Nina Gualinga – An indigenous woman from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She is an environmental activist and Indigenous Rights defender. She’s the perfect example of a strong and powerful woman. Protecting her people and their ancestral land with everything she has.
The Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela are one of the largest relatively isolated tribes in South America. Their territory extends for 9.6 million hectares in Brazil and 8.2 million hectares in Venezuela. Their land was demarcated following a long campaign led by Yanomami spokesman Davi Kopenawa, the global indigenous rights movement Survival and the NGO Pro Yanomami Commission.
Today, however, the Yanomami still face many problems: hundreds of miners, mostly in Venezuela, work illegally on their lands, while settlers and farmers have invaded the outer border of Yanomami territory in Brazil. The invaders transmit deadly diseases such as malaria to the tribe. Uncontacted members are particularly vulnerable to diseases brought from outside: following contact, in the past, entire isolated peoples were quickly killed by viruses.
The Yanomami are the best conservationists in their Amazon forest area, which on the Venezuelan side of the border is the second largest biosphere in the world; today, however, their territory is deforested and polluted with mercury.
In addition, the Brazilian Congress is currently debating a bill that, if passed, will open indigenous territories, such as Yanomami, to large-scale mining.
The Amazon region is home to the largest rainforest in the world and the richest river system. The Amazon River collects nearly 20 percent of the fresh water found on Earth, while the forest conditions and regulates the climate of the entire planet.
The rainforest stores 90 to 140 billion tons of CO2, and its continued destruction causes huge quantities of this substance to be released into the atmosphere, with catastrophic consequences for the environment.
If today in the tourist maps of Peru we find the Yaguas National Park reported, it is also thanks to Liz Chicaje Churay, a Peruvian activist of the Bora people who for years fought so that this slice of the Amazon forest on the border with Colombia was protected from poachers. by illegal loggers and miners. Supported by her indigenous community, this 38-year-old woman had the courage, despite years of threats, to oppose the exploitation of these lands that the local population considers sacred, eventually gaining political support for the area to be declared a national park.
THIS PHOTO HAS TAKEN DURING THESE DAYS IN PERUVIAN BORDER. A WOMAN LAY ON THE GROUND TO PROTEST AGAINST THE CLOSURE OF THE BORDER.
HOW MANY WOMEN HAVE FIGHT FOR PEOPLE’S RIGHTS IN THE PAST? HO MANY WOEN HAVE RISKED THEIR LIVES TO CARRY ON IMPORTANT STRUGGLES?
Zuana Ajorduy Daughter of a mestizo mother and a white father, she was born in a territory that would become Bolivian, in the Viceroyalty of La Plata. Orphaned as a child, she spent a good part of her life in convents. Married at 25, he had five children. Together with Padilla, his companion, he was part of one of the small internal resistance formations, born after the defeat of the so-called urban movements. His determination, courage and enviable leadership earned him the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1816. Wounded in combat, still pregnant with her fifth child, her husband died trying to save her. In 1825 she was promoted to colonel, by decision of Simon Bolivar. He also fought in six major clashes against the monarchists in northern Upper Peru to secure independence processes. Years later, she died in poverty and was buried in a mass grave. Late acknowledged, it was in her honor that Argentina made the 12th of July, her birth, the Day of the Heroines and Martyrs of the Independence of America.Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, who was the leader of a rebellion in 1780, together with her husband José Gabriel Condorcanqui, Túpac Amaru II. The goal was to defeat and banish the colonizers, this desire having been consolidated by the abuses that were committed against the indigenous peoples. Her husband was the rebel leader in Puno, while she personally handled military operations in Cusco. On countless occasions it was she who established the strategies followed by Túpac Amaru II. In addition, she was a great administrator, taking over the reins of all the family businesses and rioters. The insurrection they led was fundamental to the subsequent Peruvian emancipation, achieved in 1821. Micaela was a Zamba, with both indigenous and African roots. He had three children and looked after them with attention similar to that which he gave to his people. After she became famous for her feats in the fight, she was offered cash prizes and noble titles for her capture. Defeated in a final battle, she and her husband were arrested and sentenced to death, along with other leaders. She entered the execution square, dragged by a horse, with tied hands and feet. In any case, I would have said “for the freedom of my people I have given up everything. I will not see my children blossom ”, having then cut off his tongue. She also needed to see one of her sons executed before she was strangled.
Leona Vicario was a standard in Mexican history, known as “the strong woman of independence” and considered the country’s first journalist, she was an intelligent Mexican, skilled in paintings, educated in politics, history and literature, and a descendant of honorable parents. María Soledad Leona Camila Vicario Fernández de San Salvador, her full name, was born 229 years ago, on April 10, 1789 in Mexico City. She was the only daughter of the Spanish merchant Gaspar Martín Vicario and Camila Fernández de San Salvador, originally from Toluca. At the age of 17 she was orphaned and under the tutelage of her uncle Agustín Pomposo Fernández. At the beginning of the War of Independence, Vicar joined the Insurgents, a movement in which he was a key player as he financed the rebel movement, sheltered fugitives, sent medicine, transmitted resources and information on any event that occurred in the viceroy court. In 1812 Vicar convinced a group of gunsmiths from Biscay to join the gang.María Remedios del Valle is an Argentine soldier. Of African origin, he was born in Buenos Aires probably towards the end of 1766 or 67. His debut in battle dates back to the defense of the city of Buenos Aires during the first English invasion in 1806 in which he was part of the Andalusian Corps. After the revolution proclaimed on May 25, 1810 when the Spanish viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros was dismissed and the First Junta of the Argentine Government was established, Maria Remedios del Valle integrated the Northern Army, in which her husband and children had also enlisted. , and on 6 July 1810 he took part in the first expedition to Upper Peru (now Bolivia) against the Spanish domination. During the battle of San Miguel de Tucumán, in addition to fighting by encouraging the soldiers, he also took care of the wounded. For the value shown, General Belgrano appointed her Captain. During the battles of Salta and Felcapugio in which the Northern Army was defeated by the royalists, her husband and children were killed. Maria de Remedios continued to fight and care for the wounded along with other women known as “Las Niñas de Ayohuma”. She was taken prisoner along with five hundred other soldiers. Her escape attempt was discovered and she was flogged for nine days. However, he managed to escape by joining the troops of Martín Miguel de Guemes and Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arenales. After the independence declared in San Miguel de Tucumán on July 9, 1816, in 1827, General Juan José Viamonte, who had been his comrade in arms during the campaign of Upper Peru, recognized Maria de Remedios begging in the streets of Buenos Aires and lived in a state of total poverty. Thanks to his role as deputy of the government of the Province of Buenos Aires, Viamonte was able to support the request for a pension for the services provided by the Capitana.Marielle Franco, the Brazilian activist killed six months ago in the Estacio neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. Elected in 2016 to the city council, she stood up for a long time in defense of the most marginalized people. Franco has fought numerous civil battles alongside the LGBT community, black women and young people from the favelas, achieving important results as a member of the State Commission for Human Rights. Her case is not isolated, as she herself denounced on Twitter the day before her assassination (March 13): “Another murder of a young man who could be credited to the police, […] how many more will have to die to end this war ? “. There is a harsh sentence on the police and army bodies which, not only in Brazil, are accused of brutally repressing activists and political dissidents.María Isabel Chorobik de Mariani, best known as “Chica de Mariani”. who passed away on August 20, one of the founders of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo association – are calling for justice for their children and grandchildren, more than forty years after the fall of the Videla military junta and, for the Mexican towns, twenty-five years after the events in Ciudad Juarez. In the city on the border between Mexico and the United States, from 1993 to 2005 there were over 300 femicides and to date, in the north-eastern region of the country alone, six thousand people have disappeared into thin air. Above all, the brutal violence against rights defenders is worrying: the Brazilian Committee for Human Rights Defenders reports that, between January and September 2017, 62 activists were killed in Brazil, most of them engaged in defense of the territory and of local populations, as also documented by a report (At what cost ?, 2018) by the NGO Global Witness: in 2017, 207 ‘environmental activists’ lost their lives in South America.Berta Cáceres Siding in defense of the Lenca indigenous community and committed to safeguarding the Río Gualcarque, Cáceres was awarded the prestigious international Goldman Environmental Prize (2015), which fueled deep aversions towards it. In Latin American ‘frontier spaces’, women’s courage collides with social prejudice, tested by political idiosyncrasies and threatened by criminal interests.Mexico, reports an article from El Paìs, the protests of the ‘mitoteras’ have continued for months, thirty women desperate for uncensored children and husbands, ‘disappeared’ in the head-on confrontation that opposes the Mexican military to the drug cartels in the state of Tamaulipas, on the border with Texas. Karen, Jessica, Gabriela and Azeneth are just some of the women who, like the Argentine activist María ‘Chica’ de Mariani – who passed away on August 20, one of the founders of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo association – call for justice for their own children and grandchildren, more than forty years after the fall of the Videla military junta and, for the Mexican towns, twenty-five years after the events in Ciudad Juarez. In the city on the border between Mexico and the United States, from 1993 to 2005 there were over 300 femicides and to date, in the north-eastern region of the country alone, six thousand people have disappeared into thin air.
Margoth Escobar was at a friend’s birthday party in the town of Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon last September when a neighbour called to say her house was on fire. The blaze destroyed her home and more than $50,000 worth of artisanry that she and other women planned to sell over Christmas. The local fire department said it was an act of arson against Escobar, who belongs to Mujeres Amazonicas, a collective of mostly indigenous women who have banded together to defend their land and the environment against oil extraction and mining. It was one of several alarming attacks against members of the collective in Ecuador last year, amid a broader trend of threats, smear campaigns and physical violence against women human rights defenders across South America. Putting aside her distrust of Ecuador’s police and justice system, Escobar filed a criminal complaint at the regional Attorney General’s Office in October. She has not been granted protective measures, despite the risk her activism brings and the attack already suffered.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 