Honduran Women's Manifesto of Rebellion
In the rebel Garífuna territory of Vallecito,
Iriona, Colón, Honduras, surrounded by elements of nature that nourish life and
hope, 1,200 women and approximately 350 children gathered and embraced each
other with life and words, arriving from Choluteca, El Paraíso, Copan, Olancho,
Valle, Francisco Morazán, Gracias a Dios, Colón, Yoro, Cortes, Atlántida,
Intibucá, Lempira, La Paz, Comayagua, and Santa Bárbara.
We felt ancestors Margarita Murillo, María
Enriqueta Matute, Berta Cáceres, Magdalena Morales and aunt Macucu with us in
all of our actions as spirit, as thought and as strength. We felt the energies
of our peoples, of the Tolupán, Lenca, Misquito, Garífuna, Pech, Maya Chortí
and all other peoples in struggle, coming together after ten years of the coup d’état
and the resistance of the Honduran people, of the women of Honduras.
The gathering salutes
the strength and rebelliousness of women, those present, those who could not come,
and those who are no longer physically with us. Despite the wounds and pains
from violence and oppression visited upon our bodies, territories and
organizing processes, we have enormous conviction and dedication to continue
thinking, creating and acting together.
The strength of the worldview of indigenous
peoples was present and manifested through spirituality, wisdom, experiences of
resistance and forms of relating to nature and life. Through debate and
conversations during meals, breaks, and work, we assembled these words, which
we now share.
The coup d'état
transformed into a dictatorship and continues to deepen the extractive model that threatens
the livelihood of women and indigenous peoples. This is a regime that plunders
the common good, identities, bodies, wisdom, spirituality; that is sustained by
corruption, impunity, drug trafficking, militarization, persecution,
criminalization of our sisters who struggle throughout the territories of
Honduras.
We are living through
an humanitarian crisis produced by that plunder, which cruelly and clearly creates
the migrant exodus by our sisters and brothers, an exodus which
empties our territories, with disastrous results for our people and the
community social fabric, benefiting the extractive projects that have less and
less opposition to confront.
We call upon all of us to respond to the
urgent necessity of reclaiming and multiplying autonomous practices and envisioning
sovereign alternatives that are anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, inclusive and
diverse, due to the evident failure of masculine exercise of power based on the
colonial electoral democratic model, which threatens women and indigenous
peoples.
The increasing normalization
violence against the bodies of women worries us. Our bodies become a territory for
the expression of machista and hetero-patriarchal culture and frustration,
often perpetrated by men from the social movements and exacerbated by the
increase in militarization and religious fundamentalism. The role of women in
the struggle has been at once set back and strengthened, with better political
clarity, wisdom, ability to mobilize and inspire in diverse struggles where we
have been putting forth our thought, voice, bodies and action. No violence will
hold us back.
From this gathering,
we commit ourselves to continue coming together in collective rebellion, to
embody each other’s struggles and to envision a Honduras without dictatorship,
with autonomy and sovereignty for the people, for women.
After 10 years of the
coup, we continue to struggle together.
For a Honduras without
dictatorship.
Vallecito, Iriona,
Colón, Honduras, June 29th, 2019
