To the Canary Island woman who is a sharecropper, packer, worker in the tobacco and canning industry, who worked hard for a meager wage and managed, with many sacrifices, to raise her children. To the Canary Island woman who ...
To the Canary Island woman who is a sharecropper, packer, worker in the tobacco and canning industry, who worked hard for a meager wage and managed, with many sacrifices, to raise her children. To the Canary Island woman who, since the 70s, has managed to overcome obstacles to train and integrate into the labor market, improving their working conditions and salaries, achieving access to professions not only traditionally male, but historically reserved for an economic elite.
To the cleaning women who have little or nothing to do with the sisters who top the ranking of the richest people in Spain, to the hotel and laundry workers who are fighting, at this moment, so that the organization of work derived from neoliberal labor reforms does not manage to take them back to the conditions of March 8 of the 19th century. To the Canary Island women who, in the latest mobilizations against the cuts, filled the streets of the Islands, to claim their rights and those of their sons and daughters.
To the European woman who, from 1945, began to direct her life more freely, entering the public space, becoming more socially visible, obtaining more social recognition, more personal autonomy, while the Spanish woman, subjected by the fascist Franco regime, returned to the private space, to "her chores" as stated on the identity card of most Spanish women until the 70s.
To the Spanish woman who overcame all those obstacles, recovering lost time, accessing education, employment, and a long-denied autonomy. To the Spanish woman of today who, despite the actions of some "iron ladies" who imitate the worst of a part of the politicians without moral authority who use coercive power to impose measures and thrive, occupies the streets of all cities to claim rights as important and vital for humanity as employment, housing, public health and public education.
To the Latin American woman to whom the large American and European multinationals pay starvation wages and impose exhausting working days, in conditions of quasi-slavery, while their owners are elevated to the rankings of the richest in the world. To the Latin American woman who fights for her countries to regain their national sovereignty and their natural resources, for a greater distribution of wealth that allows them to live without violence, without exploitation, with the dignity and well-being that has been usurped for centuries.
To the Saharawi woman whose territory has been violently occupied by Morocco, with the approval of Spain, the United States and France. To the Saharawi woman who lives in the camps, where she contributes decisively to the organization and administration of daily life, and who, despite the harsh atmospheric and economic conditions, has managed to maintain life and overcome the high rates of illiteracy they had at the time of the illegal occupation of their Land, accessing elementary and professional training in the middle of the desert.
To the Saharawi woman who cannot live or express herself freely in the occupied zone, in her own Land, but has the courage to rebel in her territory against the illegal occupier despite the harsh reprisals, torture and disappearances with which the Moroccan Authorities respond, who illegally occupy the Sahara and illegally exploit its natural resources, such as phosphate, fishing and oil, and illegally erect walls of more than 3,000 kilometers, plagued with mines, before the passivity, and the greed of the so-called international community and of the different governments of Spain that still have legal responsibility over the territory of Western Sahara and do not enforce the UN resolutions on the Referendum of Self-Determination. To the Saharawi woman who has been fighting for 38 years, with her people, for the longed-for return to her liberated Land.
To the Palestinian woman whose territory was occupied, since 1948, with the help of Great Britain, the mandatory power, by a minority of settlers who created the Jewish State by dividing and partitioning Palestine, expelling three quarters of the native population, the Palestinians, refugees, since then, in other countries, and who still, today, cannot return to their homes. To the Palestinian woman who remained in the territories occupied by Israel and, since then, has lived through wars, attacks, arbitrary detentions, torture, murders, the occupation and usurpation of her lands, illegal settlements, the destruction of her houses, curfews, the construction of separation walls with the West Bank, isolating the Palestinian people, preventing their free movement and that of their products, violating their most basic rights and breaking their means of subsistence.
To the Palestinian woman of the Gaza Strip, where the passage of medicines and hospital supplies is denied by the repressive apparatus of the Government of Israel, causing, on many occasions, the death, in childbirth, of women or their sons and daughters. To the Palestinian woman who is forced to give birth at the checkpoint, without the necessary conditions for it, as the Israeli soldiers prevent her from leaving Gaza. To the Palestinian woman who, in addition to enduring this hell in her daily life, has to endure that Israel presumes, in international forums, to be the most "democratic" country in the area, while exercising its coercive power over millions of people, the Palestinian population, which lacks civil and political rights, failing, without political consequences, all UN resolutions on the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories. To the Palestinian woman who has been fighting for 65 years for the return to the liberated land.
To the women of the world, who give life and fight to preserve it, despite the violence, armed conflicts, poverty and hunger to which international capitalism subjects the majority of humanity, with the sole purpose of accumulating all the wealth of the world in a few hands.
