Lizette Vila Espina | Palomas Project, Audiovisual Production Company for Social Activism (Cuba)
Dear friends, dear sisters, and dear brothers,
The reasons that lead women to rise up against war and defend peace are many and varied.
Feminist and anti-militarist activist Montse Cervera explains why this is so: “It is not because women are peaceful by nature, but because we have chosen to stand for the lives of people and the planet.”
This commitment to placing the needs and well-being of people at the center—to guarantee dignified lives rather than the profits of markets, as capitalism proclaims—is what explains the feminist rejection of the logic of armament and of an industry that grows and fattens in times of peace until it becomes a powerful industry of death generating enormous profits.
It also explains the rejection of militaristic escalations that are forged under the rhetoric of peace and of state policies that, at the same time, provide fertile ground for the growth of the far right.
It is the same perspective that underlies the demand for less military spending and greater social investment in state budgets.
Social spending is what can truly address people’s real needs and security. Recent wars have highlighted which forms of work are truly essential: the work of cleaners, care-home workers, healthcare workers, caregivers, social service workers, and those who sustain households through unpaid and paid care labor. In all these sectors, the majority of workers are women.
The glorification of war inevitably leads to a culture of violence, and nothing stands in greater contrast to the feminist vision.
The brutality of war and the human tragedy it brings can normalize a worldview that ignores any issue lying outside military logic, even though those issues form part of the struggle for life carried out by women in many regions of the world. Overcoming this is not easy; perhaps we must learn how to do so. This is the necessary Pedagogy of Peace.
But there is another fundamental component of the feminist proposal for peace and the call to say “No to War”: violence itself.
Women know well the destructive logic of violence—in this case, gender-based violence. Wars represent the highest expression of generalized violence aimed at subjugating peoples, accompanied by the patriarchal violence that always follows in its wake.
As has sadly—but fortunately—been documented countless times, women become spoils of war.
The world had to wait until the tragedy suffered by women during the Balkan Wars came to light before rape was recognized as a war crime. Once again, the glorification of war inevitably leads to a culture of violence, and nothing is more alien to the feminist vision.
As the manifesto of the 8M Commission of the Madrid Feminist Movement states:
“We feminists have a plan: we are going to change the system. We are drawing another possible path, with a feminist power that crosses borders and tears down walls.”
And this is not mere rhetoric. There is an inclusive feminism in which all of us have a place—a feminism whose proposals address the structural causes of women’s oppression and which perhaps, for that very reason, causes such discomfort.
Feminism or barbarism! That is the great challenge before us.
We come to this gathering hoping that feminism—which is a political pact—will expand democracy and social justice throughout society.
We come longing for a world in which everyone has the right to decide about motherhood, because that also makes fatherhood more conscious and more freely chosen.
We come aspiring to sexual education that fosters freer, safer, and more informed relationships.
We come with the hope that shared responsibility in caregiving will open spaces for men to participate actively rather than remaining mere spectators of the multiple burdens carried by women.
We come with the determination to prevent femicides and all other forms of violence, and with the conviction that justice, accountability, and reparation must accompany that effort.
We come aware that equality between women and men is a matter of human rights, a condition for achieving a dignified life, and a fundamental requirement for development, sustainability, and peace.
We must once again reflect and act during these extraordinarily difficult times, when anti-rights forces, imperialism, colonialism, militarism, and patriarchy threaten the limited advances achieved in gender justice, environmental justice, and social justice.
Today, the world spends six times more on war than on protecting women and guaranteeing their aspirations.
Peace and stability are essential prerequisites for the full development of women, and it is necessary to strengthen all mechanisms against violence and thereby challenge every form of abuse.
Continue to count on Cuba—free, independent, sovereign, and conscious—a country that the empire persistently seeks to push backward in an attempt to erase our achievements and return us to old histories disguised as false freedoms.
To the women of Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and everywhere that women and girls, men and boys suffer, Cuba sends its embrace. Cuba, too, suffers greatly in these times—and Cuba, too, is a woman.
Thank you very much.