Colombia: Successful day of mobilization for March 8
We publish this unofficial translation of a report on the mobilization for the 8th of March in Colombia.
On March 8 in the city of Medellín, in the Park of Lights, women gathered at two in the afternoon, several of them working women, young people, teachers, students, to carry out the mobilization of International Women’s Day of the worker, peasant and people’s women.
The rally started with the chanting of slogans, making posters, and carrying out various artistic exhibitions of women who were there. In the midst of this, a tribute was held by the People’s Women’s Movement, which commemorated revolutionary and communist women. In a heartfelt speech, the comrades expressed their reason to commemorate the following fighters: Alexandra Kollontay, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, women of the working people who gave their lives to the service of the proletarian revolution, showing in practice what the role of people’s women is in the class struggle. Also Chiang Ching, a revolutionary woman of the people, who, with her class fury, and together with the peasantry and the working people, swept away the three mountains that oppressed the Chinese people: semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism and bureaucratic capitalism. Furthermore, Colombian revolutionaries such as María Cano and Bestabe Espinal, participants in the strikes, representative of the history of our country, with their temperance and the bravery of the people’s women, opposed the terrible working conditions imposed by bureaucratic capitalism, took position for the class, organizing the proletariat and raising the consciousness of the class, to continue fighting along the revolutionary path to transform the living conditions of the workers. Lastly, and not least, the HEROIC PALESTINIAN WOMEN, in the trenches of national liberation, historical resistance of the brave Palestinian people, who have shown us the future of the oppressed peoples of the world against imperialist domination.
This commemoration event filled the women of the people who gathered there, with politics and spirit. They applauded and shouted : Break the chains, unleash the fury of women, as a powerful force for the Revolution! The mobilization began by taking Avenida San Juan, taking to the street, demanding justice for the femicides, rapes and sexual oppression to which half of the working people are subjected.
In this first part of the mobilization, slogans were shouted against patriarchy and double exploitation. The mobilization route passed through important places, where denunciations were made. The women of the people, with their fury, boycotted the Metroplús, an unworthy transportation system, where several cases of sexual harassment have occurred. The Eastern Police Station, the repressive nature towards the people, and towards women in particular, was denounced, reaffirming with their slogans that the police does not care of me, my friends care of me . Despising the role of the armed wing of the State, denouncing how they have raped and murdered the women of the people. You could also see how a group of these women went through the D1 stores, banks, the big monopolies, writing: Up with the oppressed, down with the oppressors! In addition, several women put up posters against imperialism and for the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people.
Upon reaching Barranquilla street, the mobilization was in high spirits; slogans were heard against the repression of the State, denouncing how the police guaranteed that rapists and murderers of women did not pay for their actions, protecting and defending them by the “law.” In turn, they were there to repress the mobilization, but they never arrived when there was a violation. Later the march divided into two, women who went towards the Prosecutor’s Office, and others who went to the Parque de la Resistencia, the former “park of wishes”. In the middle of the division, two positions were heard, some calling to denounce the femicides, the violations of the prosecutor’s office, an institution that claims to do justice, and others, calling for the pacifist, anti-militarist march, which wanted to continue towards this park to put an end to the mobilization. In the middle of the division, a mother and her daughter waved a sign – denouncing the rapist of her daughter, who was released after serving only three years in prison – in the face of ESMAD [“Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron”, riot police in Colombia], demanding justice. These events show that there is a need to demand justice, they joined the group of women who wanted to go to the prosecutor’s office, and they joined the block of women who wanted to report the cases of murdered and raped women to the prosecutor’s office.
As soon as the prosecutor’s office was reached, the people’s women with their fury shouted “justice!” They waved the signs against the prosecutor’s office fence, moved steel fences and removed a billboard from the place. There they gathered demanding justice, and they were preparing for a tribute proposed by the People’s Women’s Movement, in which the names of the women victims of feminicide were raised, while a comrade gave a few words against the State of the landowners and the big bourgeoisie, who oppress the women of the people, through submission and fear, and who promote the ideology of the dominant classes, machismo. They denounced how the bourgeois women did not have the same conditions as the women of the people, and how the sexual oppression that the women of the people experience serves the bourgeoisie for this double exploitation, subjecting half of the people to work in terrible conditions, sustained with “deficit nature”, domestic work as a woman’s task, when this work allows the maintenance of the workforce for the bosses. Finally, a call was made for the organization of the women of the people, to be that feminine ferment that transforms the society of misery and pain, all these cases of the women of the people can only have justice in a society that is at the service of the women and men of the people.
After the tribute, comrades approached the microphone to tell how they had experienced sexual oppression, how since they were children, this society with decadent ideas oppresses them, reducing their role to sexual objects. Each of them told how they have suffered in this society due to machismo, in the midst of tears and pain, they reaffirmed the path that people’s women have in this society, that path is the people’s struggle, which guarantees that women can achieve their rights. , and advancing in the fight towards revolution, where a new society can be achieved, a society where there is justice and women have a role in social production and in the construction of a society at the service of the people.
Below we share some images from the day:
