Today 8M millions of women fill the streets of large cities around the world, we gather here again in this space of commemoration and struggle. We wish to keep alive the flame that those rebellious women decided to ignite hundreds of years ago and that today comrades continue to embody day by day from different trenches.
Over the years the struggle against heteropatriarchy has sprouted, resisted and persisted in many territories. Heteropatriarchy is present in multiple areas of our lives, both in our interpersonal relationships and in ourselves, we are constantly learning and unlearning, inhabiting new experiences that make us question and reflect from different realities and environments.
The heteropatriarchy hits harder to those who resist the subjugation of their nature, that which the system defines as normal, it is not the same experience that we live indigenous, intersex, trans, gay, non-binary, pans, lesbians. Above all, it is not the same for those who decide to attack every bastion that seeks to dominate and destroy us. For the same reason we do not raise the banners of passive victimhood, on the contrary, we aim at constant confrontation against everything that seeks to subdue us.
Today we want to remember different comrades who with their struggle have nurtured the antagonistic path that we have decided to embrace. Herminia Concha, Luisa Toledo, Cláudia López, Aracely Romo, Jill Phipps, Guilly Peachy. We also wish to emphasize those comrades who have fallen in confrontations or have been assassinated for their fervent commitment to the defense of land, water and territories and animal liberation. Nicolasa Quintreman, Macarena Valdes, Emilia Baucis, the three Mapuche weychafe comrades. Nicolasa fought hard against the installation of ENDESA’s Ralco project in Pehuenche territory. At the age of 74, she was found dead in the artificial lagoon of the same project. Macarena Valdes, seed guardian, defender of water and forests in the Newen-Txagil community, was found dead in her own home at the hands of hired killers from the companies RP Global and SAESA at the age of 32. Emilia Baucis, defender of water and territories, anti-speciesist, part of Lof Llazkawe, was murdered at the age of 25 by hired killers from the Riñimapu condominium in the context of a territorial recovery in Riñiwe Lewfu.
We remember every compañera/e who has been killed for fighting against the killing of animals and the devastation of their habitat. Because we recognize speciesism and patriarchy as two oppressions that share the same system. One seeks the subjugation of other species, considering them inferior, despite their capacity to feel. And the other seeks the oppression and invisibilization of women and dissidences, considering them inferior beings that can be violated and commodified. Therefore, we believe that it is not possible to fight for the liberation of human women and dissidences and ignore the violated females of other species. Continue reading “Chile: Words from Monica, Mawvnhko and Itamar on the occasion of another March 8th” →