March continues for Black Women’s Organizations and Populist Movements from the North and Northeast

Published on: 08 June 2016

This was the conclusion of the Inter-regional Meeting which ended in Salvador on

Saturday, having gathered together representatives of organizations for black women

and populist sectors from the North and Northeast.

“A coup-making, macho and sexist government doesn’t represent, only violates, us”. This

is one of the conclusions of the Inter-regional Meeting of Black Women and Populist

Movements from the North and Northeast, which finished on Saturday (04/06) in Salvador.

Alongside other messages prepared collectively, in line with a methodology called “Training

in Action”, this message forms part of a series of guidelines which will support the activities

of meeting participants and their social organizations in the struggle for more rights and

against the social setbacks currently present within the country.

Communication techniques were used to run debates, to formulate content and in

strategies to confront the current political situation in the country. Phrases, hashtags,

words of order (and disorder), began to be adopted as guidelines and slogans for

campaigns, and other activities, responding to the meeting’s call for creation: “Crisis?

Create resistance!!”

On Friday (03/06), the women put meeting deliberations into action, coordinating a

public debate on the theme “Challenges of the current situation for the struggles of

black women and populist sectors for rights and policies in Brazil”, which filled the

auditorium of the Barris Central Library. The activity represented the high point of the

methodology, from the recording of statements based on debates to the jointly

constructed content, the production of the debate and the distribution of a pamphlet.

The phrase “Black women carry on marching!” was also restated at the Meeting, which

brought together members of social organizations from the nine States of the

Northeast as well as Pará, Amapá and Tocantins. They decided they are not ready to

give up, but rather to achieve more, rights. “We will continue marching because this

civilizing model, which places millions of us outside its processes, has failed. Brazil

needs to constitute itself as a country of diversity,” declared Valdecir Nascimento

Coordinator of Odara – the Black Women’s Institute.

Priscila Estêvão, from the National Forum of Black Youth, said that “the transition

government has represented a profound setback for the constitutional rights of

minorities such as black people, poor people and homosexuals”. She noted that this

was evidenced in the closure of the Ministries of Racial Equality, Human Rights, and

Women, “not to mention the Ministry of Culture, whose closure was reversed due to

popular pressure”. But the young woman also stressed that the alternative media has

contributed to democracy by demonstrating another view of the facts, unlike the

position of conventional broadcasters aligned to the coup. Regarding this, the women

concluded: “Globo Network – enemy of democracy and of black women!”

At the Meeting, run by the Ecumenical Coordination of Service (Coordenadoria

Ecumênica de Serviço: CESE) and SOS Corpo – Feminist Institute for Democracy (SOS

Corpo – Instituto Feminista para a Democracia), with financial support from the

European Union, the participants also asserted that “Without Black Women, Brazil

would come to a halt!” Valdecir Nascimento went beyond this, declaring that black

people are perhaps the best placed to talk about a new Brazil because, “given the

position we occupy, we are in the best position to talk about and present solutions to

the exclusion and oppression that affect more than half of the Brazilian population.”

For Eliete Paraguassu, from the National Network of Fisherwomen “the statements at

the voting session for the coup were revealing of the people they wish to have at the

front of the government”. She stressed that the acts of the interim government have

intensified the exclusion of sectors historically discriminated against, for example the

closure of the Ministry of Agricultural Development, which was responsible for the

entitlement of quilombola territories. “Now, it is Temer who will say whether or not

we are quilombolas”, she added, referring to the measure which transferred the

jurisdiction for the recognition of quilombola communities to the Civilian Household.

The conclusion also emerged from the meeting that “The coup which makes our souls

bleed, strengthens our struggle”” which reinforces the speech made by Celenita, from

the Tocantins State Quilombola Coordination, who, in reference to the transference of

demands for the regulation of quilombola lands to the Ministry of Education said,

“black women always have been and always will be in the struggle, fighting for their

rights and this moment of political setbacks in the country, instead of weakening, will

strengthen us”.

The Project

The Inter-regional Meeting for Black Women’s Organizations and Populist Movements

from the North and Northeast is part of the Black and Populist Women’s Project: Tracing

Pathways, Constructing Rights, started in 2015, with activities planned until 2017. The

initiative is aimed at strengthening the struggle and self-organization of fisherwomen,

quilombola and indigenous women, rural workers, followers of African-origin traditions,

young people and other groups of women from the countryside and the city. Activities

include support to projects, training and communication activities, involving nine states

from the Northeast, as well as from Amapá, Tocantins and Pará.

Between 02 and 04 June, the activity enabled participants to share experiences, discuss the

direction of national politics and the recurrent threat of setbacks to the social gains made

in recent years.

The “Black and Populist Women’s Project: Tracing Pathways, Constructing Rights”

principally aims to contribute to the social integration and improved living conditions of

black women and women from the populist sectors living in poverty. It also aims to

strengthen the role of black and populist women and their organizations in public debates

and in the social participation processes referred to in government policies to combat

poverty, and for the social inclusion of women and the black population.

CESE has been a philanthropic institution for more than 43 years and acts to strengthen

those social movements and populist groups that fight for political, economic and social

transformations focusing on structures in which democracy with justice prevail, mediating

with financial resources and sharing spaces for dialogue and networking. The institution

has a centre in Salvador, Bahia and is made up of Christian churches. One of the ways it

fulfils its mission is by supporting projects from populist organizations.

SOS Corpo is a civil society, autonomous, non-profit, organization, founded in 1981 and

with a centre in Recife, Pernambuco, which has worked for 35 years in favour of the

emancipation of women, proposing the construction of a democratic and equal society

with socio-environmental justice. Its activities are based on the idea that women’s

movements, as organized social movements that struggle for social transformation, are

political subjects which provoke changes to the living conditions of women in general. For

the institute, the struggle against poverty, racism and homophobia are fundamental

aspects of feminism and social transformation in order to confront the capitalist, racist and

patriarchal system that produces inequalities and human suffering.