Feminicide and Global Accumulation

Frontline Struggles to Resist the Violence of Patriarchy and Capitalism

Susana Draper, Liz Mason-Deese, Silvia Federici

• Publisher: Common Notions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781942173540
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Femicide and Global Accumulation brings us to the frontlines of an international movement of Black, Indigenous, popular, and mestiza women’s organizations fighting against violence—interpersonal, state sanctioned, and economic—that is both endemic to the global economy and the contemporary devalued status of racialized women, trans, and gender non-conforming communties in the Global South.

These struggles against racism, capitalism, and patriarchy show how crucially linked the land, water, and other resource extraction projects that criss-cross the planet are to devaluing labor and nature and how central Black and Indigneous women and trans leadership is to its resistance.

The book is based on the first ever International Forum on Feminicide among ethnicized and racialized groups—which brought together activists and researchers from Colombia, Guatemala, Italy, Brazil, Iran, Guinea Bissau, Bolivia, Canada, the U.S., Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, among other countries in the world to represent different social movements and share concrete stories, memories, experiences and knowledge of their struggles against racism, capitalism and patriarchy.

Femicide and Global Accumulation reflects, in a collective fabric, the communitarian and enraged struggles of women, trans, and gender non-conforming communties who commit themslves to the transformation of their communities by directly challenging the murder and assassination of women and violence in all its forms.

Part 1

Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Feminicide

The interventions in Part 1 emphasize how violence against Black women is expressed at the cognitive level through persistent acts of delegitimization and devaluation. Faced with this, the forum is proposed as a necessary space for sharing and reclaiming voices, popular knowledges, and struggles.

To inaugurate the forum, the women of the Asociación Casa Cultural el Chontaduro lead a memorial ceremony, evoking their ancestors and paying homage to their maroon heritage as well as the murdered and missing relatives and acquaintances of all present. Participants sing together and create a mandala to mourn the dead and share their energy with the living. Everyone is invited to place the names and stories of their lost loved ones on the mandala, a spiritual act that unites the dead and the living, transforming the solitude of grief into a collective struggle to end violence against women. The radical possibility of transforming death into life is posed by Vicenta Moreno as an act of “collective construction” crucial for rebuilding communities constantly faced with denigration and silencing, pain and death.

Danelly Estupiñán Valencia’s intervention explores the multiple forces destroying the possibility of community and a good life in Buenaventura: megaprojects and the dispossession of territories; paramilitary operations that, since 1998, have been generating violent deaths and disappearances; the declaration of Buenaventura as the capital of the Pacific Alliance in 2014; and the state’s denial of the existence of an urban Black community to negate its legal protections. All these forces destroy the rich ancestral history of communal coexistence for diverse ethnic, Afrodescendant, and Indigenous groups. Estupiñán Valencia proposes it is necessary to name this violence in terms of the imposition of a model of capitalist development that makes the survival of Black and Indigenous communities impossible and to recognize the forms of life that have long sustained the Black community through what she terms “re-existence,” allowing them to exist otherwise through the affirmation of their own cultural, economic, and territorial forms.

Part 1 ends with “Causes of Violence against Women and the Relationship between the Murder of Women and Global Accumulation,” in which scholar-activists from a range of places delve into the question of how to understand the relation between the increasing violence against women and ongoing processes of global accumulation in Buenaventura. Violences against women in the region, especially ethnic and racialized women, are posed in relation to a longer history of multiple dispossessions: colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism “all together,” as Aura Cumes states. The participants discuss the need to analyze and address the multiplicity and complexity of the systems that sustain violence against Indigenous and Black women, as unilateral solutions have only served to perpetuate and deepen those systems of oppression.

Intervention 1

Evoking Our Ancestors:

Homage to Our Maroon Heritage

Asociación Casa Cultural el Chontaduro

The International Forum on Feminicides in Ethnic-Racialized Groups began with an emotional event led by women from the Asociación Casa Cultural el Chontaduro [Chontaduro Cultural House Association]. It was a ceremony to remember the names of the murdered women, relatives, and acquaintances of those of us who were present. It was an event that allowed us to move from collective pain toward collective reflection. This helped us delve into the reasons behind the murder of women worldwide and allowed us to feel that we are not alone; neither in our mourning nor in finding responses, through resistance and insurgence, to the violence that oppresses women, especially for those of us who belong to ethnic and racialized groups.

Our event started with a hymn to the Virgin Mary sung collectively by the women of Chontaduro, who assembled around a mandala. This hymn demonstrates how the Black world, led by Black women, has repurposed Catholic religiosity to use it in their reconstruction as a people, after being kidnapped from Africa and during the period of slavery in the Americas:

Intercessor Mary, of the suffering women,

tell your son Jesus Christ that we are very sad,

but that we will never be defeated

Holy Virgin Mary strengthen us,

Lady of Sorrows, may God save you

We will keep going, without stopping a single day,

reclaiming respect for our lives

What sadness, what misery,

they are killing the women of the land

Holy Virgin Mary strengthen us,

painful mother, may God save you

In these strange abuses, Black women suffer the most,

because no one speaks for them,

no one defends them,

as if they did not provide good fruit to the Earth

Holy Virgin Mary, strengthen us,

Mother of Sorrows, may God save you

Women of Buenaventura and the whole universe,

let’s unite our talent,

demanding that the governments value our lives

That they stop raping and killing us,

like that, in cold blood.

Why do they feel so much hatred toward those who generate life?

Holy Virgin Mary, strengthen us,

Mother of Sorrows, may God save you

Holy Virgin Mary, strengthen us,

Mother of Sorrows, may God save you.

—Juanía Hurtado

What does the mandala mean in this context? Iris Moreno, from Chontaduro, explained to the group:

We wanted to give you that light, that other voice of hope, and that’s why we made this mandala that represents the energy containing all of us. It is like energy from the universe that tells us those who have passed are still here with us, transforming, conspiring. Also, because we know that for women and Black culture, the dead do not disappear; they stay with us. They stay here transforming, caring, doing those other things that one does not think are there; they are those hands, those dreams, that continue to be forged with all of us. Thus, this mandala is offered for all the women who are no longer here, but also for all of us who keep walking, keep transforming, fighting, and seeing that another way of living is possible. We keep looking at how we think about ourselves, that we are not that mala yerba that people think we are, we are those people who are here to raise up a new concept of life, a new way of feeling.

Who mourns our dead? Ofir Muñoz led the discussion with this question:

Who mourns our dead? Thinking about this, we want to bring them here, to our memory, at this moment, in order to remember them and make them visible. Since women have a special meaning for our ethnic and racialized communities, taking a woman’s life is representative of, and generates, differential affections. Therefore, we want to make them visible here today, we want to make visible the problem of violence against women, and especially against ethnic and racialized women. We invite people who want to bring a name here, to put it on the posters, making them visible.

Many women came forward to put names on the sign so they could be remembered. Some placed the name in silence, others mentioned the circumstances in which the woman lost her life and what she had devoted it to.¹ Ofir Muñoz continued to address the group:

This is a sensitive moment, of pain, but we wanted it to be of shared pain. It was necessary to remember them, for them to be here with us. It was necessary to bring them here, for them to be present, in order for us to understand why we are here, why we need to be here collectively thinking about and discussing this problem that affects women and our communities in differential ways. The light burning and this mandala are for all of them, as is our energy that is currently hoping they all be united, so that the pain of these deaths is not only felt by the mother, the daughter, the sister, as Luna said, but for it to be felt by communities, regardless of which ones, so that all men and women feel that indignation, so that all this can be changed.

A song—composed by Chontaduro’s Elena Hinestroza—was performed by the group:

I often ask myself:

why are we forgotten

if legally we have rights,

and we are all Colombian women?

Who mourns our lives?

Who mourns our people?

Who mourns our dead women?

Who is hurt?

Due to money and class,

due to skin color,

an exclusive class

ties us up hand and foot.

Who mourns our daughters?

Who mourns our people?

Who mourns our dead women?

Who does it hurt?

Because we keep going forward without stopping.

Unity is strength

and this has to change.

Who mourns our daughters?

Who mourns our people?

Who mourns our dead women?

Who does it hurt?

But we will keep going without stopping;

unity is strength,

this has to change.

Unity is strength

and this has to change.

Who mourns our daughters?

Who mourns our people?

Who mourns our dead women?

Who does it hurt?

Who does it hurt?

Who mourns our daughters?

Who mourns them?

Who mourns our people?

Who mourns them?

Who mourns our dead women?

Who mourns our daughters?

Who mourns them?

Who mourns our women?

Who mourns them?

Who mourns our dead?

Who does it hurt?

Our girls, who mourns them?

This abuse, who does it hurt?

Who does it hurt?

This abuse, who does it hurt?

Who does it hurt?

Who mourns the women?

Who does it hurt?

Who does it hurt?

Who does it hurt?

Vicenta Moreno: Only when we are capable of making those other deaths be felt differently will we be able to transform death into life. We have many dead, some of whom have been placed here on the sign, others who we carry in our feelings, others in the community. There are many women dead just for being women, but there are also many women here struggling to improve the situation, to transform that death. We also have signs of our ancestors who have walked, and despite being dead, still walk here with us. Those women whose names are on the sign continue to walk with us. As they said, we are awaiting justice. That search for justice is what brings us here, into a situation that is painful to us. So, I want Betty Ruth to tell us about other women, who are also present here, and share our ancestry.

Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma: Let the evil powers make no mistake, they have not defeated us. We are the daughters of the witches they could not burn and we will not let them burn us again. We are here to resist together, to weave unbreakable bonds; to be like Anansi, weaving bonds so that evil powers cannot triumph over us. What we have here is a display of cimarrona women, of fighting women, like the women there [she points to the poster with the names of murdered women] who leave us messages of encouragement, of resistance, of insurgency, of how women can find strength in our deepest pain in order to keep going. Then, we have to maintain a feeling of strength; a feeling that all this pain can empower us to defend life—all life. That is the message we want to leave: through all of this pain for all of those who we are mourning, we come together to consolidate our bonds, so that the evil powers cannot continue to brutalize and harm women’s bodies. With that, we call for the resistance and joy that has characterized the Black communities in this territory for five hundred years. We never stopped celebrating life.

Vicenta Moreno: Here we are, women from the Chontaduro Cultural House Association, located in the east of Cali, in the Aguablanca district, where most of Cali’s Black population lives. In Cali, which is said to be the city with the second-largest Black population in Latin America after Salvador de Bahía, many Black women are reinventing life, figuring out how to rebuild ourselves, how to not let them kill us. Because death appears to us every day, through thousands of forms, one of the ways we have to transform is through our collective construction.

Now, we...