This past week, Land is Life’s global network of grassroots partners recognized International
Women’s Day. Rallies and events were held worldwide calling for
increased gender equality and women’s rights.
One significant march took place in the town of Puyo, Ecuador,
where Indigenous women from across the Amazon region gathered
to demand their individual, collective, and territorial rights.
In this letter, Majo Andrade Cerda, a Kichwa woman and Land is Life’s
Latin America Program Assistant, shares her thoughts from the march.
* * *
At 4 am on March 8th, we came together with Sapara, Kofan, Waorani, Kichwa, Shuar, Achuar, Andwa, and Shiwiar women for a ceremony of wayusa and chukula, ancestral drinks that we nourish ourselves with daily. At 5 am we started our symbolic walk, carrying torches illustrating that the fire that moves our resistance burns with the same passion as our lives.
Delegations from the entire Amazon gradually arrived in the city of Puyo. Sisters from the north and south joined to remind us that none of us are alone.
Recognizing faces from past encounters filled our spirits with fervor, it was a good sign to meet again. We knew that we are alive and stand strong in this fight. It was also energizing to mew new companions. The power of these young women adds to the process of resistance that will last as long as it takes to gain respect for women’s rights and collective rights.
We marched on the streets because our existence is our resistance. The Indigenous women of the Amazon live in constant threat because of the extractive industries that only see our territory as a resource and not as the all-encompassing being as we know it. We are fighting to abolish this false idea held by the states and corporations that the only purpose of our bodies and nature is to be exploited.
Our fight follows the path paved by our mothers and grandmothers in their search for freedom. In the 1990s, they were present in the Indigenous uprising. They played an essential role in the process and the development of the resistance. They sowed the seed, and now it is us, the new generation, the caretakers of the seed, who honor their lives and work with more marches and more voices. That is why Indigenous women from the Amazon were marching on March 8th; to demand our individual, collective, and territorial rights that allow us to live a full life in our communities.
