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The World March of Women in Chihuahua
By MARCHA MUNDIAL DE LAS MUJERES
The World March of Women (WMW) arrives today,
April 26, after a stop in Mexico City, the Mexican capital, proclaiming that
poverty is not “heaven-sent” and that it is possible to build a world free of
exploitation, intolerance and exclusion.
The international solidarity quilt, with its message of equality and
peace, is being accompanied by a committee composed of indigenous women and
other women activists. It already contains squares created by Argentinian,
Bolivian, Peruvian, Equadorian, Colombian, Haitian, Cuban, Honduran,
Salvadorian, Guatamalan and, now, Mexican women.
Starting yesterday, the committee has voyaged over 370 kilometres with
the quilt and the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity before coming to Ciudad
Juarez, where 10 women
have already been assassinated this year.
In Mexico’s Distrito Federal, the WMW held the Forum on Women and
Neoliberal Economic Policies, where one hundred women―indigenous women, trade
unionists, academics and activists‑gathered to decry the perversity of
neoliberalism and protest poverty.
Among them were the ecofeminist Ursula Oswald, who reminded women that
in the last 10 years the North American Free Trade Treaty “has reduced
children’s height by an average of one centimetre,” illustrating that hunger
has affected the very bones of our country’s children.
Joost Maartens, president of Oxfam International for Mexico, described
the country not as the ninth world power (as president Fox does) but as 54th
in the world in terms of its human development index.
Marta Heredia, WMW representative for the Distrito Federal, denounced
the fact that increasingly women are forced to work in dangerous sectors, as
domestic workers, factory workers, etc.
Next, Leticia Burgos, a senator from Guerrero, a State where social
inequality has reached almost unrivalled heights in Mexico, joined the March,
which she characterized as as “new global covenant against hunger and poverty,”
and committed to take the Charter and women’s demands to the higher chamber of
the legislature.
Before the forum, the Committee went to San Cristóbal de las Casas, in
Chiapas, where the Charter was handed over during a colourful ceremony filled
with symbols of women’s diversity.
After Ciudad Juarez, the quilt and the Charter will continue on their
route, eventually arriving in Quebec City, in Canada. After that, they will go
on to Turkey and throughout the world until they reach Ouagadougou, Burkina
Faso, on October 17, 2005.
