin of the Americas consolidates, the experience of collaborative work between national coordination carried out since 2018. In addition, from Brazil, international communications are assumed and recently the production of Capire, an experience of feminist communication that is shared in social media networks and a our bulletin that disseminates local and popular production of  feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist work. 
Also, the Berta Cáceres International Feminist School was promoted and led from the region. This experience brought together more than 80 participants from all over the world, with whom they exchanged on topics such as the challenges of the construction of the feminist political subject and the feminist economy as a transformation strategy.
The region's agenda is marked by anti-systemic feminist positions, which dialogue with the defense of territories, food sovereignty, environmental and linguistic justice. 

Contributions for construction
In a space for debate and discussion, that did not lack the richness that characterizes us in spite of having to conduct it virtually-- there were several contributions from those who participated in the two day meeting. 
Among the issues raised by the participants were: the criminalization of women fighters for the rights of women; the rise of anti-rights and fundamentalist groups; the offensive of transnational companies, of capital on the lives of women; and the increase in polarization between left and right. 
It was also pointed out that media makes women's resistance invisible, and therefore the importance of an anti-hegemonic and communication strategy from movements.  As well as the worsening of the crisis in the care economy and how it affects women's bodies with its overload of work.