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The National Federation of Campesinas, Artisans, and Indigenous Women of Peru marched on October 18 to commemorate the U.N. International Day of Rural Women and to make a series of demands on the government.
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The march included 300 Indigenous campesina leaders from the coast, mountains, and jungle of Peru. The diversity of the women participating was reflected in the variety of traditional outfits displayed at the march. The action started in the district of Jesus Maria and headed to downtown Lima stopping at several government institutions.
Before the march, the women met to analyze, discuss, and elaborate their demands to the Peruvian government. They claim that the policies that were created to protect and promote the rights of women during the previous government did not have a significant impact for rural, Indigenous, and campesina women. Because of the lack of progress for women from those communities and with an integral understanding of what is necessary for long lasting development, the women demanded the government make changes in the areas of health, education, agriculture, energy, mining, culture, and environment.
Lourdes Huanca, director of the federation, argued that “many times the suffering and labor of rural women is invisible, so we have to defend the rights of women but also more specifically the rights of Indigenous women and Indigenous peoples.”
Maria Sangama, an Indigenous woman from the region of Loreto, in the Peruvian rain forest, explained, “We need schools that teach our children in their languages Aymara, Quechua, Shipibo. Same with the judicial branch and hospitals, (we need to have) nurses and doctors who can speak our languages.”
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Gladys Campos, a campesina from La Libertad in the northern coastal region of Peru, claimed that “as rural women we have been forgotten by the authorities and the policies implemented are leaving us aside ... so we are here to tell the government that we are also Peruvians and that we want dignified jobs, access to health, and education as well as the right to defend our territories which includes our lands and our bodies.”
Among the demands presented to the government are the implementation of intercultural policies for the eradication of sexual, physical and emotional violence against women in rural and native communities; the decriminalization of abortions resulting from rapes or attempts to save the mothers life; the implementation of the “prior consultation law” of the International Labor Organization Convention 169; legislation to promote the eradication of racism through public, communal, and private media; the elimination of GMO’s; sexual and pregnancy prevention education; and programs to promote family agriculture.
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