Agosto-Août-August 2022
South America
There are 34 South American women participating, from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay and Venezuela. There are comrades from allied organizations such as REDES and CSA (Uruguay), Amigos de la Tierra and Alba Movimientos (Argentina) and Confluencia de Mujeres para la Acción Pública (Colombia).
One of the objectives of the Berta Cáceres Feminist School is to strengthen ties of work and struggle with organizations with whom we share territories and principles of action. The incorporation of allied organizations is vital to make feminism and its proposals transversal throughout the continental popular movement, so we celebrate having 28 alliance partners at the Feminist School.
Natalia Carrau from REDES (Uruguay) makes it clear in her presentation that we are very close to achieving this goal at the school:
“I work on economic justice issues and a few years ago we started incorporating the gender perspective into the analysis… we consider it essential to strengthen the structural and transversal analysis that the feminist perspective provides in all the work we do. On another level, at the national level we recently joined a political articulation of organizations that work against forms of violence against women and dissidents of the patriarchal and sexist system, for our organization it is essential to make a contribution to that construction that is informed, reflexive and that incorporates the analysis of the WMW.”
Brazil, regional diversity
Brazil has prioritized regional diversity,
The Brazilian delegation is composed of women from the states of Tocantins, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco, Maranhão and the Federal District, compañeras from the March that are active in the local struggles of the feminist movement, student, ecological, union and anti-racist struggles.
For one of the participants, Carolina Azevedo, the experience of the School has been important because it allows to "to re-engage in debates that shape our feminism and, at the same time, delve deeper and deeper, especially in the debate about the economy, climate crises, territories and violence, debates so precious to us, anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-colonial feminists in this context." She also points out that the School is a fruitful space for "sharing knowledge with feminist women from various countries of the Americas.” The School is, for the comrades from Brazil, a space for deepening political education for militancy, to broaden continental reflections within the country and strengthen actions and formulations at the national level.
Venezuela, Continue the resistance and Re-existence.
The Venezuelan delegation places special emphasis on how great the school has been to create and strengthen links from the exchange of experiences with other organizations of the WMW Américas and allies. All agree that exchange and reflection build a strong movement that shares ways of doing and at the same time strengthen identity and belonging to the movement.
For Laura Cano, of the Tinta Violeta collective, “the most important aspect of this formative process has been the sisterhood, the spiritual interconnection of knowledge and struggles against patriarchy and capitalism in its neoliberal stage. Not to forget the místicas that we carried out in the sessions of the Berta Cáceres Feminist School, because it is these that return us to the original word, return us to the root, reconnect us with those who are no longer there, in order to continue in resistance and re-existence.”
For her part, Yoseglis Cabrera, militant in Cultural Calisthenics, is very pleased to be able to bond with feminist sisters from other countries, from the sorority and the struggles that concern us all: “Beyond the training program, the most interesting thing about the School is to know the realities of other comrades, how they have unified forces and how hard it has been for them to build their feminisms. When we are in the group activities we can get to know each other, interact and connect from the historical processes of each country," said Yoseglis.
Belén Navarro, an Argentinian residing in Venezuela and belonging to the Las Yerbateras Collective, stresses that the Berta Cáceres Feminist School is a place to acquire new knowledge about American feminisms, especially when it comes to feminist economics. She tells us that “Venezuelan feminists can contribute from their experience of resistance and offensive against the hegemonic powers that sustain patriarchy.”
