Women, Resistance and Liberation – By Carmen Bohorquez

When Christopher Columbus arrived for the first time in America, in his invading caravels, he was marveled by the beauty of the men and, above all, the women that he had before him; that inspired him to write in his diary that the place could be no other than the Earthly Paradise. Three trips later, his men captured two young girls that Columbus though they could be no more than 9 and 11 who were “so easy going that they seemed to be simply whores”.

In other words, in a few years the imagery, prejudices, values and concepts the Spaniards had of women that they considered the native women of the goddess that lived in the Earthly Paradise and who were prostitutes. From there on native women were submitted to sexual violence as were all the native peoples of America Also, the harsh conditions of work, destruction of the family group, the imposition of a God and a religion totally alien to them caused them suffering and loss of the condition of femininity. Raped and humiliated as a woman and as a human being, many chose suicide and others were forced to betray their own culture to survive. That was the case of La Malinche. This African woman had to suffer a life of slavery. For this reason, if there is in America a doubly oppressed human being that should be doubly vindicated in their mocked rights and historical dignity that is the native and afro descendent women

Today, 500 years have passed. Women today continue to fight against the same denial of their feminine condition, against the same forms of oppression, the same forms of labor exploitation. It is our duty to denounce this situation wherever it is present, but are much more obliged, men and women together, to denounce these actions, to organize and act however we can in our environment and in every corner of the world because aggression and discrimination slips through our finger to spread oppression. Following the Spanish colonization process was the neo colonial process of the new empires. First England, the United States later that threw them to the stocks of capitalism that aggravated the patriarchy and dulled women transforming them into slaves of consumerism, into pawns of a criminal chess game where only interests of global domination rule.

Whatever the form of oppression, be it against a man that sees his frustrations drained through violence against the woman, or he latter tries to escape from a miserable life in this kingdom of media fantasy are mere modern manifestations of the same mechanisms that condemned native man due to his weakness and drunkenness and the native woman for her “easy going way” repeating constantly the discrimination and condemnation of a world considered inferior. It is then the time for resistance in rebellion to work together, men and women, united to change material conditions to which they have been condemned and the miserable conditions of life. It is necessary to liberate the world so that we can liberate all. Men and women free in a world of justice, in a world of solidarity and no competition, in a world centered on the preservation of life and the human person and not of the market; a world not of the murder of women and other atrocities against women and where man is a loyal comrade and goes along the same route in solidarity.

We Venezuelan women have had to begin this struggle and the vanguard is being assumed with more force, not of intellectual women or with more educational level, but worker women, campesino women and afro descendants, single mothers. All granted their rights in the Constitution that defines the State as a State of Rights and Justice that relies on the prominence of all its men and women that have taken this prominence with much dignity and decision. Thus we see them organizing technical tables of water to solve, together, the problem of water in their community; or the committees of urban land committees to make a cadastral lifting of their barrio and obtain property titles of their homes; or committees of health or organizing communal homes, etc. Women who decided to break the chains of ignorance enrolling en masse in the Robinson Mission, the Ribas Mission, in the Sucre mission to learn to read and write, to have a primary education, a bachelors and university degree; and those who also decided to confront the fascist dictatorship attempted on that April 11 of 2002, leaving the outlying areas of the city going down the hills with bravery together with their men and often their sons to remove those who attempted a coup from the Miraflores Palace and restore democracy and the legitimate president, Hugo Chávez Frías. On behalf of these brave Venezuelan women who are building with love and courage this new homeland of justice and freedom and who suffer in solidarity the pain of other women of the world for whom equality and justice seems impossible. We condemn the patriarchal violence of neo liberalism, State terrorism by which the government of the United States subjugates the peoples and destroys culture. We also condemn the forms of discrimination and exclusion that victimizes millions of human beings in the planet. When we achieve equality and justice we have definitely liberated women.

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