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Opening Ceremony
photos: Joanne McDermott
July 1rst, 2006
WORDS OF WELCOME NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF PERU
Dear friends, activists of the March, feminists from across the world: it is an honour for us, the Peruvian women of the March, to be your hosts.
Over the next days of our 6th International Meeting, we will share our respective struggles and aspirations. It will be a chance for women of the South and North to meet and share both our achievements and what must still be done in both hemispheres to ensure that humankind, and especially women, obtain Equality, Justice, Peace, Solidarity, Freedom: the five values of our movement that guide us in our daily life and demonstrate that, as women, our vision is to create a different world for every inhabitant of the planet
We are sure that in the following days we will strengthen the relationships that have united us since before the year 2000. These ties will give us the strength to challenge the chauvinist, patriarchal and neoliberal system that is a blight on the entire planet, creating misery, exclusion and pain, particularly among those who have the least.
Peru is a multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural country, with an immensely diverse geography featuring mountains, volcanoes, great rivers, luxuriant jungles, desert-like coastal lands and beautiful valleys that provide our nourishment and livelihoods.
Peru possesses some of the most fantastic natural and cultural wealth the Earth has to offer, testifying to a past era that enjoyed greater social and economic solidarity than today.
Peru has been enriched with the knowledge and wisdom of great civilizations like that of the Incas, yet all this co-exists with immense exclusion and poverty.
Today we open our arms to all you women, who love, struggle and dream of strength and solidarity. We are committed to making your stay here a pleasant one.
So welcome to you all and please accept our humble and affectionate wishes of sisterhood.
Welcome to Peru, feminist sisters of the worl.d
Welcome to Peru, activists for humanity.
Welcome to Peru, women of the World March.
On July 2, women participating at the meeting went to a demo against the Free Trade Agrrement signed by the peruvian government with the United States. The demo took place in front of the US embassy in Lima.
