Latin America’s indigenous women leaders are working to increase their regional coordination to boost their unique agenda so their proposals do not remain simple words shouted at countless forums, meetings and summits.

 

“There are many spaces where we women can work and fight … to have a presence, but no one is going to give us those spaces for free,” said Nancy Iza Moreno, leader of the Kichwa Confederation of Ecuador, or ECUARUNARI, and the women’s leader of the Andean Coordinating Group of Indigenous Organizations.

 

Just over a year ago, 3,500 indigenous women leaders from 21 Latin American countries met in the highland city of Puno, Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, for the Abya Yala Summit of Indigenous Women.

 

Participants in the summit sought to form a women’s regional body to better represent indigenous communities’ needs and rights – including self-determination and land rights – and indigenous women’s rights before international and local bodies.

 

 

“For women to have their own agenda is important because our sensibility, our view is different,” said Blanca Chancosa, another leader of ECUARUNARI. “Women are always thinking about the children, life, the family, so our sensibility, the woman’s point of view, is more collective, broader. It is not limited to ‘me’ as a woman, but rather “I, a woman with my family.”

 

“We need a woman’s indigenous agenda because that’s how we’ll be able to consolidate and clarify women’s vision,” she added. “I say we women have to make our mark, our contribution to these processes of change, because if not, no one will notice. We still have to deal with machismo, with the fact that women’s contributions aren’t noticed.”

 

For her part, Iza, added that their specific situation as indigenous women must be addressed: “how we are discriminated against, excluded.”

 

She said the women must also fight for greater leadership roles and not have their contributions in indigenous organizations be overshadowed or ignored.

 

“Even though we’ve historically given great support to the indigenous movement, our participation hasn’t been recognized,” said Dora Tavera, a member of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia.

 

 

Indigenous women leaders are now trying to draw up the framework of the Continental Coordinating Group for indigenous women, but some leaders, such as Iza, say there must be more input from Central and North America.

 

“We have to have a real articulation” of these projects, she said, “not just talking out loud, something superficial. We have to strengthen the organizations from the bottom upward, from the base.”

 

Tavera notes that the issues are not just women’s issues, but are centered around “complementarity and balance.”

 

“All of our actions go hand-in-hand with strengthening women as much as the communities,” she said. “It’s about making sure that the indigenous movement in Latin America and the world includes the issue of indigenous women and not just an issue for women to debate amongst themselves.

 

It’s about communities and the indigenous movement in general.”

 

The leaders are now trying to form a region-wide position on issues such as environmental protection, promotion of indigenous spirituality and cosmovision, immigration policy, economic development, discrimination and racism against women and counter-violence: political, social and domestic.

 

“What we need to do now is to start not only opening up spaces for leadership, but act with greater confidence in other spaces, such as economic policy and development of our communities,” said Chancosa, adding that women need to lead more indigenous organizations, not just ones for women. “We have to win confidence on a general level so that the recognition of women is not just coming from other women.”

 

Source: Latinamerica Press http://www.comunicacionesaliadas.org