Thelma Cabrera and Jordán Rodas launch their candidacy for the presidency and vice presidency of Guatemala in December 2022, which has been vetoed by the courts, in a maneuver that has drawn criticism from human rights groups at home and abroad. CREDIT: Twitter

By Edgardo Ayala
SANTA CATARINA PALOPÓ, Guatemala, Mar 4 2023 (IPS)

Centuries of racism and exclusion suffered by indigenous peoples in Guatemala continue to weigh heavily, as demonstrated by the denial of the registration of a political party that is promoting the presidential candidacy of indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera in the upcoming general elections.

On Mar. 2, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled against Cabrera’s party, the leftist Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), which had appealed a Feb. 15 Supreme Court resolution that left them out of the Jun. 25 elections.“There is a racist system and structure, and we indigenous people have barely managed to start climbing the steps, but with great difficulty and zero opportunities.” -- Silvia Menchú

Cabrera’s candidacy and that of her vice-presidential running-mate Jordán Rodas are now hanging by a thread, with their hopes depending on a few last resort legal challenges.

The deadline for the registration of candidates is Mar. 25.

A centuries-old racist system

Guatemala’s political and economic elites “are looking for ways to keep her (Cabrera) from registering; everyone has the right to participate, but they are blocking her,” Sonia Nimacachi, 31, a native of Santa Catarina Palopó, told IPS. The municipality, which has a Cachiquel Mayan indigenous majority, is in the southwestern Guatemalan department of Sololá.

“We would like a person with our roots and culture to become president, I think it would help our people,” added Nimacachi, standing by her street stall in the center of town.

Nimacachi, a Cachiquel Mayan woman, sells “granizadas” or snow cones: crushed ice sweetened with syrup of various flavors, perfect for hot days.

“There is a racist system and structure, and we indigenous people have barely managed to start climbing the steps, but with great difficulty and zero opportunities,” Silvia Menchú, director of the K’ak’a Na’oj (New Knowledge, in Cachiquel) Association for the Development of Women, told IPS.

The organization, based in Santa Catarina Palopó, carries out human rights programs focused on indigenous women.

Santa Catarina Palopó, a picturesque Cachiquel Mayan town located on the shore of Lake Atitlán in the southwestern Guatemalan department of Sololá, is preparing for the upcoming general elections, where voters will choose a new president, vice president, 160 members of Congress, 20 members of the Central American Parliament, as well as 340 mayors. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“Racism has prevailed, we are mistreated everywhere by the government and the authorities, we are seen as people with little capacity,” said Menchú, of the Maya Quiché ethnic group.

An alleged illegality attributed to Rodas, the vice-presidential candidate, was the cause for denying the MLP the right to register for the elections.

Analysts and social organizations perceive obscure maneuvering on the part of the powers-that-be, who cannot accept the idea that an indigenous woman is trying to break through the barriers of the country’s rigid, racist political system.

Cabrera is a 51-year-old Mayan Mam woman who is trying for a second time to run in the unequal fight for the presidency of this Central American country of 14.9 million inhabitants.

Of the total population, 43.7 percent identify as indigenous Mayan, Xinca, Garífuna and Afro-descendant peoples, according to the 2018 census.

In the 2019 elections Cabrera came in fourth place, winning 10 percent of the total votes cast.

In the Jun. 25 general elections voters will choose a new president for the period 2024-2028, as well as 160 members of Congress and 20 members of the Central American Parliament, and 340 mayors.

In Guatemala, the ancient Mayan culture was flourishing when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century.

The descendants of that pre-Hispanic civilization still speak 24 different autochthonous languages, most of which are Mayan.

Years of exclusion and neglect of indigenous rural populations led Guatemala to a civil war that lasted 36 years (1960-1996) and left some 250,000 dead or disappeared.

The presidential candidacy of Thelma Cabrera, of the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), must be allowed by the Guatemalan authorities, so that the indigenous population is represented in the Jun. 25 elections, says Silvia Menchú, director of the K’ak’a Na’oj (New Knowledge, in Cachiquel) Association for the Development of Women. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A blatant maneuver

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s (TSE) rejection of the MLP arose from a complaint against Rodas, who served between 2017 and 2022 as head of the Office for the Defense of Human Rights.

In that office, Rodas strongly questioned alleged acts of corruption by the current government of Alejandro Giammattei, who took office in January 2020.

The criminal complaint against the vice-presidential candidate was filed on Jan. 6 by the current head of the Office for the Defense of Human Rights, Alejandro Córdoba.

After Cabrera and Rodas attempted to register as candidates, Córdoba said he had “doubts” about some payments allegedly received by his predecessor in the Office for the Defense of Human Rights.

His “doubts” apparently had to do with some alleged illegality on the part of Rodas, but since Córdoba has not described it in detail, his statements have been nothing but a weak half-hearted accusation.

However, that was enough for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to reject the MLP on Feb. 2, which triggered protests by rural and indigenous people, who blocked roads in at least 12 parts of the country.

According to Guatemalan law, all candidates for popularly elected positions must have a document that attests that they have no pending legal issues.

But analysts have pointed out that this document should only take into account actual legal rulings handed down by courts, and not “doubts” vaguely expressed by some government official.

By vetoing Rodas, the TSE automatically bars his presidential runningmate Cabrera, who may actually be the ultimate target of the maneuver, since she is the one who is trying, once again, to win the votes of the indigenous population.

On Feb. 15, the MLP runningmates filed a provisional injunction with the Supreme Court, so that it would take effect immediately and overrule the TSE’s decision, while the Supreme Court studied and resolved the matter in depth.

But the injunction was rejected, so the MLP appealed the next day to the Constitutional Court, asking it to review the case and order the Supreme Court to admit the provisional injunction, to allow the fight for the registration of Cabrera and Rodas to continue forward.

But the appeal was denied Thursday Mar. 2 by the Constitutional Court.

However, the Supreme Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the injunction, but only a provisional stance. This means that when it is finally issued, if it goes against the MLP, Cabrera and Rodas could once again turn to the Constitutional Court, in a last-ditch effort.

But it seems as if the die is already cast.

In a tweet on Thursday Mar. 2, Rodas wrote: “The constitutional justice system has denied my constitutional right to be elected and denies the population the right to choose freely. We await the Supreme Court ruling on the injunction and the position of the @IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). Our fight continues.”

Guatemala’s political and economic elites are determined to block the candidacy of indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, says Sonia Nimacachi, a Cachiquel Mayan woman selling snowcones in Santa Catarina Palopó, in the country’s southwest. She would vote for Cabrera again, if her candidacy is finally allowed. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Cabrera’s second attempt

This is Cabrera’s second attempt to run for the presidency. Her first was in the 2019 elections, when she failed to fully capture the indigenous vote.

“I would dare to think that the majority of the indigenous population did not vote for her because of those instilled prejudices: that she is a woman and also indigenous, not a professional, are issues that have nothing to do with the dignity and the quality of a person,” argued Silvia Menchú.

She added that the right-wing parties have been allies of the country’s evangelical churches, through which they keep in submission segments of the indigenous population that end up supporting conservative parties, rather than a candidate who comes from their Mayan culture.

To illustrate, she said that in Santa Catarina Palopó, a town of 6,000 people, there is only one school to cover primary and middle-school education, “but there are about 15 evangelical churches.”

The TSE’s veto of the registration of Cabrera and Rodas puts the credibility of the elections at risk, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) warned on Feb. 27.

In a joint statement, the two organizations said the electoral authority’s rejection of aspiring candidates “is based on dubious grounds, puts political rights at risk, and undermines the credibility of the electoral process.”

“The electoral process is taking place in the context of a decline in the rule of law, in which the institutions responsible for overseeing the elections have little independence or credibility,” they stated.

In addition to Cabrera and Rodas, the TSE also rejected the registration of right-wing candidate Roberto Arzú, because he allegedly began campaigning too early.

HRW and Wola added that “efforts to exclude or prosecute opposition candidates create unequal conditions that could prevent free and fair elections from taking place.”

Meanwhile, the TSE did endorse, on Feb. 4, the presidential candidacy of Zury Ríos, daughter of General Efraín Ríos Montt, who governed de facto between 1982 and 1983.

In 2013 the general was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacre of more than 1,400 indigenous Ixil people in the north of the country.

He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, but the Constitutional Court later revoked the ruling. Ríos Montt died in April 2018.

Article 186 of the Guatemalan constitution prohibits people involved in coups d’état, or their relatives, for running for president.

Meanwhile, snowcone vendor Sonia Nimacachi said in the central square of Santa Catarina Palopó that she still held out hope that Cabrera would be able to register as a candidate.

“If they let her participate, I would vote for her again,” she said, while serving a customer.

On the suspension bridge that crosses the Vilcanota River, in the village of Secsencalla, in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, a group of men who have been taking steps towards a new form of masculinity without machismo pose for a photo. From left to right: Saul Huamán, Rolando Tito, Hilario Quispe and Brian Junior Quispe. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
CUZCO, Peru , Oct 6 2022 (IPS)

“My father was very ‘machista’, he used to beat my mother… It was a very sad life,” said Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, on the outskirts of the town of Huaro, in the southern Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco more than 3,000 meters above sea level.

Today, at 66 years of age, he is happy that he managed to not copy the model of masculinity that his father showed him, in which being a man was demonstrated by exercising power and violence over women and children."I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions.” -- Dionisio Ticuña

“Now I am an enemy of the ‘wife beaters’, I don’t hang out with the ones who were raised that way and I don’t pay attention to the taunts or ugly things they might say to me,” he said in an interview with IPS in his new adobe house, which he built in 2020 and where he lives with his wife and their youngest daughter, 20. Their three other children, two boys and a girl, have already become independent.

In this South American country of 33 million people, tolerance of violence, particularly gender-based violence, is high, and there is a strong division of roles within couples.

A nationwide survey on social relationships, conducted in 2019 by the governmental National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), showed that 52 percent of women believed they should first fulfill their role as mothers and wives before pursuing their dreams, 33 percent believed that if they were unfaithful they should be punished by their husband, and 27 percent said they deserved to be punished if they disrespected their husband.

The survey also found that a high proportion of Peruvians agreed with the physical punishment of children. Of those interviewed, 46 percent thought it was a parental right and 34 percent believed it helped discipline children so they would not become lazy.

Katherine Pozo, a Cuzco lawyer with the rural development program of the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Center, told IPS that masculinity in Peru, particularly in rural areas, is still very machista or sexist.

“The ideas acquired in childhood and transmitted from generation to generation are that men have power over women, that women owe them obedience, and that women’s role is to take care of their men and take care of the home and the family. This thinking is an obstacle to the integral experience of their masculinities and to the recognition of women’s rights,” she said in an interview at her home in Cuzco, the regional capital.

Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, in the Andean region of Cuzco in southern Peru, stands in front of his new adobe house, built in 2020. At the age of 66, he has achieved the tranquility of a life without machismo, which he experienced as a child in his family. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Based on that analysis the Center decided to involve men in the work they do in rural communities in Cuzco to help women exercise their rights and have greater autonomy in making decisions about their lives, promoting the approach to a new kind of masculinity among men.

In 2018 the Center launched this process, convinced that it was necessary to raise awareness among men about gender equality so that women’s efforts to break down discrimination could flourish. The project will continue until next year and is supported by two Spanish institutions: the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and Muguen Gainetik.

IPS visited different Quechua indigenous villages in Cuzco´s Andes highlands to talk to farmers who are working to shed gender prejudices and beliefs that, they acknowledge, have brought them unhappiness. Now, they are gradually taking significant steps with the support of the Center, which is working to generate a new view of masculinity in these communities.

“I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions,” said Ticuña, a participant in the initiative.

“Being head of household is hard, but it doesn’t give me the right to mistreat. I decided not to be like my father and to be a different kind of person in order to lead a happy life with her and our children,” he said, sitting at the entrance to his home in Canincunca.

Hilario Quispe, a farmer from the Secsencalla farming community in the town of Andahuaylillas, in the Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco, poses for a photo with his wife Hilaria Mena. For him it was a revelation to understand that the tasks she performs at home are work, and his commitment now is to share them. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Recognizing that women do work

Hilario Quispe, a 49-year-old farmer from the Secsencalla community in the town of Andahuaylillas, told IPS that in his area there is a great deal of machismo.

In his home, at 3100 meters above sea level, he said that he has been able to understand that women also work when they are at home.

“Actually, they do more than men, we have only one job, but they wash, cook, weave, take care of the children, look after the animals, go out to the fields…And I used to say: my wife doesn’t work,” he reflected.

Because of the distribution of tasks based on stereotyped gender roles, women spend more time than men on unremunerated care tasks in the household.

INEI reported in 2021 that in the different regions of the country, Peruvian women have a greater overall workload than men because the family responsibilities fall on their shoulders.

In rural areas, women work an average of 76 hours per week, 47 of which are in unpaid activities involving work in the home, both caring for their families and their crops.

In the case of men, their overall workload is 64 hours per week, most of which, 44 hours, are devoted to paid work.

Saúl Huamán is a family farmer in the rural community of Secsencalla. He recognizes that machismo is still a daily reality in Peru’s Andes highlands regions, but he strives to demonstrate day by day that he can be different and can achieve a life based on respect with his partner and their six-month-old son, Luas. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Breaking down stereotypes

Pozo, with the Flora Tristán Center, cited data from the official report that found that in the countryside, married women spend 17 hours a week in kitchen activities and men only four; in housekeeping seven and their partners three; and in childcare 11 and their husbands seven.

Quispe, who with his wife, Hilaria Mena, has four children between the ages of six and 17, said it was a revelation to understand that the different activities his wife performs at home are work.

“If she wasn’t there, everything would fall apart. But I am not going to wait for that to happen, I am committed to stop being machista. Those ideas that have been put in our minds as children do not help us have a good life,” he remarked.

The department of Cuzco is a Peruvian tourist area, where the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is the main attraction. It has more than 1.3 million inhabitants, of which 40 percent live in rural areas where agriculture is one of the main activities. Much of it is subsistence farming, which requires the participation of the different members of the family.

This is precisely the case of the Secsencalla farming community, where, although the new generations have made it to higher education, they are still tied to the land.

Rolando Tito sits next to his mother Faustina Ocsa. He believes that men can experience their masculinity differently, without machismo or violence, with equal relationships with women. The university student is also actively involved in agricultural work in his rural village of Secsencalla, in the Andean region of Cuzco, in southern Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Rolando Tito, 25, is in his third year of systems engineering at the National University of Cuzco, and helps his mother, Faustina Ocsa, 64, with the agricultural work.

“I want to better myself and continue helping my mother, she is a widow and although she was unable to study, she always encouraged me to do so. Times are no longer like hers when women didn’t have opportunities, but there are still men who think they should stay in the kitchen,” he told IPS, with his Quechua-speaking mother at his side.

Sitting by the entrance to the community’s bodega, which is often used as a center for meetings and gatherings, with the help of a translator, his mother recalled that she experienced a lot of violence, that fathers were not supportive of their daughters and that they mistreated their wives. And she said she hoped that her son would be a good man who would not follow in the footsteps of the men who came before him.

“I have learned about equality between men and women,” her son said. “For example, I am helping in the house, I am cooking and washing, that does not make me less of a man, and when I have a partner I will not have the idea that she has to serve me. Together we will work in the house and on the farm.”

Brian Junior Quispe, a 19-year-old from the community, who is about to begin studying veterinary medicine, said he now knows that “men should not take advantage of women, but rather support each other to get ahead together.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Saúl Huamán, 35, who has become a father for the first time with his baby Luas, six months old.

“Now I have to worry about three mouths to feed. I used to be a machine operator but now I only work in the fields and I have to work hard to make it profitable. With my wife Sonia we share the chores, while she cooks I watch the baby, and I am also learning to prepare meals,” he says as his smiling wife listens.

Pozo the attorney recognized that it is not easy to change cultural patterns so strongly rooted in the communities, but said that it is not impossible.

“It is like sowing the seed of equality, you have to water and nurture it, and then harvest the fruits, which is a better life for women and men,” she said.

Every other Tuesday, a working group of Mayan women meets to review the organization and progress of their food saving and production project in Uayma, in the state of Yucatán in southeastern Mexico. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Ko'ox Tani Foundation

By Emilio Godoy
UAYMA, Mexico , Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

Every other Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. sharp, a group of 26 Mexican women meet for an hour to discuss the progress of their work and immediate tasks. Anyone who arrives late must pay a fine of about 25 cents on the dollar.

The collective has organized in the municipality of Uayma (which means “Not here” in the Mayan language) to learn agroecological practices, as well as how to save money and produce food for family consumption and the sale of surpluses.

“We have to be responsible. With savings we can do a little more,” María Petul, a married Mayan indigenous mother of two and a member of the group “Lool beh” (“Flower of the road” in Mayan), told IPS in this municipality of just over 4,000 inhabitants, 1,470 kilometers southeast of Mexico City in the state of Yucatán, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The home garden “gives me enough to eat and sell, it helps me out,” said Petul as she walked through her small garden where she grows habanero peppers (Capsicum chinense, traditional in the area), radishes and tomatoes, surrounded by a few trees, including a banana tree whose fruit will ripen in a few weeks and some chickens that roam around the earthen courtyard.

The face of Norma Tzuc, who is also married with two daughters, lights up with enthusiasm when she talks about the project. “I am very happy. We now have an income. It’s exciting to be able to help my family. Other groups already have experience and tell us about what they’ve been doing,” Tzuc told IPS.

The two women and the rest of their companions, whose mother tongue is Mayan, participate in the project “Women saving to address climate change”, run by the non-governmental Ko’ox Tani Foundation (“Let’s Go Ahead”, in Mayan), dedicated to community development and social inclusion, based in Merida, the state capital.

This phase of the project is endowed with some 100,000 dollars from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the non-binding environmental arm of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), formed in 1994 by Canada, the United States and Mexico and replaced in 2020 by another trilateral agreement.

The initiative got off the ground in February and will last two years, with the aim of training some 250 people living in extreme poverty, mostly women, in six locations in the state of Yucatán.

The maximum savings for each woman in the group is about 12 dollars every two weeks and the minimum is 2.50 dollars, and they can withdraw the accumulated savings to invest in inputs or animals, or for emergencies, with the agreement of the group. Through the project, the women will receive seeds, agricultural inputs and poultry, so that they can install vegetable gardens and chicken coops on their land.

The women write down the quotas in a white notebook and deposit the savings in a gray box, kept in the house of the group’s president.

José Torre, project director of the Ko’ox Tani Foundation, explained that the main areas of entrepreneurship are: community development, food security, livelihoods and human development.

“What we have seen over time is that the savings meetings become a space for human development, in which they find support and solidarity from their peers, make friends and build trust,” he told IPS during a tour of the homes of some of the savings group participants in Uayma.

The basis for the new initiative in this locality is a similar program implemented between 2018 and 2021 in other Yucatecan municipalities, in which the organization worked with 1400 families.

María Petul, a Mayan indigenous woman, plants chili peppers, tomatoes, radishes and medicinal herbs in the vegetable garden in the courtyard of her home in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Unequal oasis

Yucatan, a region home to 2.28 million people, suffers from a high degree of social backwardness, with 34 percent of the population living in moderate poverty, 33 percent suffering unmet needs, 5.5 percent experiencing income vulnerability and almost seven percent living in extreme poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit this Latin American country in February 2020 exacerbated these conditions in a state that depends on agriculture, tourism and services, similar to the other two states that make up the Yucatán Peninsula: Campeche and Quintana Roo.

Inequality is also a huge problem in the state, although the Gini Index dropped from 0.51 in 2014 to 0.45, according to a 2018 government report, based on data from 2016 (the latest year available). The Gini coefficient, where 1 indicates the maximum inequality and 0 the greatest equality, is used to calculate income inequality.

The situation of indigenous women is worse, as they face marginalization, discrimination, violence, land dispossession and lack of access to public services.

More than one million indigenous people live in the state.

Women participating in a project funded by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation record their savings in a white notebook and deposit them in a gray box. Mayan indigenous woman Norma Tzuc belongs to a group taking part in the initiative in Uayma, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Climate crisis, yet another vulnerability

Itza Castañeda, director of equity at the non-governmental World Resources Institute (WRI), highlights the persistence of structural inequalities in the peninsula that exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis.

“In the three states there is greater inequality between men and women. This stands in the way of women’s participation and decision-making. Furthermore, the existing evidence shows that there are groups in conditions of greater vulnerability to climate impacts,” she told IPS from the city of Tepoztlán, near Mexico City.

She added that “climate change accentuates existing inequalities, but a differentiated impact assessment is lacking.”

Official data indicate that there are almost 17 million indigenous people in Mexico, representing 13 percent of the total population, of which six million are women.

Of indigenous households, almost a quarter are headed by women, while 65 percent of indigenous girls and women aged 12 and over perform unpaid work compared to 35 percent of indigenous men – a sign of the inequality in the system of domestic and care work.

To add to their hardships, the Yucatan region is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, devastating storms and rising sea levels. In June 2021, tropical storm Cristobal caused the flooding of Uayma, where three women’s groups are operating under the savings system.

For that reason, the project includes a risk management and hurricane early warning system.

The Mexican government is building a National Care System, but the involvement of indigenous women and the benefits for them are still unclear.

Petul looks excitedly at the crops planted on her land and dreams of a larger garden, with more plants and more chickens roaming around, and perhaps a pig to be fattened. She also thinks about the possibility of emulating women from previous groups who have set up small stores with their savings.

“They will lay eggs and we can eat them or sell them. With the savings we can also buy roosters, in the market chicks are expensive,” said Petul, brimming with hope, who in addition to taking care of her home and family sells vegetables.

Her neighbor Tzuc, who until now has been a homemaker, said that the women in her group have to take into account the effects of climate change. “It has been very hot, hotter than before, and there is drought. Fortunately, we have water, but we have to take care of it,” she said.

For his part, Torre underscored the results of the savings groups. The women “left extreme poverty behind. The pandemic hit hard, because there were families who had businesses and stopped selling. The organization gave them resilience,” he said.

In addition, a major achievement is that the households that have already completed the project continue to save, regularly attend meetings and have kept producing food.

Peruvian farmer Hilda Roca, 37, stands in her agro-ecological garden in Cusipata, a town located at more than 3,300 meters above sea level in the highlands of Cuzco, where she grows vegetables for her family and sells the surplus with the support of her adolescent daughter and son. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

“Pachamama (Mother Earth) is upset with all the damage we are doing to her,” says Hilda Roca, an indigenous Peruvian farmer from Cusipata, in the Andes highlands of the department of Cuzco, referring to climate change and the havoc it is wreaking on her life and her environment.

From her town, more than 3,300 meters above sea level, she told IPS that if women were in power equally with men, measures in favor of nature that would alleviate the climate chaos would have been approved long ago. “But we need to fight sexism so that we are not discriminated against and so our rights are respected,” said the Quechua-speaking farmer.

The link between climate change and gender is the focus of the United Nations’ celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day, Mar. 8, under the theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”.

The aim is to “make visible how the climate crisis is a problem that is closely related to inequality, and in particular to gender inequality, which is expressed in an unequal distribution of power, resources, wealth, work and time between women and men,” Ana Güezmes, director of the Gender Affairs Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

Latin America is highly vulnerable to the climate crisis despite the fact that it emits less than 10 percent of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

In addition, climate injustice has a female face in the region: lower-income population groups, where the proportion of women is higher, are more exposed to climate effects due to their limited access to opportunities, despite the fact that they are less responsible for emissions.

The extreme poverty rate in the region increased from 13.1 percent to 13.8 percent of the population – from 81 to 86 million people – between 2020 and 2021, according to data released by ECLAC in January. Women between 25 and 59 years of age are the most affected compared to their male counterparts. This situation is worse among indigenous and rural populations, who depend on nature for their livelihoods.

These aspects were highlighted at ECLAC’s 62nd Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women, held Jan. 26-27, whose declaration warns that women and girls affected by the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters face specific barriers to access to water and sanitation, health and education services, and food security.

And it is women who are mainly responsible for feeding their families, fetching water and firewood, and taking care of the vegetable garden and animals.

“That is why we maintain that the post-pandemic recovery must be transformative in terms of sustainability and equality,” Güezmes emphasized from ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

To this end, she said, this recovery “must untie the four structural knots of gender inequality that affect the region so much: socioeconomic inequality and poverty; the sexual division of labor and the unjust organization of caregiving; the concentration of power and patriarchal, discriminatory and violent cultural patterns; and the predominance of the culture of privilege.”

Luz Mery Panche, an indigenous leader of the Nasa people of Colombia. : Courtesy of Luz Mery Panche

Reconciling with Mother Earth

Luz Mery Panche, an indigenous leader of the Nasa people, discussed the need to incorporate a gender perspective into the climate crisis. She talked to IPS from San Vicente del Caguán, in the department of Caquetá, in the Amazon region of Colombia, a country facing violent attacks on defenders of land and the environment.

For her, more than sustainable, “it is about moving towards a sustainable future.”

“We need to change the conditions that have generated war and chaos in the country, which is due to the hijacking of political and economic power by an elite that has been in the decision-making spaces since the country emerged 200 years ago,” she said.

Panche is a member of the National Ethnic Peace Coordination committee (Cenpaz) and in that capacity is part of the special high-level body with ethnic peoples for the implementation of the peace agreement in her country. She is a human rights activist and a defender of the Amazon rainforest.

She argued that to achieve a sustainable future “we must reconcile with Mother Earth and move towards the happy, joyful way of life that we deserve as human beings.”

This, she said, starts by changing the economic model violently imposed on many areas without taking into account the use of the soil, its capacities and benefits; by changing concepts of economy and the educational model; and by organizing local economies and focusing on a future of respect, solidarity and fraternity.

Panche said that in order to move towards this model, women “must have informed participation regarding the effects of climate change.

“Although we prefer to call Mother Earth’s fever ‘global warming’. And it is up to us to remember to make decisions that put us back on the ancestral path of harmony and balance, what we call returning to the origin, to the womb, to improve coexistence and the sense of humanity,” she said.

Uruguayan ecofeminist Lilian Celiberti carries a banner reading “Our body, our territory” in the streets of Tarapoto, a city in the central Peruvian jungle, during an edition of the Pan-Amazon Social Forum. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Changing times: another kind of coexistence with nature and equality

Lilian Celiberti, Uruguayan ecofeminist and founder of the non-governmental Cotidiano Mujer and Colectivo Dafnias, told IPS from Montevideo that governments have the tools to work on gender equality today in order to have a sustainable future tomorrow, as this year’s Mar. 8 slogan states.

But against this, she said, there are economic interests at play that maintain a development proposal based on growth and extreme exploitation of nature.

She called for boosting local economies and agroecology among other community alternatives in the Latin American region that run counter to the dominant government approach.

“But I believe that we are at a very complex crossroads and that only social participation will be able to find paths of multiple, diverse participation and collective sustainability that incorporate care policies and awareness of the eco-dependence of human society,” she said.

Celiberti said “we are on a planet of finite resources and we have to generate a new relationship with nature, but I see that governments are far from this kind of thinking.”

ECLAC’s Güezmes emphasized that social movements, especially those led by young indigenous and non-indigenous women in the region, have exposed the multiple asymmetries and inequalities that exist.

Ana Güezmes is director of the Gender Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: ECLAC

“We have an intergenerational debt, where young women have put at the center of the debate the unsustainability of the current development style that has direct impacts on our future at a global level and direct impacts on their livelihoods, territories and communities,” said Güezmes, who is from Spain and has worked for years within the United Nations in several Latin American countries.

She recognized the contribution of feminist movements that focus on a redistribution of power, resources and time to move towards an egalitarian model that includes the reduction of violence.

And she warned that from a climate perspective, the window of opportunity for action is closing, so we must act quickly, creating synergies between gender equality and climate change responses.

Güezmes said that “we are looking at a change of era” with global challenges that require a profound transformation that recognizes how the economy, society and the environment are interrelated. “To leave no one behind and no woman out, we must advance synergistically among these three dimensions of development: economic, social and environmental,” she remarked.

The expert cited gender equality as a central element of sustainable development because women need to be at the center of the responses. To this end, ECLAC plans to promote affirmative actions that bolster comprehensive care systems, decent work and the full and effective participation of women in strategic sectors of the economy.

She also raised the need to build “a renewed global pact” to strengthen multilateralism and achieve greater solidarity with middle-income countries on issues central to inclusive growth, sustainable development and gender equality.

“We have reiterated the urgent need to advance new political, social and fiscal pacts focused on structural change for equality,” Güezmes stressed.

She stated that in this perspective, the participation of women in all their diversity in decision-making processes is very important, particularly with regard to climate change.

To this end, she remarked, it is necessary to monitor their degree of intervention at the local, national and international levels – where asymmetry persists – and to provide women’s organizations, especially grassroots ones, with the necessary resources to become involved in such spaces.

“It involves strengthening financial flows so that they reach women who are at the forefront of responses to climate change and who are familiar with the situation in their communities, and boosting their capacities so that women from indigenous, native and Afro-descendant peoples participate in decision-making spaces related to the environment to promote the exchange of their ancestral knowledge on adaptation and mitigation measures,” she said.

Güezmes highlighted the contribution of women environmental activists and defenders to democracy, peace and sustainable development. It is necessary to “recognize their contribution to the protection of biodiversity and to development, despite doing so in conditions of fragility and exploitation and having less access to land, productive resources and their control,” she said.

For her part, Roca, who like other local women in the Peruvian Andes highlands practices agroecology to adapt to climate change and reconcile with Pachamama, calls for their voices to be heard.

“We have ideas and proposals and they need to be taken into account to improve the climate and our lives,” the indigenous farmer said.

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"Women Leaders at COP 21 in Paris Raise the Banner for Gender Awareness in Any Climate Deal." Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
PARIS, France , Dec 8 2015 (IPS)

53-year old Aleta Baun of Indonesia’s West Timor province is a proud climate warrior. From 1995 to 2005 she successfully led a citizens’ movement to shut down 4 large marble mining companies that polluted and damaged the ecosystem of a mountain her community considered sacred. After their closure in 2006, she became a conservationist and restored 15 hectares of degraded mountain land, reviving dozens of dried springs and resettling 6,000 people who were displaced by the mining.

On Monday, on the eve of the Gender Day at the ongoing UN Climate Change Summit (COP21) in Paris, Baun who is better known as or ‘Mama Aleta’ in West Timor, had a strong message for the negotiators: for a climate deal to be effective on the ground, it also had to be gender equal and recognize women’s climate leadership.

Running a landscape restoration project is costly. Baun has so far spent about 50,000 dollars pooled by community members and local NGOs. The project needs much more for completion. But this is a challenge as official funding has not come forth. This dismays Baun who feels that although women were setting great examples of climate leadership, it is not officially recognized by governments and international policy makers.

For example, she said, there was no official communication between the Indonesian delegation of negotiators at the COP and grassroots women climate activists like her. “We don’t know who the negotiators are and we don’t know what they are negotiating. We feel that we, the indigenous women, are alone in this fight against climate change,” she said.

Baun’s dismay and disappointment was shared by several other women leaders who expressed their thoughts on the draft climate policy at the COP. The draft, tabled at the end of the first week for formal negotiations, was “far from ideal,” said a woman leader because it had “too many brackets that made the text too complicated.”

“The purpose of the many sections is not clear. Also, some crucial components are missing. For example, gender equality is there, but indigenous people are not. One very important thing is inter-generational equity. For us, this is a core issue and it’s really not clear,” said Sabina Bok of Women in Europe for a Common Future.

Farah Kabir, head of ActionAid in Bangladesh agreed as her country has been hit by extreme weather events like flooding and sea disasters that have affected millions of women from poor communities. “The draft policy has lack of clarity on several of these points,” she said.

Presently, the key demands of most women leaders at the COP21 included commitment by all governments to keep global warming under 1.5 Celsius to prevent catastrophic climate change, including in all climate actions the recognition of human rights, gender equality, rights of indigenous peoples and intergenerational equity and provide new, additional and predictable gender-responsive public financing.

But, the negotiators seemed divided on the global warming target, which dismayed Kabir. “It is not clear whether the deal will stop global warming at 1.5 degree or at 2 degrees, the later will be catastrophic for women as that will mean more disasters and more suffering for women who are already the most vulnerable people.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) estimated that women comprise one of the most climate vulnerable populations. As the impact of climate change on women grows bigger, the vulnerability of women across the world is also growing and there is a sheer need for allowing women greater access to renewable technologies, said many. However, these technologies also had to be safe and gender responsive, so that they responded to both the daily and different needs and priorities of women. Alongside, investment is the need to train women in how to use these technologies.

Investments are also needed to facilitate women’s leadership in both mitigation and adaptation measures, said Neema Namadamu, a women leader from northern DRC. “In Congo, women are busy planting trees to help re-grow our rain forests. First, we need assured investments into initiatives like this that is a direct flight against climate change. The hair-splitting negotiations can continue after that,” said Namadamu, founder of Mama Shuja, a civil society organization that trained grassroots Congolese women in climate action and fighting gender violence using digital media tools.

However, to ensure women’s greater access to climate finance, renewable technologies and adaptation capacity, the climate draft needed to have a sharper gender focus, felt Mary Robinson, former Prime Minister of Ireland and one of the greatest women climate leaders.

“There will be a climate deal in Paris. It will not be a ‘great’ deal, but a fairly ambitious one. But its extremely important to have a climate agreement that is ambitious, fair and also gender-fair. We definitely need an agreement that will exhilarate more women’s leadership. If we had more women’s leadership, we would have been where we are now,” Robinson said.

(End)

The five Chilean women, before heading to the Barefoot College in India. Credit: Courtesy of National Women’s Service

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 13 2013 (IPS)

Three indigenous communities from the Chilean highlands have just received solar panels, which will be set up and maintained by unlikely solar engineers: five native women who travelled halfway around the world to India and overcame language and other barriers to bring photovoltaic energy to their villages.

Luisa and Liliana Terán are cousins from Caspana, an Atacameña indigenous community; Elena Achú and Elvira Urrelo are from the Quechua village of Ollagüe; and Nicolasa Yufla is an Aymara Indian from Toconce. The three villages, with a combined population of 1,000, are in the Atacama desert.

Water is scarce and there is no electricity in their villages, located more than 3,000 metres above sea level in the Chilean altiplano, near the Bolivian border.

“We get power from a generator for just two and a half hours late in the evening,” Luisa Terán, an artisan, told IPS.

Last year, the five women travelled to the village of Tilonia in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, which is home to the Barefoot College.

The College has been working since 1972 to improve the lives of the rural poor by addressing basic needs for water, electricity, housing, health, education and income. It is now training poor, rural women from Africa, Asia and Latin America as solar engineers, to bring solar lighting to remote inaccessible villages off the energy grid.

For six months, the five Chilean villagers received hands-on training at the College in fabricating, installing and maintaining solar lighting systems.

“An ad reached us that said they were looking for women between the ages of 35 and 40 to receive training in India. I was interested from the start, but when they told me it would be for six months, I was hesitant, because that was a long time to be so far away from the family,” Terán said.

Encouraged by her sister, who took care of her two daughters, and her mother, she decided to make the journey. But she left the village without telling anyone else where she was going.

Now that the solar panels have arrived, she’s afraid that she has forgotten what she learned, after six months without being able to apply her knowledge.

“I knew what I was there for, but it still took me three months to adapt, mainly to the food and the incredible heat,” she said.

The five women left on Mar. 15, 2012, as part of an initiative organised by the Barefoot College, Chile’s National Women’s Service (SERNAM), the Regional Secretariat of the Energy Ministry, and the Italian company Enel Green Power, which donated the equipment.

The three solar kits that arrived in the villages this month each include a 12-volt panel, a 12-volt battery bank, a 4-Amp LED light, and an 8-Amp charge controller.

So far, 700 women from 49 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have taken the course to become “barefoot solar engineers”.

In that capacity, they are responsible for installing, repairing and providing maintenance for solar lighting units in the households of their villages, for a minimum of five years. They are also expected to set up a rural electronic workshop to store the necessary components, which functions as a mini-electric plant with a potential of 320 watts per hour.

Thanks to this and other Barefoot solar initiatives, 450,000 people in remote villages in different regions now have light, and the carbon emissions caused by burning fuel and firewood have been reduced by 13 metric tonnes a day.

In Latin America, the aim is to bring light to 1,000 homes.

In Chile, “it is very important for communities to learn about our potential for the development of renewable energies, and solar energy projects in particular,” Carlos Arenas, the regional energy ministry secretary for the Macro Zona Norte in northern Chile, told IPS.

The northern region has vast potential, especially the Atacama desert, which has one of the highest solar radiation levels worldwide, according to studies by the University of Chile: between 7 and 7.5 kwh per square metre.

In fact, solar panels covering an area of 400 square km could fully meet the country’s energy needs, experts say.

But most of the demand in the north comes from the mining industry, which absorbs 90 percent of the energy produced, while the remaining 10 percent goes towards household, commercial and public use.

“Our energy system is still being developed, and in many villages electricity comes from generators powered by fossil fuels such as diesel,” said Arenas. “But in some cases we are complementing these supplies with renewable sources, particularly wind and solar.”

For that reason, “we supported this initiative…an enriching experience for the people who live in such remote villages and who lack a steady energy supply, and in some cases pay a high cost for energy,” he added.

When the five Chilean women reached India, they found out that the course was in English. It was difficult for them to understand the instructors, Terán said, but in the end they managed to communicate through signs, gestures and drawings.

They also found themselves in a place radically different from their villages. “There were many bugs, lizards and other animals. We slept on mats on hard wooden beds. And the poverty there was terrible,” she said.

In the group, there were also five indigenous women from Peru “who were sad, and cried a lot,” she said. But now, those Peruvian mothers and grandmothers have brought solar lighting to the households in the village of Japopunco, 4,800 metres above sea level, Terán added.

“These are women with skills, but they live in remote places, which means it was an incredible personal experience for them,” Paola Diez, the director of the SERNAM department of women and work, told IPS.

Her office and Chile’s national indigenous development agency, CONADI, are implementing a plan to train native women around the country in sustainable enterprises, helping to pull them out of a subsistence economy.

The initiative is aimed at boosting women’s insertion in the labour market in Chile, where 47.7 percent of women work, and the government wants to bump that up to 50 percent.

Terán is ready to put her newfound knowledge to use in Caspana. “The idea is to start by bringing light to the houses, and maybe later we could install a refrigerator, which everyone wants,” she said.

“We also want to share our training, but we need help to start making and selling solar lamps. And people want us to teach them, so that the women themselves will know how to install solar lighting in their homes,” she added.

Trifonia Tordoya, two of her daughters, and a granddaughter during their last programme on women’s politics and rights. Credit: Jenny Cartagena/IPS

By Jenny Cartagena Torrico
CLIZA, Bolivia , Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

“Atispa mana atispa ñawpajman rinanchis tiyan” (“Power without power, we have to keep moving forward”) in the Quechua language, Ruth Rojas told her listeners at the end of a series of radio programmes on political culture, broadcast to indigenous women in Bolivia.

From the small booth in the Ecológica community radio station in the town of Cliza, located in one of the highland valleys in the central department (region) of Cochabamba, an intergenerational group of four women and girls sparked debate and reflection on topics linked to politics and women’s and indigenous rights.

They discussed the exercise of democracy, social control, gender equality, legal questions and other issues, based on their experience as indigenous women in South America’s poorest country.

Other community radio stations are involved in similar work empowering people in the highland valleys of this mainly agricultural region on the eastern side of the Andes mountains.

Throughout the department of Cochabamba, women who have never taken a course in radio broadcasting are using the airwaves to inform, empower and raise awareness, and to work for change in their communities.

They know from experience that radio is the best way to reach women in their homes in remote rural villages, where television is an inconceivable luxury due to the lack of electricity, and newspapers are impossible to get because of the distances involved.

In Bolivia there is no official list of community radio stations or stations run by trade unions or peasant associations, because most of them have a very limited range and operate without a licence. But the estimate is that there are at least 2,000 community stations.

Their impact in rural areas and poor neighbourhoods surrounding towns and cities is indisputable, thanks to their programming in Quechua, Aymara or Guaraní, the three most widely spoken native languages in Bolivia, where more than 60 percent of the population of 10.6 million belong to one of 36 different indigenous groups.

In some of the areas, there are bilingual or even trilingual programmes.

The biggest network of community stations is that of Educación Radiofónica de Bolivia (Erbol), with ties to the Catholic Church, whose chief focus is improving social conditions through grassroots communication.

For 21 Sundays in a row, 63-year-old Trifonia Tordoya led a two-hour programme broadcast live in Quechua along with her daughters Ruth, 25, and Tania, 30, both of whom are schoolteachers, and her 13-year-old granddaughter Madeleine Pereira.

The name of the programme was itself a declaration of intentions: “Wakichikuy wasiyuj allin kawsayta tarinapaj” (“Get ready to live well”, in Quechua).

In the Ecológica radio station, Tordoya told IPS in Quechua that the programme, which had just ended, was the result of her concern about the participation of women in productive activities and decision-making in her village.

She and other local women leaders took part in the programme on “Political culture and cultural diversity: Empowering citizens in Quechua-speaking populations of Peru and Bolivia”, carried out in this country by the non-governmental organisation Ciudadanía: Comunidad de Estudios Sociales y Acción Pública (Citizenship: Community of Social Studies and Public Action).

The aim of the programme is to foster an intercultural political dialogue and strengthen democratic values among women, while tapping into the knowledge of indigenous women.

For three years, women leaders of 20 rural community organisations from Quechua-speaking areas in the highlands valleys of Cochabamba worked to build their own definitions and concepts of key rights and issues, drawing on their own life experiences.

In the end, they chose 19 elements, including democracy, legitimacy, autonomy, rights, gender violence, exclusion, discrimination, transparency, corruption and justice, the coordinator of the programme, Olivia Román, told IPS.

“We didn’t know what exclusion was,” Tordoya said. “We asked each other what was the meaning of that word, which doesn’t exist in Quechua. Later, all together, we came up with a definition for that concept.”

She attended the workshops with her granddaughter Madeleine, who at the time was 10 years old. Madeleine was there to take notes for her, because she reads and writes with difficulty, having only gone to school through fifth grade.

After Tordoya was abandoned by her husband, she raised her six children on her own, farming a small plot of land.

None of the definitions were easy. “We had heard these words in Spanish, but we didn’t know exactly what they meant. So we discussed and debated, and defined them in Quechua,” said Norah Claros, another participant in the workshops.

They decided to call gender “qhari-warmi” (man-woman), because a key principle in the Quechua culture is the complementarity and parity of opposites. And their definition of gender is: “Men and women have the same rights, capacities and way of life, choosing and being chosen, helping each other in work and in life.”

The next step was to get the word out to other women, and help them incorporate these definitions and concepts in their daily lives, because the participants reached the conclusion that unless women were aware of their meanings, the rights would be neither demanded nor practiced.

Some of the participants suggested producing radio programmes, and others suggested workshops, or short radio spots, or radio plays. Tordoya’s idea for a radio programme prospered with the support of Ciudadanía: Comunidad de Estudios Sociales y Acción Pública, and she decided to get her daughters and her oldest granddaughter involved.

The four women from Villa El Carmen, a rural community outside the town of Cliza, decided to discuss one concept each Sunday, in 15 shows. But the enthusiasm of their listeners prompted them to produce six more shows.

They told IPS that they achieved their objective: reaching the homes in the rural communities around Cliza, and urging the local authorities to guarantee the rights of women and the exercise of democracy.

“The audience grew as the programme went on, and the public participated a great deal by calling in over the telephone,” the owner and director of the radio station, Roger Araoz, told IPS. “So we expanded it to two hours and produced another set of episodes.”

“Listeners have been calling in and asking the women to continue, because they did such a good job explaining the rights of women, and expressing constructive criticism of the authorities,” he said.

The Ecológica station belongs to the Erbol network, and reaches the entire rural area of the highland valley around Cliza, the town where it is located, 37 km from the capital of Cochabamba.

“Señora Trifonia is well-known and respected,” said Araoz. “She has participated in other programmes, and she would come to the station to discuss problems facing the community. So when the opportunity for the programme came up, we did not hesitate to give her air time.”

Her daughters Tania and Ruth agree that the general view, which not only prevails in their community, is that women don’t know how to think for themselves and should not participate in politics or be involved in decision-making.

For that reason, they said, many people were surprised to hear three women and a young girl speaking so articulately about these issues on the radio.

Both of them said they were grateful that their mother got them involved in the programme, because it helped them learn about their rights and how to exercise them, which they weren’t that clear about before despite the fact that they are teachers.

And more importantly, they said, the programme helped many Quechua women learn that they have rights, and demand that they be respected in their homes, their communities, and society in general.

Madeleine Pereira said she tried to put everything she learned in the workshops and on the programme “in practice in school, and I teach my schoolmates that they have rights.”

Dongria Kondh tribal girls. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
RAYAGADA, India , Sep 18 2012 (IPS)

The deafening din of the lunch gong is sweet music to the 200-odd tribal girls rushing down the stairway, clutching stainless steel plates and tumblers.

Sikhsya Niketan (House of Education) in Chattikona administrative block of Rayagada district is a residential school meant exclusively for girls of the Dongria Kondh tribe in eastern Odisha state. The school is part of the federal government’s intensified efforts to take universal education to extremely marginalised groups in India.

Odisha’s 62 tribal communities make up 22 percent of the total population and account for 50 percent of people living below the poverty line in the state. They are partly responsible for Odisha’s low human development indicators as compared to other Indian states.

The Dongria Kondhs, who number about 8,000, live in 120 villages located at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the sea level on the Niyamgiri hill plateau, coveted by mining companies for its valuable mineral deposits.

Till date, only two Dongria Kondh girls have managed to complete school. The first, Kasturi Melaka, did so as recently as in 2010.

Literacy among the Dongria Kondh is less than 10 percent, with female literacy at just three percent. This is when the national tribal literacy stands at 47 percent and Odisha’s general literacy close to the national level of 74 percent.

Rina Wadaka, 14, one of the 28 girls from Khambesi village is in class five. Inspired by Kasturi Melaka, she wants to be a teacher, and that is considered progress because Dongria Kondh girls are rarely interested in jobs and careers.

This exclusive primary school, which started in 2008 with 123 students, has grown to have 225 girls aged 6 – 16 years. “Every year, around 20 girls take admission, while 15 drop out,” Simadri Trinath Row, special officer with the Dongria Kondh Development Authority (DKDA), which manages the school, tells IPS.

Primary school dropout rates in Odisha’s tribal communities is 6.4 percent – more than twice the state dropout rate of 2.8 percent,  according to the government’s ‘Annual Plan 2011-12’.

One problem is language. Dongria Kondh speak the Kuvi language which is of Dravidian origin and unrelated to Oriya, the state’s official language which is derived from Sanskrit.

“Lessons are taught in the similar Kondh dialect, which many Dongria students cannot follow. Dongria girls with better language skills help translate the lessons into Kuvi,” Jayanti Sabar, a teacher at the school, told IPS.

Though government regulations specify that Kuvi-speaking Dongria Kondh teachers be hired, “it is difficult to find a qualified one,” says Row.

According to Sabar, the students score a poor 30 – 40 percent marks in examinations, but teachers try to be lenient while marking answer sheets. Last year, 16 girls passed class five with support from two male tutors who come in to support the female staff.

Getting Dongria Kondh girls to join the school is not easy. DKDA employs multi-purpose workers (MPW) as motivators. “Weekly markets, when the Dongria Kondh people descend to buy and sell farm products, are the best time to catch them,” says Gola Sikkaka, an MPW in Khambesi village.

The community relies on witch doctors and knows little about modern medicine. “I tell parents that their daughters will know about medicines to cure brain malaria and tuberculosis (the witch doctor’s remedies don’t work for these) if they go to school,” Sikkaka tells IPS.

The sex ratio among Dongria Kondhs is 1,352 females per 1,000 males against the state average of 978 females for 1000 males. Girls are highly valued in economic terms, as they gather forest products and help with household chores, and command a bride price on marriage.

Given such tangible benefits sending a girl to school becomes irrelevant. “Parents often ask MPWs questions such as who will do the farming? What if, after being schooled,  they decide to marry outside the tribe?” Suryanarayan Patra of Khajuri village an MPW, told IPS.

“Dongria Kondh culture and tradition cannot go parallel with development objectives,” Row told IPS. “The older girls who have been in the school for some years now see their traditional costume as fancy dress,” he added.

“On the other hand, when they return to their hilltop homes during festivals, sowing and harvest periods, they are reluctant to come back to the school. Accustomed to roaming free, they find it suffocating to stay within the four walls of a classroom,” says teacher Srimati Nundruka.

Female teachers residing in the school must stay constantly alert to stop the girls from running away. “Sometimes, younger girls get homesick and try to quietly slip away home, but we get them back,” Nundruka tells IPS.

“We are caught in a cleft stick,” says Row. “The school cannot deny the girls home trips because they might otherwise leave school altogether – yet we don’t want them to lose lessons by staying away from classes for too long.”

The government is doing its bit to keep Dongria Kondh girls in school. With grants-in-aid of three million rupees (54,000 dollars) yearly, they are given two dollars as monthly stipend for regular classroom attendance, while most other costs including medical expenses and school uniforms are borne by the government.

Government schemes to encourage tribal girls to attend school include providing them with bicycles to commute and fixed bank deposits of 54 dollars that become accessible on entering secondary school.

The efforts are yielding results. According to the annual Odisha Economic Survey 2010-11, the dropout rate at the primary school level for tribal girls has steadily declined from 66 percent in 2000 to six percent in 2010.

India’s planners are keen to attain the United Nations Millennium Development Goal- two that seeks to ensure that children everywhere are able to complete a full course of primary education by 2015.

India’s net enrolment ratio in primary education has already crossed the 95 percent mark making the 2015 goal within reach. Getting Dongria girls into classrooms is among last mile efforts.

A Quechua leader at a meeting on rural women in Bolivia. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS.

By Jenny Cartagena Torrico
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

A growing number of Bolivia’s indigenous women are participating in politics, ready to break the barriers of gender and ethnicity.

Though spread across great distances and representing various realities,  many of these women share a similar history. Most started out leading civil society organisations and then went on to run for local public office, often overcoming resistance within their own families.

“The major obstacles (to accessing a government position) are domestic duties and economic issues,” Lucinda Villca, a councilwoman from Santiago de Andamarca, a municipality in the western district of Oruro, told IPS.

Villca is one of four councilwomen who shared their experiences with IPS during a national meeting of women leaders from rural local governments held recently in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

“We go out on the fields early in the morning to help our husbands, tending the crops or taking the cattle out to pasture. We come home at night and we have to fix supper and make some time to weave so we can earn extra money for the house,” Villca explains.

“With these obligations, there’s no time for anything else,” said this Aymara mother of nine who used to be one of the native leaders of her quinoa and llama farming ayllu (community).

“I now have a greater responsibility. As a member of the indigenous council my mission was to work for my community. In this new post I have to work for the future of my municipality,” she explained, describing an experience she shares with other indigenous leaders elected to local governments.

“I used to be a housewife. I’m a Guarani, and like many women in the countryside, I have no regular job. I was working for a women’s organisation when I was asked to run for office,” Marina Cuñaendi, a 55-year-old councilwoman from Urubichá, said.

Urubichá is one of Bolivia’s poorest areas, despite being located in Santa Cruz, the country’s most prosperous district. According to the last census, 85.5 percent of its 6,000 inhabitants – mostly Guarani people – live in extreme poverty.

Before being nominated in 2010, Cuñaendi never thought of holding public office. She planted rice and corn and, in her “free time,” weaved to support her seven children, along with her husband.

In Urubichá, she said, women have no time to organise and are marginalised from political life. She admitted that she had to consult her husband and children, who were “happy” to support her and encouraged her.

In San Julián, another municipality of Santa Cruz, Yolanda Cuellar, a Guarani, had to overcome a third barrier, that of being “too young,” in the eyes of her community to hold a municipal position.

She turned 21 a month after being elected councilwoman in April 2010, on the ticket of Without Fear Movement, the opposing the party of Movement to Socialism, which governs the municipality and the country.

“They didn’t trust me because I was young, and a woman to boot. In our municipality, sexism is very strong. Now there are four of us women in the council,” this accountant and mother of two said.

Cuellar has her husband’s support. “He understands me and tells me not to quit because people voted for me; he tells me to fight for what I want and not give up just because somebody doesn’t want me there,” she said.

But these women’s lack of political experience and the constant discrimination by male peers have not made the work in the council easier. Being a councilwoman is also very different from being an indigenous leader.

“There’s a lot of bureaucracy which slows down any project, but the worst is the lack of support. Our ideas are ignored and we feel alone. It’s like nobody is interested in doing anything for young people and women,” Cuellar said.

San Julián’s economy is also primarily agricultural, and, because one of the country’s leading highways runs through it, it is complemented with commerce and services activities.

However, 57.9 percent of its more than 70,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

Under the 2009 constitution and other applicable laws, women must occupy at least 50 percent of all elected government positions. To ensure that percentage, candidate lists must be drawn up by alternating between women and men.

At present, 43 percent of the mayors and councilpersons in Bolivia’s 327 local governments are women, and 96 percent of them are holding public office for the first time.

Lidia Alejandro, a 50-year-old Aymara councilwoman from Llallagua, a municipality in the mining district of Potosí, in western Bolivia, also identified inexperience as a factor that puts them at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts.

“I became a councilwoman without knowing a thing about how municipal affairs are run. I’m a teacher, but holding office is very different. I couldn’t even speak up at a meeting or give statements to the press,” Alejandro said.

“I had to learn as I went along,” she admitted. Training workshops also helped her overcome this limitation.

But training takes time, she said, and that causes problems with husbands as they reproach women leaders for neglecting their homes.

Alejandro is troubled at the failure to attain the goal of bringing the women of her municipality out of poverty due to a lack of specialists who can design projects to meet their needs.

Bolivian legislation requires that part of the annual budget at every government level be allocated to spending on projects that target the needs of women and other vulnerable groups. But most of these budget allocations are not spent and the funds are either returned or transferred to other areas.

“Women have come to us to complain. ‘How is it that we have four councilwomen and they’re not doing anything for us?’ they say. We’ve tried to join forces, but the truth is that we all have our political loyalties,” Cuellar said.

Bolivia has seen great progress in terms of women’s participation in politics, furthered by the Constitution and a number of different laws, Natasha Loayza, a specialist with the U.N. Women’s office in Bolivia, told IPS.

“The challenge is to translate this legislation into action, into real and concrete participation,” she said.

The U.N. Women’s office’s ‘Semilla’ (seed) programme, a three-year pilot initiative now in its final year, helps women in rural districts  exercise their economic and political rights.

Loayza said that one of the programme’s goals was to motivate more women to participate in politics by showing them the meaningful involvement of women who are already participating.

“Women can now access (public office), but it’s very hard. It’s a colossal task. The women who have achieved positions of responsibility in public bodies can bear witness to the problems they face every day to make their presence felt, and not just occupy decision-making positions on paper,” Loayza said.

“We’re still at a point where women have to work hard to really participate,” she concluded.

The programme is being implemented by the ministry of equal opportunities in 18 rural districts and so far it has benefited 4,000 women, with nine million dollars in financing from the United Nations.