Mujeres Creando: Feminist struggle in Bolivia

By Jeffery R. Webber
Translated by Jeffery R. Webber and Sheila Wilmot
From New Socialist

Mujeres Creando, or Women Creating, is a small group of anarcha-feminist women fighting for social change in Bolivia. Two of its leading figures are among only a few openly lesbian activists in the country. The group embraces a diversity of struggles, as Julieta Ojeda pointed out in a separate 2002 interview: “So with our starting point as women and our identities as women, we can assert our own struggles and fight against oppressions in society. We also recognized that we come from a particular social class, that we have our own ethnic origins, that we are different ages, and that we are part of society. In this sense, we don’t only struggle for women’s rights or issues that affect women, but against all types of oppression.” Jeffery R. Webber caught up with two activists in the Mujeres Creando Café/House/Cultural Centre in downtown La Paz on June 29, 2005.

JRW: I am here with Julieta Ojeda and Florentina Alegre. To start off, can you describe some important aspects of your personal life that led you to become activists in this organization?

JO: So, how did we become involved in the group, right? I have been active in Mujeres Creando (MC) for more than 12 years and one thing that stood out for me was the creative way that women were brought together in this period [when I was first introduced to the group]. Three comrades (compañeras) had started the group and were doing murals and other activities within the university. I got close to the group because while I had been looking for a left-wing group to get involved in, I hadn’t found one previously that met my expectations. But MC really knew how to make me question and think through if I wanted to be involved with the group. So, I did and have been active now for 12 years.

JRW: And you?

FA: My name is Florentina Alegre, I come from the countryside but I have been coming into the city since I was quite young, not to live here, but because I was a peasant union leader. I would go back and forth between the city and the country. In 1980, the union founded an internal women’s peasant organization called Bartolina Sisa*, and this is where I started to try to organize other women, as well as to do my own political development, from 1980 to 1990. Since 1995 I have been a leader at various levels: in my own community, as well as at the provincial, departmental [state], and federal levels.

Joining MC 6 or 7 years ago was a result of men’s discrimination and humiliation. The peasant union organization was supposedly parallel with the men’s and women’s union organization, but within the women’s one, we were in reality subjugated to the male leadership of the other one. I didn’t like it much, they didn’t let us breathe, they didn’t let us organize autonomously.

JRW: And how did MC get started? What is the group’s history?

JO: MC was founded and developed more or less in 1992, by 3 Leftist comrades who brought with them a whole critique of the Left, of women’s roles within our traditional Left groups, for example, the fact that we tend to have only secondary roles to carry out, as secretaries, serving tea, or putting up posters, generally doing the jobs that we always do. The other issue is that women function as sexual booty on the Left.

So, the group’s founders themselves had had to leave the country for political (including sexual) reasons, and when they came back more or less 5 years later, they founded MC because they felt the need to organize as women, to create something new, not something that would replace the revolutionary subject – who is supposed to be the working class, according to Leftist groups. Instead, the group wanted to constitute itself as a vehicle for change, one that would contribute to social change working with others, but from a feminist perspective. Since then we’ve been going through a series of stages and steps to arrive at this point 14 years later.

JRW: Right, and who were these founding women?

JO: They were Maria Galindo, Julieta Paredes and Mónica Mendoza, three comrades who had been active in Leftist groups.

JRW: So, now, and during the period since its foundation, what have been the politics and ideology of MC?

JO: MC has various axes: the issue of autonomy, heterogeneity, union of what is considered manual and intellectual work, and the use of creativity as a tool for struggle.

On the one hand, with regard to the issue of autonomy, as feminists we put forward that we are autonomous from any hegemonic centre of power in our society, whether it’s the State, political parties or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), because we believe that autonomy is what is going to allow organizations to move forward much better.

Having made this criticism, we can just look at what happened in
October [2003, mass mobilization – “Gas War” – that ousted president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada] and May and June [2005, another mass mobilization that ousted president Carlos Mesa]. In this later era, social movements are in fact starting to question themselves about the issue of political parties and the role of the political system in our society. We’ve done that for a number of years. So we believe in autonomy as an organizing form that is going to allow us to grow and foster the development of our organization, in a way in which our ideas and selves are not subordinated to a male leader’s political control or the leader’s or party’s control of money. Therefore, autonomy is important, and even more so in the case of women’s organizations.

There is also the idea of heterogeneity. We don’t believe in organizing between women in one sector, or only with establishing certain academic affinities. No, because we believe in uniting different women: Aymara** women, peasant women, students, young women, older women, professional women, women who only recently have begun their political formation. So, that is the heterogeneity that we recognize first off. We believe that this strengthens our analysis of social reality while permitting us to attack the system from different sides.

For example, various times when we’ve talked about land or indigenous territory, Florentina will raise issues, will have proposals relating to that theme, or, when we’re talking about a problem of racism, or these kinds of things. We have diversity within the group that allows us to raise various issues. We don’t limit ourselves to 3 or 4 themes like they do in the international organizations [NGOs concerned with gender, the United Nations work on gender and so on]. International organizations tell you if you want to be a feminist, or work with other women, you have to work on 3 or 4 themes, such as reproductive rights, abortion, and maybe one more little theme, right? But we as women believe that we are capable of engaging with reality and have our opinion and our position with respect to whatever theme that rises to the national agenda!

Then, there is the theme of uniting manual and intellectual work. In some ways this has allowed us to maintain our political autonomy because we are not economically dependent [on NGOs, international organizations, or the government.] We have received concrete help for certain little things, but we do not live off international aid, we live off our work and this house [café, cultural centre in La Paz], for example, sustaining ourselves with the work that we do.

Then, there is creativity. We occupy public space. Public space is occupied by society here: the use of the streets, like venders selling goods, lovers in the streets, people passing time being in the streets, resting in the street. So, for us, it is the optimal place to do politics, to occupy the street. We have occupied space through our graffiti and through creative, direct collective actions. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to see any of these. [Julieta continues this section with a biting critique of the “gender technocracy” that NGOs promote while pretending to represent the “women’s movement” as a whole.]

FA: Another part of this is that in our society, everything is coordinated so that women are supposed to always be submissive. Or, if women have demands those demands are always appropriated [by NGOs, the state, etc.]. However, in MC we have our own voice. This is the most important thing. We act with our own voice. For example, we demand land rights for women, zero interests for peasant women in debt, security for the women prostitutes working at night, among others. We direct these demands, these proposals, at the State, at the government. And so this is very important to us, this other form of doing politics. Within MC, and also within the feminist movement, we practice solidarity and honesty, a solidarity and honesty that is lacking in many of the Bolivian social movements.

Often this is why there is division between leaders, fights around personal interests, people always seeking more power. In MC there is no leader, no one who heads the group. We all decide equally. There is no comrade who leads us. Each comrade is like all the others, everyone equal and capable of deciding. So we don’t have a structure like the social movements with leaders, with executives….

JRW: Do you see the struggle against capitalism as being a part of your struggle as well?

JO: Yes, because we believe in social change…. It’s like our position on the international organizations around women. They have a technocratic vision. They believe that change can be fostered within the system by making certain reforms, with a certain rhetoric of gender. Against this, we argue that transformation, that dramatic social change is possible. We develop our own forms, our own strategies and our own objectives.

We have concrete objectives for concrete change that arise from the demands of social movements, ones that want to coordinate their struggles with ours, that want to build on the struggles that we have put forward.

But, in the longer term, we also believe in the transformation of the society. And we try to live the utopia that we want, that we dream of, that we think through. We try to put it in practice everyday here. Obviously, it’s a daily struggle, it’s not as though we’ve done it. It’s a daily struggle for solidarity, reciprocity, like how we manage this space [the café and cultural centre] as a cooperative, including the idea that there are no hierarchies among us, that there is respect, no racism, no classism.

And something that I think is truly anti-capitalist is the concept of reciprocity. This is a way of attacking the system, the capitalist system. None of us receive a salary. We all work in this space because of conviction. Obviously, we generate a little money by selling things [coffee, desserts, magazines and books] to maintain the house, but that’s basic right? We say that we are against capitalism, and obviously we are against capitalism.

Endnotes

Bartolina Sisa was the consort or partner of Túpaj Katari, a central figure in the anti-colonial insurrection of 1780-81.
The “Aymara” people make up the second largest indigenous group in Bolivia.
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The Product is You!
Towards Understanding The Media

An Editorial
By Brent Erickson

Corporations sell products. Media Corporations are no different; they manufacture a product and sell it to their customers. But just what are, most magazines, newspapers, radio, television shows and web sites really selling?

Most people feel like they already understand the media. The death of model Anna Nicole Smith, the breakdown of singer Brittany Spears and other such stories are in the news for one reason, money. The masses want their sensational news and the media is simply making money by supplying the demand of the public. If Noam Chomsky sold as many newspapers as Anna Nicole and Brittany, he would be on the front pages instead of them. The customer is always right.

Though there is more truth to this argument than perhaps the person who makes it first realizes, this view is ultimately both condescending and inaccurate. Opinion polls show repeatedly that people are much more open to and interested in challenging issues than is reflected in most media outlets.

However the media continue to publish and broadcast an often fractured and distorted picture of the world with little objection from the so-called “educated” members of society. The fact that most of us in Canada and the U.S, despite being intelligent individuals, are unaware of the level of indoctrination in our countries, unfortunately only demonstrates the effectiveness of the propagandist system under which we live.

To be aware of the factors that influence media content is to develop Media Literacy. Media Literacy means bringing critical thinking skills to bear on the messages that inform, and entertain us every day. There are many factors shaping media content, two of the most fundamental to consider are; owners, and advertisers. These two variables, though they determine to a large extent how we see the world, are rarely are mentioned in discussions of the “Liberal Media”.

Media Ownership and Concentration
The number of corporations that control nearly all North American media has fallen from only 50 in 1983 to about 6 today. Media moguls such as Rupert Murdock and Conrad Black are known to media activists as stanch opponents of diversity and pro-labor sentiment, but even they are small potatos compared to some media owners. General Electric Corporation, one of the worlds largest weapons manufactures owns NBC / CNBC, networks that seem quick to push for war. Likewise with Westinghouse Electric Company, a corporation that owns a large number of media holdings including the CBS network.

According to the media watch group F.A.I.R, in December 2002 then CanWest Global Communications CEO Izzy Asper, who’s company owned the National Post, 14 large city dailies, 120 smaller dailies and weeklies, and the Global TV network, among other holdings, made the decision to require all of its daily newspapers to run corporate editorials produced in its Winnipeg head office. Though known to be liberal on certain social issues, Mr. Asper held much more conservative views than the majority of Canadians on many subjects (most notably support for Israel) and fire journalists who did not agree with him. His sons David and Leonard Asper have proven even more extreme since taking control of Can West after their father’s death in 2003.

F.A.I.R adds “The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and the Quebec Federation of Professional Journalists (QFPJ) have denounced the actions of the media giant as ‘a disturbing pattern of censorship and repression of dissenting views.’”

Advertising
The old sayings “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” and “Never bite the hand that feeds you.” are good to keep in mind when assessing the role advertising plays in shaping media content.

Commercial magazines generate over 50% of their revenue from advertising, Newspapers about 80%, Radio, TV, and web sites get close to 100% of their revenue from advertising. Because such a large amount of money (over $175 billion a year in the U.S alone) comes from not the selling of media content itself, but the selling of audiences to advertisers the public is not the customer in our media system, we are the product!

The so-called “media content” is only the bait to generate audiences for advertisers. If the customer is always right, that customer is the car company (which might deny global climate change) who paid for the ads, not the person who buys the magazine or who watches T.V. This is why there has been such an effort made to stave out public broadcasting and push it into the commercial arena where corporate “sponsors” can regulate the content. Noam Chomsky could attract more viewers than a new Pamela Anderson sex tape and he still would be excluded from the front pages unless the advertisers gave it the green light.

If we do not, as a society develop a minimal degree of Media Literacy and push for, what has been called “Media Democracy” we are losing more than we will ever know. As U.S congressman Bernie Sanders recently said, “If you are concerned about Health Care, Iraq, the Economy, Global Warming you must be concerned about Corporate Control of the Media.”



Preventative Justice

Activist Jaggi Singh is arrested for what he might do and threatened with six months in detention

By Jaggi Singh
From The Dominion

Singh was attending a press conference by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and was arrested before he could even stand up and ask a question. Spoken by Jaggi Singh, member of Block the Empire and No One Is Illegal, at Rivière-des-Prairies detention centre, by phone to allies on Sunday November 26.

"Tomorrow, I will be facing a bail hearing that will determine whether or not I will spend the next six months in preventative custody. The Crown – encouraged no doubt by the Montreal police and the RCMP – is objecting to my release, arguing that I am a threat to public security. Let me explain what brings me to this position, and readers can decide for themselves who's the real threat to public security...

On Friday, I joined with at least two dozen other anti-war activists in attending an action, organized in less than 36 hours, at a press conference by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Effective action doesn't mean sitting through stage-managed photo-ops, it means standing up and holding decision-makers directly accountable for their policies. That is exactly what we, members of grassroots groups like Block the Empire, No One Is Illegal and others, intended to do.

Before we could even stand up and ask a question, the RCMP unilaterally decided to remove me from the event, not based on what I had done, but based on what I might do. When I refused, I was subsequently arrested and now find myself facing up to six months in detention. If I had the chance, I would have denounced Stephen Harper's partnership with George Bush's disastrous "war on terror." Canadian troops are in Afghanistan to allow more American troops to kill in Iraq. Moreover, the direct words of Major-General Andrew Leslie – Canada's commanding general in Afghanistan – prove the nonsensical logic of Canada's policy. Speaking at a conference in 2005, Leslie stated: "Afghanistan is a 20-year venture. There are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. There are things worth killing for." In the same speech, he said: "Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you." This is a made-in-Canada plan for disaster on the backs of Afghani civilians.

But Stephen Harper's complicity with US imperialism goes beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. When the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Occupied Palestinian Territories – actions widely recognized as war crimes – Harper expressed his unconditional support for Israel. Disgustingly, even after a Montreal family was massacred in their own home in Southern Lebanon, Harper continued to describe Israel's actions as "justified and measured."

Occupations abroad are rooted in occupation at home. One of Stephen Harper's closest advisors and mentors is Calgary neo-conservative Tom Flanagan. His writings provide the ideological underpinnings for the Harper government's assimilationist policies vis-à-vis aboriginal peoples. In the context of continued self-determination struggles at Six Nations, Sun Peaks, Grassy Narrows and elsewhere, the Harper Conservative position amounts to genocide.

Ostensibly, Stephen Harper was in Montreal on Friday to announce more funding for cancer research. Meanwhile, the Harper Conservatives continue to attack publicly-funded healthcare and have deepened Liberal cutbacks to social programs, undermining services to women, the poor, immigrants, indigenous peoples and queers. Harper announced some $200 million for cancer research, while the Canadian government is spending upwards of $3 billion for Canada's intervention in Afghanistan. Everyone knows someone affected by cancer, including the demonstrators who protested Harper's press conference on Friday. The substantive point is that the general well-being of society comes not just from initiatives to fight cancer, but fundamentally from eliminating poverty and oppression. The Harper government policies in their totality are disastrous for the health of the poor, the indigenous and Canadians in general and his support of the "war on terror" fundamentally destroys the health of average Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghanis.

Many are uncomfortable with the idea of getting in the face of the decision-makers. But when those decision-makers are ideologically deaf to dissenting points of view, disruption and impolite protests are necessary. That's why others and I similarly confronted Immigration Minister Monte Solberg in Ottawa this past May to oppose the government's continued deportation and detention policies. These policies, under the Conservatives, have resulted in the arrest of children in schools, raids at workplaces and general insecurity and fear among Canada's non-status immigrant population. Moreover, others and I picketed Afghan puppet Hamid Karzai in September of this year and during that picket, I tried to speak directly to Michael Fortier, Stephen Harper's right-hand man in Quebec. On each of those occasions – against Monte Solberg, against Michael Fortier, and then against Stephen Harper – I was arrested and charged with public order offenses. I haven't been convicted of anything and going by past personal experience, I might very likely be acquitted of everything. My and others' desire to continue to protest even to the point of trying directly to reach decision-makers puts me in the position that I might face at least the next 6 months in prison. I don't regret any of my previous actions and I intend to defend myself vigorously at the upcoming trials. I only regret that I, along with others, can't do more to oppose policies that are not just misguided, but murderous and genocidal.

I certainly don't expect that everyone or a majority of readers to agree with my political point of view. But what's at stake at tomorrow's bail hearing is whether or not someone who actively dissents deserves to be locked up for at least six months before being convicted of anything. Either way, I'm prepared to live with the consequences of my actions, knowing that they occur in the context of movements that are uncompromisingly fighting for justice and dignity, whether at home or abroad."

On November 27, Jaggi Singh was released on a $2000 bail, money that was collected by his supporters who numbered close to one hundred at the hearing. In addition to bail, a condition was also attached to the release; Singh is not allowed to partake in any demonstration which is illegal or non-peaceful.




Naomi Klein: Scrap NAFTA, Rejoin the Americas

From new social movements in South America, to “Mexico's so-called president [being] sworn in at midnight in a shameful ceremony,” Klein said that a rebellion against neoliberalism is sweeping the southern hemisphere.

By Tor Sandberg
From Common Dreams
2006

“This is a turning point for Canada and it's also a turning point for the neoliberal project, for the privatization project,” said Naomi Klein last week at a fundraiser for the Ontario Health Coalition.

“In Canada we have weird timing. Just when the Americas are turning away from neoliberalism in droves, its principal purveyors so embarrassed by their own policies that they have to wrap it in the rhetoric of war and civilization — they pretend they don't even care about economics anymore, it's about security, not trade.

It's precisely at this moment that Canada throws in the towel and gives up the very system that is held up around the world,” said Klein, referring to Canada's election of a Conservative government and the current privatization of various health care services across Canada.

Speaking publicly for the first time in over a year, Naomi Klein, a well-known anti-globalization author and activist, returned to Toronto last Friday to join Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, and the Ontario Health Coalition for a talk about new social movements and the protection of public health care at St. Andrew's Church.

Klein focused on a trip to New Orleans that she took with partner Avi Lewis and a photographer friend in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, part of the research for her upcoming book called Disaster Capitalism.

“I arrived when the city was still flooded,” recounted Klein, saying that the concept of “disaster capitalism” is not only about the profiting from disaster, but also about the clandestine introduction of privatization in moments when people are in shock.

“What they have to do now is use cataclysmic violence and exploit people in their moment of most severe trauma, which is what has happened in New Orleans,” said Klein. “By using the disaster to further privatize the health care system, to turn the public education system into laboratories for Charter schools… shows you that we are truly up against sociopaths.”

Klein stated that the response to Hurricane Katrina showed the ineffectiveness of neoliberal policies.

“Because Katrina, the disaster that was Katrina, was the most damning indictment of the logic of the privatization and total neglect of the state — to the extent that you had a few days where some hard-line neoliberals were doubting themselves, … saying: 'Where is the State?'”

Car crash in New Orleans
In a stroke of luck — or bad luck, depending on how you look at it — Klein was able to get a first-hand account of the segregated American health care system, when, while driving quickly to avoid the curfew in New Orleans, her car smashed into another car at an intersection, continuing into the middle of a coffee shop.

“The other car was a cop car and that's how we found out we were in the South,” recounted Klein. “Everyone was okay in the end: Andy [the photographer friend] was arrested, Avi was face down on the ground being warned [about] what happens when you hit a cop [car] in the State of Louisiana, [and] I was strapped in a gurney in an ambulance trying to convince them to please not take me to a hospital.”

Klein recalled seeing frightening hospital scenes on the news, particularly those from Charity Hospital that catered to those who couldn't afford to pay for care. “I was just terrified about where they were going to take me,” said Klein, who — while slipping in and out of consciousness because of a concussion — began negotiating with the ambulance driver to let her out. “I said: Just drop me off at a corner, you know, I’ll walk. No problem. Please don't take me there.”

“They said no, no, you have to go.”

Klein recalled that she soon awoke in what looked like a spa, but soon realised it was a private hospital.

“I was in a private room in three minutes flat. I was being attended to by three nurses, a senior doctor, and a medical intern. I have never in my life got such attentive health care.

”This was in the middle of the largest natural disaster, humanitarian disaster in American history,” marvelled Klein. “The doctors were playing cards in the middle of this hospital and were being protected by an army of private security, who were there, as they called it, to keep the junkies out.”

After receiving a few stitches, Klein recounted that she wasn't able to leave the hospital because of the curfew in New Orleans, and in order to pass time, attempted to interview the intern who was tending to her.

“I asked if he worked the hurricane and he said, 'No, thank God, I wasn't on duty. I actually live in the suburbs.'”

“Did you go to any of the shelters?” Klein recalled asking the intern. “He looked at me, confused. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch,” Klein exclaimed to chuckles from the audience. “I just assumed that someone who just learned how to be a doctor would want to go to the shelters and help.

“It actually hadn't even occurred to him to go to one of the shelters, just as it hadn't occurred to any of the doctors and nurses in this hospital that, instead of being in their fortress, dealing with three or four patients … they could be out there.”

Klein blamed the development of this frame of mind on the American two-tiered health care system, which, she said, had “already accepted the idea that some lives are worth more and some are worth nothing.”

“Once you do that in your health care system, you are mentally prepared to do that in a major disaster,” noted Klein. A disaster, she added, which extends into the privatization of the health care and education systems.

“It's a hardening of hearts that's required on a daily basis to run a luxury hospital in a city like New Orleans,” continued Klein. “It's the same hardening of hearts that lets people be abandoned on their rooftops by their country.

“That's the direction that we're being taken in,” warned Klein. “The irony is that this way of thinking is being rejected around the world, at this very moment. We're not deciding we want this; they've just worn us out. We voted again and again and said again and again that this is the most pressing issue for Canadians.

“They bored us into privatizing health care. How many times can we really fight the same fight?”

Rejoining the Americas
Klein devoted the final part of her talk to the topic of Canada's participation in the neoliberal project and Canada's relationship with the rest of the Americas. “In Canada, neoliberalism is not opposed to violence, neoliberalism is itself violence,” she said. “It plays itself out on the bodies of the poor in this city once the temperature drops. It is a violent model and that's why it needs to be enclosed with violence,” added Klein, referring to the metal-wire fence and the lines of police that surrounded the Summit of the Americas conference held in Quebec City in 2001.

Klein offered one way of helping to shake off the shock of neoliberalism in Canada. “The Americas are leading the way, and their response to being padlocked by the neoliberal lobby … was to form constitutional assemblies and remake the laws,” said Klein. “We don't have to reform our constitution, we can just scrap NAFTA."

“And we have to do it,” Klein added. “It is a revolutionary moment and we had a moment here in Canada where we were, for one brief moment, part of the Americas. Not as mining companies and energy companies, exploiters and colonizers, but on an equal basis.”

Klein stated that the neoliberal project has been unmasked in the Americas, claiming its leaders have had to live under “a permanent state of siege” in the face of the growing “counter-counter revolution.” From new social movements in South America, to “Mexico's so-called president [being] sworn in at midnight in a shameful ceremony,” Klein said that a rebellion against neoliberalism is sweeping the southern hemisphere.

“In 2001,” noted Klein, “Canada showed that we could be part of this moment of effervescent rebellion. In 2001, people were in the streets in Canada, they were naming neoliberalism; they were naming the policies — privatization, regulation, cuts to our crucial social services, and now, we're going to transfer all that to the military.

“Look at how much has changed since 2001 in Latin America,” Klein added. “Almost all those leaders [who attended the Summit of the Americas] have been driven from power, many in helicopters from their presidential palaces.” In concluding her remarks, Klein stressed the imperative in resisting the neoliberal project, offering advice to those who might be feeling disillusioned.

“It is possible to lift the web if we have the determination,” said Klein. “It is possible to break this feeling that we all have, that it's impossible to turn [the neoliberal project] back…that it really has been a death by a million cuts,” said Klein.

“We have to get our courage back and we have to rejoin the Americas.”

Tor Sandberg is a former intern and a frequent reporter for rabble.ca. He is now pursuing a Masters in Environmental Studies at York University.














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