Women of the Sun, Women of the Dawn

We women are finding ourselves again. A reunion with Dignity. Our identity as women is underlined by the courage of our daily battles. Because we want respect, we are competent, our strength is abundant, so we turn our right and need for Justice into a daily battle, a daily awareness.

Speeches are not enough. Rhetoric is usually empty, false - purely cosmetic. Every March 8th we take our measure to see if we have any new breaks, how many ribs we have left along the way, how many of those used in raising up Adam, how many were stripped out of Eve. Every March 8th, the international Right wing, organized and institutionalized, send the Left an invoice with the bill. Every March 8th, “Perfect Capitalism” wags an accusing finger at Socialism, which, for them will never be any good, or any better and much less a model or road map to the Ideal.

Every March 8th, the exam and the self-examination; a boring routine and a parade of masks and lies, dressed up in embittered matriarchal authority. That parade ploughs across the contrived stage-set, where political adversaries disguised as Magistrates in a Gender Court, dare to pass judgment and sentence! Self-elected women and men make nonsense of any law while accusing millions of women, whom their destructive, exploitative predatory model has reduced to sexual, advertising, economic objects, political, ideological and cultural objects, perpetuating the domination of free market, private sector capitalism. This libertine, failed model of total discrimination has the shameless nerve to sell itself as happiness, as if it were a liberating, democratic proposal, to the impoverished, exhausted majorities who inhabit Mother Earth! Save us Mother from the ghosts and the dead!

Every March 8th we women want more than anything else to see Awareness flourish and give light. Awareness to take up the law and our rights, fully, effectively and qualitatively. Awareness to occupy and to take the lead with quality and real impact in the spaces that with our own heartbreak we have opened up in this world and this so-called civilization. Awareness to stake out advances and identify challenges. To deepen advances and confront those challenges. To defend our advances and make each one of those challenges our own, as we have done with Liberty, with Independence, with the Cultural Bequest that our Forebears, Teachers through their own immense battles, passed down to us as a banner and as a way forward.

Growing awareness to take on the battles. To carry forward the fight. To beat poverty hand to hand, poverty - that capitalist sore, capitalist misery, capitalist hell - a permanent battlefield on which we sharpen our hearts to deal piercing, shattering blows that entrap more and more the expiring model while ALBA, the dawn, lights the way, the still blank page of History that we, out of duty and decency, out of fundamental commitment, out of human urgency, are obliged to make better!

We cannot afford to give in to the temptations of talking about Heaven. Or of Hell. With intuition - a feminine weapon? - our own intuition and our awoken consciousness like a magic electrical earth, out under the open sky we have to say, that very little, after all, has been done. We have not undone the catastrophic damage of neoliberal Capitalism. Everything or almost everything remains to be done – we are chiefs but still slaves. Promoters, builders, constructors, workers and many others likewise. That we are at the same time still slaves but yet leaders. We have lived through great marches and tremendous battles, witnessed many crossroads, spread wings in all the victories and even so, on reviewing what has gone by, the Light of Awareness seems to be sleeping, to have lost the dimension of greatness, ownership, merit, justice, lost the concept of pure law. I think the Light of Awareness, without us realizing it, is dimming and darkening the past. It obscures the waters of the present and - take care! - may even darken or cloud the mirror of the future!

Awareness, sisters, the golden rule. Take on. Take on. Take on! See and foresee. Discover what is invisible! Make possible the impossible! A remark by Juan Bautista Arrien, that he made to me last Saturday, I borrow it and propose it to all of us! To work with the light on, so as to look back and so find strength. To look around in the present and find strength. To see the future with strength. Woman, the paradox. The female word - Woman. Nicaragua. Revolution. All feminine. All immense, all of Humankind with all qualities, subtleties, sensibilities, solidarities, intensities, incredible potential, with the skin and the hands of woman.

A perspective of ingenuous generosity could dilute what we see. We need a conscious awareness to take the pulse of successes and defeats. Early awake, to take up hope once more and launch it once more; to stop routine and dizziness from lowering the banners or from setting out priorities that do not include Gender.

Woman should be there in capital letters in every routine and every destiny. As an absolute priority. As an absolute protagonist. As courage, as vision as passion, as creation and as dream: Woman conceiving and giving birth to Worlds that never cease spinning because they are Real Life and which we must make better - although understanding that Better seems still a contradiction, diffuse, complex, difficult, dependent on very particular goings-on and the merciless tampering of political agendas. Because we suffer from an inflated professional feminocracy with next-to-nothing of revolutionary, humanist, compassionate, truly radical feminism. Because revolutionary feminism sets out to change the world not let itself be changed by a System that dominates the world – the very world it is doing to death!

And then, in the end, March 8th is just one more day. Angels, devils, Paradise, Hell, one more day - perhaps one more special day among many other special days. Perhaps a day on which to find ourselves. Perhaps a day to get past points of view, self-interest and the self-imposed boundaries of the worn out, squeezed-dry politics of those points of view and those self-interests. Maybe a day to love ourselves. Maybe one to get ourselves together and focus on horizons, sinking our hands into the distance, behind and ahead of us, before we turn deaf, dumb and blind; before we fall incommunicado, before we lose our bearings. Before we become invisible. Before we get buried in tsunamis of a terminology incomprehensible and useless to the great majorities. Before we lose the thread, the time, the chance, History's open door . Before we lose our own selves!

We come and we go. Completely ordinary and totally extraordinary. On the way, both participants and audience. All the good and all the bad. All the reality. All the also humble, so as to be able to recognize so much that lies ahead. Courage to commit ourselves to keep on going. Joy, optimism, to see that the glass is neither empty nor emptying, but filling little by little. Courage to take on hope. Filling the glass is filling Life. And how very difficult it still is, Sisters, for the meeting in solidarity of voices, of demands, of urgencies to go on and build! But democracy is the sum of all those voices and all those un-encounters.

And democracy, as we see it, is debate and meeting of common interests, of objectives and aims in common; objectives and aims that constantly change because every day we are the same but different. Thinking, researching, studying, learning. Opening ourselves to the universe, every one in their own circumstances, possibility, everyone on their own path. Opening the way to change and transformation! That is how we see ourselves wanting to be; that, I hope, is how we will go on being.

Towards more enlightenment, more commitment to communicate, to give, to stay relevant, to organize in a vital way; to organize so as to transmit vitality through teaching. To share teaching. To learn and to share out learning. Every woman sows seeds, cuts furrows, sows, gardens, fertilizes. And we go harvesting, even though still, far from enough!

Awareness of needs then. Awareness of want. Awareness of urgency. Closing the doors to complacency and accommodation. Opening other doors to understanding and growth. Knowing we have worked out the map and it's time now to get going.

Rights, restoration of rights, agreements and disagreements, quotas, affirmative actions, 50% and more in every single space... of course we want it! Of course we propose it! Of course we need and demand it! But more clearly still, compañeras and sisters it is our job to ensure those spaces are more than simply a name, neither public relations nor cheap politics nor mere rendering of accounts to discredited international bodies.

Affirmative action, quotas, 50% and more, in all the spaces of political life, of social life, of economic life, of multi-cultured life, of renascent autonomous indigenous and afro-descendant leadership, of State and institutional leadership posts, of internal party popular, local and national election lists! 50% and more means equality, one built from our own experience of the battles.

And we ought to fill those spaces with real presence and work, without war between the sexes, without war between ourselves, but yes, waging combat in the trenches and battles with the banners, ideas and practice of a real and just struggle that by no means obliges us to work silently or clandestinely.

A legal, juridical, cultural, political battle …. ideological, for sure! A battle in the economic sphere. For land, work, housing, credit, property...For full leadership in the State, in Government in the Parties, in the Party of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, among the Youth, the Trades Unions, the Social and Labour Movements and Organizations; for full leadership in the developing Model of People's Power which will never be Revolutionary without the equal participation of women.

50% and more - and with more than mere verbal commitment. Not as alms, as condescension, as a handout, a gift, or electoral spin. 50% and more - not as a trick or ruse to calm down or cheat. 50% and more - in everything, but from us ourselves, knowing ourselves, recognizing ourselves as authors and actors...correction...actresses and makers of the Decrees, Ordinances, Resolutions; occupying, exercising, absolutely informed of and practicing the rights, the responsibilities, the performance, the development, the carrying out of Agendas, for which we are obliged, compañeras, to render account, again under equal conditions before a Nation that builds itself anew, that wants to be new, that sets out to be united, that seeks to be cohesive within the integral awareness of the Common Good.

We want a Social Agenda where health is the patrimony and responsibility of women and men. Where apparently taboo subjects like reproductive health, the scourge of HIV-AIDS, therapeutic abortion, defence of the mother's life, of adolescents, of children, responsible and indispensable sex education for young people, can all be part of national de-politicized reflection and debate, free of manipulation for financial or clientilist political ends by movements and bodies that have neither the authority nor the representativeness either to judge or to condemn.

Those same movements and bodies that also fail to take into account the culture, beliefs, tradition, values, social, community and family practices of Nicaragua's people. Movements and organizations chained to their own dependency. On business, on vice on media prominence. They know it. And so do we!

We want a Social Agenda where education works for all women, opens opportunities for all women, opportunities and rights, without exception. Regardless of their condition or situation in life. An education making restitution through an integrating focus of women's role as leaders, based on equality and respect. An education that forms new generations to understand that the world has been built and lived in by both women and men; that science and culture have been developed by both women and men; that women's contribution to History, in memory, now and in the future must be rescued, made visible, recognized and incorporated into the story. Into History in big letters. Into the Patrimony, into Culture, into Human Identity!

We want a Social Agenda where we women decide on Politics, Porgrammes and Actions to take, that guarantee us equality of rights and conditions, to make life livable in.

We want a Labour Agenda that treats us as economic subjects, active in every area. One that equips us with rights as facts. We want a Juridical Agenda that abolishes laws that damage us and political representatives that bring forward laws taking our realities into account, securing dignity, respect and inclusion for us, for women of all conditions and origins.

We want a Natural and Environmental Agenda that contributes to saving Human Life. An agenda that respects the rights of Mother Earth...Mother, Woman , Earth, Nature, all feminine : Environment and Context, of Human Gender, Of Humanity's Gender. We want an environmental Agenda where we women lead together with men in knowing and making our own the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and Humanity's Common Good. We find this Declaration covers all our demands, aspirations and rights. We support it. We abide by it. We will give the Mother of all Battles for it. Struggling for life, as always.

We want a Family Agenda, one that ensures men and women will be companions and comrades with just, solidarity-based relations. We want to share responsibility for conserving our best family traditions, our cultural practices of respect and affection for older people, of respect and loving care for girls, boys and adolescents, of the search for harmony in a nucleus that represents human diversity and the bonds of tolerance and understanding between one another, on particularity and Unity.

We want a Family Agenda that helps us identify and practice Democracy. A family microcosm, healthy, strong in values and able to transmit community social values, those values learned in Love, living together, Solidarity in knowing how to share and contribute, among one another for the Wellbeing of everyone. A family from which we can go on to build Society as a Community for the Common Good.

We want a family with Values that prevent violence among its members from an Awareness based on teaching and practice, preventing verbal or physical maltreatment and cruelty between Men and Women, Children a plague that we must reject, fight and eradicate responsibly. We gain little by criminalizing, persecuting, prosecuting or punishing. At the same time, we must prevent, teach and learn, transmit values, build human respect. That is the most effective and intelligent way. The most urgent too!

We want a Communications Agenda where publicity, entertainment spaces, show business, news, debate, opinion, broadcasting do not dismiss, denigrate, diminish nor perpetuate exclusive and discriminatory cultural patterns which in sum, evoke hatred for women.

We want a Media Agenda that does not manipulate for clientilist political goals women's battles to come. We want Media and Communications Agendas that speak the truth about the advances and difficulties in the Process of Restitution of Gender Rights, of the rights of all our people, that we champion as Nicaraguans. And we have been doing that in a world in crisis. A crisis of economic, environmental and labour values and the collapse of Systems that are no longer able to sustain either us or themselves. We believe Communication must work to give critical support, to accompany leading processes of change, not to torpedo them or blow them up and never to obstruct them!

We want above all, a National Agenda that takes into account the transition into vulnerability in which the neoliberal capitalist system submerged women and the majority in Nicaragua, the transition out of vulnerability to Dignity, Equality, to Awareness and the Way of Responsibilities and Rights that the government of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional proposes.

In that National Agenda, we women see with clarity that our main task, without under-rating the urgency of bravely taking on all the others too, is to preserve Social Peace for us all, Peace with Justice, defending this Revolutionary Process that guarantees the rights of us all. Our priority is to defend the continuity of the Frente Sandinista in government via the electoral route. To defend it with our votes. With 51% of Nicaraguan women voting so that our Government with our Democratic Model, can continue to guarantee a present and a future of full rights for everyone.

We should stress, we women have taken up the role of leaders in the Model of Direct Democracy, one we are building from hamlets and rustic homesteads, from urban barrios, from the family and the community; a Model-in-progress allowing us to say that here in Nicaragua it is the people who govern. Via our territorial Cabinets, Ministers, Directors, Delegates, Mayors and Mayoresses, a People-as-Woman, a People-as-Man, a People-as-Youth, we follow up our Plans, Programs, Actions and we take decisions about how to get more from what we have by means of Alliances and via the Route of Shared Responsibility that we have forged and strengthened, that we are forming and strengthening in a new Culture of Consensus and Peace.

Defending our Revolutionary Sandinista Projects is to defend calm and the Common Good.

For that reason women in Nicaragua, aware of our qualities, strengths and special sensibilities, aware of our capacity for vision, intuition, passion and commitment, conscious of our firmness in struggle, in the battles, of our part in all the victories, the great strides we have made in the Vanguard of Hope, aware also of course of the challenges we face in future and above all of the great battle that is the battle for awareness itself. We declare ourselves in a permanent campaign to assert and develop our cultural and spiritual identity, the beliefs of our peoples and of ourselves as women, as more than half of Nicaragua.

We declare ourselves in a permanent campaign for Unity and the Common Good, in our Mother country, for Humanity! Unity of women and men. Unity of women and women, unity of Youth, unity of families, unity of communities... Unity, unity, unity for the Common Good, for the Good Life, to better Life, to change Life, to change the System for Citizens' Power in all its expressions. To deepen the mechanisms of Popular Power, of Direct Democracy, to continue making the Revolution in Peace, a serene Revolution, an Evolving Revolution. A Revolution that has come far and has far to go. A Revolution that mobilizes, builds, creates, proposes and manages to bring together, harmonize the most disparate interests and represent society as a whole. A society that thinks, talks, writes, loves and prays in Spanish and in Nicaraguan.

Our Society regards itself and sees itself with pride, with its privilege of Landscape and Natural Resources, reflected in the mirror and greatness of Rubén Darío, of Augusto Sandino, of the wise women heroines, leaders and chiefs rendered anonymous in a history written by men. A society that with all women and men can now only progress, move ahead because it is already moving ahead, thanks to the contribution, the intelligence and the inspired action of a people we all know very well. We know of the struggles, the joys, the tears, the honour and the pain,. We know of our glories and we are a people with Memory, a people of women and men who for that reason have chosen a unique Meeting of the way enabling us to continue building so as to inhabit a new day, a Time of Peace and Well-being.

Women, as a majority in Nicaragua, today March 8th 2010, a Year of Solidarity, we decree our faith in that tomorrow that the Frente Sandinista wants, one of Unity for the Good and Dignity of women and men, of the families and Youth, Divine Treasure, of all the Nicaraguan community!

Long live our triumphs!
Long live our battles!
Women of the Sun and of the Dawn, the ALBA of our peoples,
Let's join forces, Let's join our Victories!

ENDS

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