mujeres
Invitation to the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle
Source: Enlace Zapatista
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO
INVITATION TO THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL GATHERING OF WOMEN WHO STRUGGLE
September 2019
To women who struggle all over the world:
Sister, compañera, woman in struggle:
We send you greetings, from the indigenous and Zapatista women that we are.
Perhaps you remember that at our First Gathering, we made an agreement that we must live. We see of course that the killing and disappearance of women continues—of women of all ages and social positions. We are killed and disappeared because we are women, and then told it is our fault, that these things happen because of how we were dressed, because of where we were walking, because we were out at certain hours in certain places. Both men and women in the bad government utter such stupidities to imply that we shouldn’t go out at all. According to this mindset, women should be shut up in their homes; they shouldn’t go out, shouldn’t study, shouldn’t work, shouldn’t enjoy themselves, shouldn’t be free.
We see clearly that the capitalist and patriarchal system is like a judge that has declared us guilty of being born women and sentenced us to violence, death, or disappearance.
It’s hard to put it into words, sister and compañeras, it’s like an evil so great that it can’t be named. Now they call it “femicide” or whatever but the name doesn’t change anything, the deaths and disappearances continue to accumulate. And then our families, friends, and acquaintances have to fight so that we are not effectively killed and disappeared all over again when our murderers go unpunished, or when it is said that we were merely victims of bad luck; or worse, that we were asking for it.