IPS-English CHILE: Indigenous and Rural Women Make Their Voices Heard Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:32:40 -0800 Daniela Estrada SANTIAGO, Mar 23 (IPS) - ”It's our turn to speak! It's time to fight, to dream, to build, to sow, to participate.” This was the slogan of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI)'s First Congress which ended Friday in the Chilean capital. ”Over the last year we have realised that women have really begun to discuss politics in a big way. We realised that all the workshops and training events we held have not been in vain. Women have arrived at an enormous political awareness. They aren't talking about 'chimuchina,' petty matters. No, they're talking about public policies,” ANAMURI president Florencia Aróstica told IPS. In 2006, ANAMURI organised meetings in nearly every region of the country to find out the opinions, difficulties and proposals of over 2,000 rural and indigenous women. The information they collected was presented at the First Congress, which opened Wednesday in Santiago. ”The goal of the Congress was to debate what kind of country we want to live in, and the policies we want to see implemented for the benefit of rural women,” Aróstica said. About 1,200 rural women from Chile and other countries attended the Congress, including women from Argentina, Brazil, Haiti, India, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay. ANAMURI was founded eight years ago by 52 women. Now its members include artisans and producers of vegetables, dairy products, medicinal herbs, fresh fruit and manufactured food products, agricultural labourers, women versed in folklore and poets. Aróstica said the root of rural women's problems is the free market economic model applied in Chile, ”which has sidelined small rural producers. The current economic system only benefits big corporations.” ”One of the most important issues addressed by the Congress, which we understand to be an essential principle underlying every other aspect, was food sovereignty. We believe that no one in this country is showing proper concern about it,” the activist said. ”When the government says that Chile should be a great power in the food industry, they don't mean small family farms but the big exporting companies,” she said. ”Today the government is promoting production chains, which means that small farmers can produce for export, but they won't be doing the exporting. It's the big companies that will do that. The small farmers have to continue producing cheap raw materials for others to export. That way we'll continue to be poor and marginalised,” she said. ”We are not against exports, but we want them to go hand in hand with sustainable development and sustainable agriculture,” she said. ANAMURI is concerned about the precarious working conditions of seasonal agricultural workers, the financial and health difficulties of self-employed rural women, social security, child labour and the migration of young people from rural areas to the cities. But the group also wants to have its views heard on issues of national interest that have direct repercussions on their work and quality of life, such as availability of and access to water, environmental degradation, and the development of biofuels, which is presently being analysed by the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet. ”We're very afraid of biofuels, because if as a country we don't have food sovereignty, how can we produce the crops that the biofuel industry needs?” said Aróstica, expressing a position at odds with that taken previously by the United Peasant and Ethnic People's Movement of Chile (MUCECH). They also found that access to water supplies is increasingly problematic. ”This is partly due to water scarcity, but the main reason is that water is in the hands of big companies, especially (mining, sanitation and electrical) transnational corporations,” the central document of the Congress stated. ”Wells have to be dug deeper and deeper, because water extraction by the companies using big machinery has depleted the (groundwater) levels,” the document said. Today, several areas in the north of the country, particularly in the Atacama region, are suffering from a severe drought. Many irrigation ditches, swamps and artificial lakes have dried up, to the detriment of crops and livestock. One of ANAMURI's proposals is for ”the rights of rural and indigenous communities, and of women in particular, to water and land, to be guaranteed priority over the economic activities of big companies.” Furthermore, the women are demanding ”the prohibition and eradication of extractive and polluting productive activities wherever water is scarce, and where the land has been overexploited beyond its capacity to recover.” And these women are calling loudly for the government to give them more active participation in the management of natural resources. Bachelet was invited to the Congress, but was unable to attend because of her state visit to Mexico and Central America. Aróstica said the president communicated to ANAMURI her interest in being informed of the conclusions of the Congress. But the women are not very optimistic. ”The Bachelet administration says it wants to be a participative government, but when civil society sets forth proposals they are not taken fully into account, or they are converted into something different. That's not citizen participation. Government proposals have to be consistent with people's demands,” she concluded. ***** + LATIN AMERICA: Family Farms - Durable but Fragile (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34996) + CHILE: State of the Environment Report Confirms Activists' Warnings (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34940) + ENERGY-LATIN AMERICA: Biofuel Boom Sparks Environmental Fears (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34845) + MEXICO: Free Trade Only One Factor in Rural Plight, Says Study - December 2005 (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31394) + ANAMURI: Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Rurales e Indígenas - in Spanish (http://www.anamuri.cl) (END/IPS/LA HD DV EN IP SU IN CS WO MD/TRASP-VD-SW/DE/DCL/07) = 03240258 ORP005 NNNN