News-Letter Nr. 451

Women Stage Demonstrations Troughout Brazil

In at least 25 Brazilian capital cities female rural workers and indigenous women have organized demonstrations and set up camps for the International Women’s Day, March 8. The slogan of the national mobilization effort is "Female rural workers are building a new Brazil" and it is being organized by the National Movement of Female Rural Workers (MNTR), the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), the Youth Pastoral, and the National Landless Movement (MST), which expect to gather about 40,000 female rural workers. In the state of Espírito Santo, the demonstration will be supported by Tupinikim women and in Roraima Macuxi and Wapixana women will take part in it. Hearings have been requested for the delivery of a list of claims to local authorities and the same document will be delivered in Brasília to the minister for Land Development, Raul Jugmann, and to the head of the department that assists the president of the Republic with political affairs, Pedro Parente.

The document contains proposals related to the land reform, imports of agricultural products, credit lines, agricultural assistance and insurance, documentation and communication, energy, social security and health care for women, housing, and education. In it, the women also express concern with transgenic food products and with violence in rural areas. They request the immediate implementation of the National Plan for Human Rights and that the Department for Land Conflicts of the Federal Police be closed down. By getting organized, female rural workers have won important victories already, such as ensuring their right to retirement pensions, to maternity pay, and to an allowance when they are sick and cannot work. The challenge now is to expand these rights and make sure they are actually enforced.

Indigenous Women are getting organized

Indigenous peoples are becoming increasingly aware that the indigenous movement will reap important benefits from the fact that women are getting organized. Women have become the political leaders of at least two indigenous peoples as their chief, a position held by men in most villages. Maria de Lourdes da Conceição Alves is the chief of the Genipapo Kanindé peoples in Aquiraz, state of Ceará. Diva Eurico de Souza, a Macuxi, is the Tuxaua (chief) of the Raposa II village in the Raposa/Serra do Sol indigenous area in the state of Roraima.

In the states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Bahia, and Roraima, women are getting organized in movements of their own. In Roraima, the mobilization began in the 1990s with the aim of strengthening the struggle of the Macuxi, Wapixana, Taurepang, Ingarikó, Wai Wai, and Yanomami peoples and of contributing to the unity of the indigenous movement and to the conquest of territorial rights. Their first state-level meeting was held in 1996. The first meeting that brought together women from Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Bahia took place in 1998 and the second one was held in the following year and was attended by leaders representing the Tupinambá and Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe (Bahia), the Maxakali, Xakriabá, Knenak, Pankararu and Aranã (Minas Gerais), and the Tupinikim and Guarani (Espírito Santo) peoples.

By getting organized and with a style of their own, women are conquering more space in the indigenous movement, predominantly led by males. They are respected and listened to at local and national meetings and assemblies about all matters related to their peoples. Women want to enhance and improve their participation in the struggle for the demarcation of indigenous areas, for the approval of the Statute of Indigenous Peoples, for a quality health care, especially for women, and for a differentiated education. They have been reporting different forms of violence, such as the sale of alcoholic beverages in indigenous villages, prostitution and sterilization of indigenous women (as in 1994, when Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe women were deliberately sterilized and the guilty ones have not been punished so far), the theft of traditional knowledge, prejudice against indigenous customs and traditions, and the assassination of indigenous leaders.

Brasília, 8 March 2001.
Indianist Missionary Council - Cimi

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