On August 10, 2000, some 20,000 women took part in the March of the Margaridas, at the end of which a delegation met with the Brazilian president and the minister of land reform. The delegates presented the two officials with their demands, the three main points being: acknowledgement of the importance and strengthening of women's participation in land reform and family agriculture; guaranteed and improved labour rights and social rights; fight against violence against women, against impunity in the countryside, and against all forms of social and gender-based discrimination.
Producing one third of the country's basic foodstuffs, women have 15- to 18-hour workdays and start working at the age of ten. In an environment marked by social exclusion and sexist discrimination and violence, women are the victims of wife assault and attacks outside the home. The name of the March was chosen to honour Margarida Alves, president of the Rural Workers' Union in Alagoa Grande, Paraíba, who was murdered on August 12, 1983, as she fought against large sugar cane landowners.
Some of the marchers carried empty baskets symbolizing poverty. Others bore crosses to call attention to violence perpetrated against women. Bringing up the end of the march were women with branches and flowers, representing peace and social justice.
The Brazilian countryside is being ravaged by modern technology, foisted on it as part of the neoliberal economic framework. March participants demanded a land reform allowing farm workers to become owners of barren land; the provision of adequate infrastructure (water, transportation, schools, etc.); women's access to land and credit; a policy fostering sustainable development that would enforce a moratorium on genetically modified crops, would stop the wasting of natural resources and the private appropriation of biodiversity. Finally they demanded that the Brazilian government reject the privatization of water stipulated in an agreement it signed with the IMF.
The March of the Margaridas was a high point in the mobilization of Brazilian women in the year 2000, an action within the movement against neoliberal globalization.
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