Encuentro de Mujeres que Luchan: A meeting in the mountains for ‘women who struggle’

“The first day we shout out our pain and courage, the second day we share ideas and experiences, and the third day we shout out our joy and strength!” With these words, Comandanta Amada, masked with the emblematic black Zapatista balaclava, welcomed some 4,000 women to the second-ever Encuentro de Mujeres Que Luchan, the “Gathering for Women Who Struggle.”

The Encuentro took place at a Zapatista community known as a caracol, in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, from December 27-29, 2019. The three days of denouncements, workshops, roundtables, and performances were devoted to addressing violence against women, which Comandanta Amada identified as a global emergency in her opening address: “Throughout the world, they keep murdering women, they keep disappearing women, they keep raping women… They say women now have more rights, but they keep killing us.”

In a year when Latin America was swept with protests against gender-based violence from Mexico to Chile, the Encuentrofelt both timely and necessary. As much was evident from the response to the Zapatistas’ open invitation to “women who struggle” all over the world, sent in September, on Enlace Zapatista, only two months prior to the event: women from grassroots social movements, feminist collectives, land rights organizations, unions, and NGOs, as well as artists and migrant rights advocates—across 49 countries—descended on the caracol, equipped with nothing more than rucksacks, tents, and the conviction that transnational feminist solidarity is the only way to confront the global crisis of violence against women.

A celebration of 26 years of resistance

The Encuentro coincided with the 26th anniversary of the Zapatistas’ armed uprising against the Mexican state on January 1, 1994. Their forces, largely composed of indigenous and campesino farmers from the Chiapaneco highlands, took up arms in protest against historic state neglect and repression, and to protect the rights and autonomy of Chiapas’ indigenous peoples. 26 years later, their communities are thriving, despite sustained low-intensity warfare waged against them by state and paramilitary forces. Entire territories, organized into caracoles, are maintained under Zapatista control, where—if their slogans are to believed—“the people rule and the government obey.”

The Zapatista women have always been active participants both in the armed resistance and their governance structures known as juntas de buen gobierno (“good government boards”), advocating for the rights of Zapatista women both within their struggle as well as globally. And while the Zapatistas are notoriously reticent toward engaging with the world beyond their borders, they began to turn their attention to the violence faced by women everywhere by organizing the first Encuentro de Mujeres que Luchan in March 2018. Anywhere between 5,000 and 9, 000 women traveled from all over the world for this historic opportunity to exchange with the Zapatistas.

Hundreds of women breaking the silence

Comandanta Amada’s opening address was followed by a short military presentation by the young women who form part of the trained militia, after which the attendees were sent off to do their work. The agenda consisted of an open mike on the first day to denounce violence, both individual and collective; working groups for sharing strategies and developing proposals for action on the second; and artistic performances on the third and final day. The Zapatistas provided the necessary logistics and spaces for these events, but the participants were left to manage time and interventions themselves.

On the first day, the queue of women stepping forward to speak at the open mike was so long that the open mike space was left open for the duration of the Encuentro. Women told their stories and made their cases to a captive crowd of hundreds: many spoke for the first time about sexual and gender-based violence experienced at the hands of family members, friends, colleagues, and strangers, while others shared their struggles to be believed, as well as the challenges of achieving justice. Still more related how their families vilified or disowned them for daring to speak out and break the chain of intergenerational violence. Their tears and their rage were shared by the crowd, punctuated by applause and collective refrains: “No estás sola!” (You’re not alone!) and “No es tu culpa!” (It’s not your fault!).

The Butterflies in Spirit collective traveled from Canada to denounce the murder and disappearance of Native women across their country. Guatemala-based activist Laura Rojas spoke of communities who are resisting the pressure from neoliberal interests extracting natural resources from indigenous territories. “It’s really interesting to be here with women from all over the world, listening to their stories their fights, their struggles,” said Seher Aydar, a Kurdish activist who traveled from Norway to participate in the Encuentro. Aydar took the microphone on the first day and spoke to the hundreds of women before her about the recent military oppression of the women’s resistance in Rojava. “I think it’s really powerful.”

The open mike demonstrated the likeness of our struggles, be they individual or collective, as well as the necessity of creating safe spaces in which women could name the violence they lived through without fear of judgment, rejection, or of not being believed. As one anonymous participant said, “I have spoken but there are many other women who are not ready to speak out. We have to keep denouncing, again and again, until all women who have experienced violence feel they can break the silence.”

Solidarity across borders

On the second day, alongside the open-mike space, participants organized themselves into thematic groups around shared interests and struggles from media activism to abortion rights. These working groups lasted well into the evening as exchanges continued. Meanwhile, in other spaces, spontaneous circles formed around indigenous Mexican women beating warrior drums, Afro-Brazilian women singing protest songs, and Mexican rap artists rallying the crowd with “Vivas nos queremos” (“We want to live”).

Guatemala lies just across Chiapas’ southern border, and despite the visa restrictions and increasing militarization, a number of Guatemalan women made the 12- to 14-hour bus journey to the Encuentro. María Q’anil, co-founder of the war widows organization CONAVIGUA and helps coordinate for the Via Campesina international network in Guatemala, was delighted she was able to attend. “The organizational force of the women is incredible. This is a historic process that has been promoted by women leaders, particularly Comandanta Ramona,” she said, referring to one of the principal leaders of the 1994 uprising. “She worked in many political spaces to make this happen. It was her dream. We are here in her honor.”

She also spoke of the need for greater solidarity between the Mayan peoples of Mexico and Guatemala. “It’s necessary to strengthen alliances between women. I really admire the Zapatistas; they defend their identity as Mayan women. The invasion divided us, but their blood is Mayan, and they share our energy for struggle.”

Aydar echoed that need. “We need to remember all the women who are not here but fighting against states, patriarchy, capitalism,” she said. “We are not here only for ourselves. We are here for all women.”

Sharing with the Zapatistas

In all these activities, the Zapatistas provided watchful, though often silent, guardianship, with little interaction with participants beyond the opening and closing ceremonies, and of course, the work that went into ensuring that some 4,000 women had somewhere to pitch their tents, enough food to eat and water to drink, sanitary facilities, and security. Yet, there was clearly a desire among the participants for a more direct engagement with the women in the black balaclavas. On the second day, a “mesa de critica,” a table for receiving comments or suggestions, was set up near the main entrance and presided over by two Zapatistas. Within ten minutes, a crowd had gathered and were asking questions. The more people asked, the more people began to gather, the crowd fluctuating between 20 to 50 people over the course of the morning, the women bent forward listening attentively as the compañeras patiently answered all they wanted to know.

It may seem incongruous that, after inviting us all the way to Chiapas, the Zapatistas would not take a more prominent role in the event, but they weren’t there to teach, nor to entertain or instruct how things were done. They gave participants the space, and it was up to us to make the most of it, with the expectation that we would report back our progress and successes in a year’s time, at the next Encuentro.

“We feel we are the same body and blood and they are killing us all over,” said Compañera Graviela, the Encuentro’s coordinator. “We asked ourselves, why this is happening?” Had the women from the first Encuentronot been organizing back in their own towns or communities?” Of course, patriarchal violence can’t be eradicated with a year or two of feminist organizing, but from the Zapatista perspective, ending violence against women is possible. They proudly reported during the opening ceremony that there were no femicides or disappearances of women in any Zapatista community in the last year. It’s a remarkable success, considering that femicide rates in Mexico are apparently on the rise, with an average of 10 women murdered each day across the country and between 3-4,000 women go missing every year. 98 percent of these and other gender crimes go unpunished. While the Zapatistas were open about cases of domestic violence, they addressed how such cases were handled within their own community justice mechanisms, as well as how perpetrators were brought to justice.

Once again, the Zapatistas demonstrated how another world could be possible and how change was achievable. By their example, ending violence against women means doing things differently, and perhaps it requires such a radical break from the rest of the world that it’s still beyond the reach of our Western imaginations.

A permanent forum for transnational feminist organizing

Comandanta Yesica gave remarks on behalf of the Zapatistas in the closing ceremony, when she announced that the Zapatistas would continue to organize these yearly Encuentros. Until the next one, participants were asked to commit to three concrete actions: responding to any woman facing violence who asks for help; continuing to communicate and coordinate with one another on actionable steps; and wearing a black ribbon on March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day, in remembrance of all the women’s lives that had been lost to violence.

It is an achievement, reflecting back on fact that nearly 4,000 women traveled from 49 countries to attend the Encuentro, under their own steam. Some scrimped and saved to come, and sharing rides, tents, food, and water. They spoke under the midday sun, sitting cross-legged on grass or under nylon tents, or sitting on rough benches. It is difficult to think of any other social movement that has the same power to draw such a diverse body of women.

They closed the Encuentro with the assurance that “here, in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, you have us, and we, like you, are women who struggle.”