From native.1492 Fri Oct 2 15:06:25 1992 From: Witness For Peace Date: 27 Feb 92 06:11 PST Subject: WFP Myth of the Month: March 92 Message-ID: <1563600129@igc.org> Lines: 320 Status: RO Witness for Peace 1492-1992 Expose the Myths: Calling for a Just World Order Myth of the Month--March 1992/Women: The Conquest and Struggle MYTH: The subjugation, mistreatment, and violation of women during colonization was due to woman's inherent inferiority to man. Likewise today women's inferiority to men prevents them from having equal access to power and resources. RESPONSE: Before colonization, the concept of male superiority was largely unknown in the Americas. Male Europeans brought this philosophy with them (along with racism) in order to benefit themselves, justify their exploitation of the land and its peoples, and legitimate the new hierarchical/patriarchal order. Women in the "New World" began to experience the dual oppression of racism and sexism. Today, despite claims of a "new world order", women continue to experience the effects of sexism and the myth of male superiority. It is not women's inferiority that prevents them from access to power and rights, but the continuation of patriarchal institutions and male domination. Nonetheless, just as women struggled to resist the Conquest, today women organize for justice, equality, and dignity. Women Before Columbus: The invasion of non-indigenous values has negatively changed the relationship between women and men in the home, and the role of women in our communities and nations. We have all been victims of this oppressive system ... of the violence of a system that is anti-life. -Resolutions of the Women's Commission, Declaration of Indigenous of the Americas at Quito, Ecuador. Women had long been accorded enormous respect among native peoples. Many indigenous societies were matrilineal, identifying heritage through the mother's lineage. Communal power was often found in the hands of the women. For example, in the Apache tradition women have always had influence, working toward a balanced sense of power within the culture. Apache women had control of the household food supply and primary roles in the inheritance of property. Similarly, clan mothers among the Iroquois nations (the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga and Cayuga) elect leadership of the nation and have the power to remove leaders (sachem) who are unfit. They are seen as the keepers of the family and of the nation. The European notion of women was strikingly different from that of the indigenous Americans during colonization. Women in Europe had long been relegated to subservient positions in society, in the church, and in the family. At issue was more than a "division of labor" between the genders; the status of women in society was deemed inferior to that of men, and women were not accorded the same rights and power as men. The ideology of female inferiority directly benefited the male-dominated power structures and the men who were in power, including the church hierarchy and the evolving mercantile class--two of the sponsors of (and benefactors of) Columbus' voyage. Women During Colonization: A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how brave its warriors nor how strong their weapons. - Cheyenne proverb European colonists brought with them the ideologies of both male superiority and racism. Many of the conquistadors viewed indigenous, and later African, women as prey for their sexual gratification and domination. Rapes and forced cohabitation were common practices. Racially, indigenous women were considered "unpure," and children born of white European and indigenous unions were also considered unpure and inferior. Verena Stolcke describes the colonists' oppression of women: When social position is attributed to inherent, natural, racial, and therefore hereditary qualities, the elite's control of the procreative capacity of their women is essential for them to preserve their social preeminence. As a nineteenth-century Spanish jurist argued, only women can bring bastards into the family. By institutionalizing the metaphysical notion of blood as the carrier of family prestige and as the ideological instrument to guarantee the social hierarchy, the state, in alliance with families that were pure of blood, subjected their women to renewed control of their sexuality while their sons took their pleasure with those women who lacked social status without having to assume any responsibility for it. In this way, indigenous and later African women and their children were subject to domination and violation by colonists. Bartolome de las Casas tells us that from the very beginning the rights and dignity of indigenous women were violated by the conquerors. Women were forced to labor in the fields while the men were taken far away to work in the mines: ...husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides ... that they ceased to procreate....the newly born died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them....some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation. Women brought as slaves from Africa, like women indigenous to the Americas, often suffered the multiple insults of sexual and physical abuse. The wrenching separation of thousands of African women from their children is recorded in the most painfully accurate histories of three and one half centuries of slavery in this hemisphere. Despite their oppression, both indigenous and African women struggled to resist colonization and slavery. For example, Micaela Bastides was a chief strategist of the Inca resistance movement in Peru in 1780 and governed the territory while her husband Tupac Amaru II was away. Both Micaela and her husband died horrible deaths at the hands of the conquerors. African women slaves also often took a crucial part in the struggles of their people for freedom. Vincent Harding recounts an instance of African women's struggle in There is a River: Among the thirty captives on board [the English ship Robert in 1721] was a man who called himself Captain Tomba ... He and several other African men and an unnamed woman had developed a plan to attack the crew .... The woman, because she had greater freedom of movement, was chosen to inform the men of the best time for the attack.... The smallness of their force and an accidental sounding of an alarm worked against them, so that after killing two of the crew they were overwhelmed by others, beaten to the deck and placed in chains.... And what of the black woman who chose the struggle for black freedom over her privileged bondage among white men? We are told that 'the woman he hoisted up by the Thumbs, whipp'd and slashed her with knives, before the other slaves till she died.' And so, not far from the shores of her homeland, the swaying bleeding body of a sister in struggle bore terrifying witness to the cost of the decision for freedom. Yet perhaps she would have considered this lonely vigil above the sea a better use of her body than any that the crew members had had in mind. Such stories of indigenous and African women's resistance often go untold. As Verena Stolcke points out: Historians have generally presented the conquest as a man's affair, an aggression and dispossession by one sector of men (Spaniards) over other men (Indians). They failed to reflect the sustained assault on these women's cultural and personal integrity, or how that assault gave form to the emerging colonial society. In this way, women are made invisible, and women's struggles and history are concealed in a male-dominated rendition. Yet a closer look at history shows the integral role women played in resisting colonization and slavery, and maintaining both the family and the culture. Women in the Americas were, and have continued to be, integral to the survival of Native and African peoples in this hemisphere. Nurturing their children, they nurtured the future; nurturing the struggle for dignity alongside the men, they nurtured hope. The Struggle of Women Today: Those who suffer most are women. As indigenous women, wearing our native dress is our ticket to discrimination. But even though the ladinos scorn us as we wear our native clothing, they ...use our clothing to attract tourism, exploiting the beauty of our handiwork; they admire the work for its design but scorn the weaver who created it for being illiterate. -"Basta!" Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America The oppression and exploitation of women which began during colonization continue today. Indigenous women, and all women of color, experience most severely the tyranny of economic, social, and political oppression. And in general, regardless of race, women are more affected than men by: - poverty, hunger and deprivation; - job discrimination based on gender, race and class; - the absence of pay equity for comparable work; - political under-representation; - rape and sexual abuse, forced sterilizations; - harassment and abuse within the criminal justice system and legal disenfranchisement; - housing discrimination against single mothers with children. Statistics indicate that rather than getting better, the plight of women continues to worsen: * The median income of an African or Native American woman living in the U.S. who is also a single parent is below $10,000 a year. * Native women are among the least represented in higher education. Women of color are infrequently found as participants in the legal, educational and political structures of the United States. * Women in Latin America have suffered from the pervasive reality of the cultural evil known as machismo, with its devastating impact on the status and treatment of women, even within their own homes. Yet women throughout the Americas are increasingly left with the responsibility to single-handedly support and maintain home and family. * Maquiladoras, export-based manufacturing plants in Mexico and Guatemala, rely primarily on labor from young women (over 65 percent of the maquiladora labor force is young and female). In part because of the myth that female workers need to earn only supplementary incomes (with males earning primary incomes), the average hourly wage in the maquiladoras is $.88 per hour. The subordination of women's social, cultural, political and educational rights and the unequal distribution of power and resources based on gender reflects the patriarchal ideology of the European invaders. Such ideology uprooted the more egalitarian ideas of pre-Columbian societies in the Americas. Truly it has been profitable for men, especially white men, to perpetuate the myth of women's inferiority. And as controllers of most newspapers, academic institutions, the film industry, radio and television, men are readily positioned to perpetuate the myth of female inferiority. In response to the reality of women's oppression, many women are organizing for equal rights and dignity. The indigenous women at Quito, Ecuador wrote: We are very concerned and have discussed in detail... the lack of training, education and health resources for women. We know that the first step in resolving these grave problems is to reclaim our traditional values, our spirituality, our culture. The step of naming the problems that women face because of their gender is an important one, but that is not all that women's groups are doing. They are also actively working for change within their societies and calling for just relations. In a just world order, women would have the same rights and responsibilities as men, and would not be subjected to systemic or personal oppression. EXAMPLES: 1. During the 15th century, the Spanish conqueror Hern n Corts led numerous massacres of indigenous peoples. He himself took an indigenous woman he called Do$a Marina, popularly referred to as "la Malinche," or "la Chingada," as his mistress and interpreter. Yet the Indian women who Corts and his soldiers had taken were not granted rights. In fact, in order to keep the "blood pure" and establish a ruling hierarchy, Corts ordered "all persons who have had Indians or who were married in Castille or other parts, to bring their women within a year and a half... under penalty of losing the Indians and everything acquired and gained with them." In other words, it was fine behavior for the European conquistadors to take Indian women and [other] possessions, but in order to keep the blood line of the ruling class pure, Spanish women were brought from Europe to populate the "New World." 2. Mama Maqu!n is an organization of Guatemalan refugee women. At their second meeting on August 15, 1990, more than 250 refugee women from different camps in Chiapas, Campeche, and Quintana Roo, Mexico, met in Chiapas. At that meeting, members of Mama Maqu!n stated two purposes of their organization: (1) to gain a deeper awareness of their situation as Guatemalan refugee women to be able to help others understand women's need to organize, and (2) to work for the development of new family and community relations, based on justice, equality, love and solidarity. Guatemalan indigenous women are the most isolated group within their society. They have the highest illiteracy rate (approximately 95%), very few speak Spanish, and as a consequence they are severely mistreated and exploited. In the face of this reality, women in Mama Maqu!n are organizing for justice. CALLING FOR A JUST WORLD ORDER: The struggle for equality and justice must be intimately tied to the work against racism and its interaction with gender and class discrimination and oppression. To work for a more just and equal world: * Join a WFP women's delegation to Central America (see enclosed schedule for details). * Study the devastating dual impact of racism and sexism in our society. Look for signs of racism and sexism within your own organizations and communities. * Learn about indigenous American images of the feminine to inform a multi-racial and multi-ethnic feminist struggle for justice. * Plan an event for International Women's Day, March 8, 1992 to bring together women of varied ethnic and racial backgrounds to celebrate Herstory. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: 1. What manifestations of gender and racial exclusivity do we see in our own communities? 2. What dialogue can take place between women of various ethnic and racial backgrounds to ensure that the gifts and insights of all be included in the struggle for human liberation? 3. In what ways does U.S. policy contribute to the plight of women, both domestically and abroad? 4. Can you give examples of how women have or are organizing for justice? Can you give examples of men organizing to end male domination of women? RESOURCES: After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, Edited by Paula M. Cooey, Wiliam R. Eakin and Jay B. McDaniel, New York: Orbis Books, 1991. "Basta!" (December 1990) Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America, 59 East Van Buren, Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60120. Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog, New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. "Conquered Women," by Verena Stolcke in NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXIV, No. 5 _(February 1991), pp. 23-28. I, Rigoberta Menchu, An Indian Woman in Guatemala, London: Verso, 1984.