Anna Lee Mraz Bartra. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
When I asked as a girl why the April 30th celebration of childhood was called "Día del Niño" (Boy's Day literally because in Spanish the masculine is used for both genders), I was confused. When I was the girl in the classroom who wanted to play soccer, even if it meant being the only one, I was called weird. When I went outside to play with my neighbors and they talked about "Viejas" (a derogatory way of referring to a woman), I was annoyed and asked them not to do so, sometimes they would walk away. When my mother explained to me that feminism was the struggle for equality for women, I responded that all women should be feminists, it was only logical. And so, I got tired of feeling alone and, for many years, I gave up the fight.
Something was gnawing inside me as I went through adolescence, the fire still quiet. But, when men looked at us lustfully when walking with my friends from the car to the club, a spark ignited; when a man put his hand down the blouse of my friend who was walking down the street, a spark ignited; when a colleague heard an idea of mine in a meeting and repeated it louder to make it his own, a spark ignited; when I heard the stories of women in shelters fleeing from drunken, abusive husbands, a spark ignited. When my students cried with me about being hurt before, a spark ignited.
And when I realized that every woman I know has suffered some kind of sexual violence, the fire lit.
That fire inside of me, which had been dormant for so many years, lit the way for me to connect with other fires.
This is what feminism feels like, a warmth that runs through your body and takes away the cold left by abuse or mockery. It is the light that shines from the chest, welcomes you from the shadows and rejection. It is the vibration that shakes off mistreatment, hurtful words and clears the sky to allow you to fly.
It is the individual and the collective, for your fire does not burn alone. It absorbs the energy of the others, in a give and take of strength. When we realized it, we were thousands. And Latin America ignited. It ignited with rage, indignation and courage.
It does not come from nothing this flame that now threatens to set fire to the doors of all the palaces and glass roofs; for wise women, ancient witches and powerful dinosaurs had already loaded with stones, logs and ocote. They had already created their own fires that knocked down more than one monument.
They pass us the baton, a heavy, dangerous baton with a giant warning sign on it: "It won't be easy." And it is not.
The struggle is imperfect, we make mistakes. We listen to each other, but sometimes we don't. We don't always agree and we throw it up for debate. We want to run before we walk and we stumble. Some of us want to change everything, aware that it will also change us inside.
They call it radical, liberal, philosophical, equality, difference, abolitionist, Marxist, white, colonial, decolonial, postcolonial, anarcho, institutional, lesbian, black, cultural, separatist, cyber, eco, dissident, queer... It comes in all shapes, backgrounds, tones, sizes, colors and smells.
And it's uncomfortable, it's bitter to dig into one's own coding. That's why we embrace and sing in unison, like someone who puts sugar in medicine. We cry and laugh hand in hand, we share what is difficult. And we irritate, because we are changing things, but there is still a long way to go.
The struggle is still needed as long as they keep killing and disappearing our sisters.It goes without saying how repulsed I am that this happens every two hours in Latin America. The United States is not far behind, as in 2018 nearly two thousand women were murdered, mostly at the hands of their intimate partner. I can't understand why I can't find more recent data, but it's clear to me that the murder of Vanessa Guillén is not the only one of its kind in this country and it touches a chord in all aspects.
It will be a long way off as long as we continue to earn less than our male counterparts in the job market. The fight will be necessary as long as the girl I teach dance on Saturday mornings to doesn't cry because her older brother is the only one allowed to play video games because "that's for men". It will be necessary as long as they look at us with lust in the street, as long as they touch us, and it will continue to be necessary as long as they continue to make laws about what to do with our bodies, without our authorization.
This movement has been around for 3 centuries, no matter what you call it, the objective is common. And we will continue to burn until we break everything.
