A “feminist spring” in the fall: find out how the second national gathering of woman of the MAB

The event brought together about 400 affected from different regions of the country debating the challenges and achievements of women’s struggles of the movementDespite the fall, Saturday (24) for the MAB had a spring face. During the afternoon, the National Meeting of Women of the MAB was held. The meeting was virtual, because we are still amid the pandemic, and counted on the presence of more than 400 affected by dams from all corners of this country where the struggle, the protagonism, and the organization of women also flourish.

The meeting was also attended by representatives of organizations from countries that build the Movement of the Affected by Dams (MAR), women from the organizations of the Workers and Peasants’ Platform for Water and Energy (POCAE)National and state parliamentarians, and other partners and allies of the MAB.It was a symbolic and historical moment, in the framework of the celebration of the 30 years of the movement and the 10 years since the 1st National Meeting of Women of the MAB.This Saturday (24), we celebrate and strengthen our self-organization, we discuss the balance of women’s participation in the struggle and the construction of the MAB, we analyze the elements of current policy with the contribution of the former President Dilma and we point out the challenges to the struggle and construction of popular feminism.It was beautiful to see companions from the North, Northeast, South, and Southeast regions in testimonials about the effective, affective, historical, and current presence of women in the strugglesand with the flags raised by the movement.

It was exciting to see two young women who, from the beginning of their lives at Ciranda, have been in the ranks of the MAB alongside their parents, and are still firm and excited in building a more just and sovereign country project.Ivanei Farina Dalla Costa, of the MAB’s national coordination, said that women have always been active in the construction of the movement by rescuing the history of the construction of the organization of the affected women, but always face greater challenges to organizing themselves into a society that is capitalist, racist and patriarchal.Ivanei highlighted the main rights violations that women suffer during the construction of dams andpointed out how the protagonism of women in the movement is essential to address this situation.ParticipationsThe meeting was attended by former President Dilma Rousseff.

Dilma’s participation is quite symbolic because in April 2011, at the 1st National Meeting of Women Affected by Dams, Dilma received the women affected in the Presidential Palace in Brasilia. On that occasion, an agenda was presented with the demands of those affected. Dilma, then four months in office as president, pledged to continue the dialogue.

On the afternoon of Saturday (24), Dilma made a conjuncture analysis on the difficult situation that Brazil goes through. For the president, the PT governments were successful in distributing income through social programs. However, he emphasizes that this is different from distributing wealth, andthat it involves altering some of Brazil’s structural issues, such as the issue of land and heritage, andthat when his government tried to address these issues, it went against powerful interests.”What characterizes genocide is sloppiness, omission, negligence, and ignorance to let die part of the population”, says Dilma Rousseff when referring to Bolsonaro.For Rousseff, the approval of the Spending Ceiling, soon after the coup that brought it down, is alsoa factor that makes it more difficult to combat the pandemic.

The president said that the fact that Lula has returned to the political scene represents a “light at the end of the tunnel” and alters the correlation of forces in favor of the popular forces.”The neoliberals do not want to get rid of Bolsonaro, because they still expect new reforms,” he says and cites as examples the privatization of the post office, the Petrobras slice, and the privatization of Eletrobras.Dilma recognized the importance of the participation of the MAB in the social struggle of Brazil, inaddition to the specific struggle of those affected, and reaffirms some challenges she sees for the conjuncture: “Our path is of formation and political organization on one side and large mobilizations on the other”.

Gleise Hoffmann, federal deputy and national president of the Workers’ Party, in greeting women, recalled Paulo Freire when he said that in 2022 our task is “to hope Brazil”, referring to the electoral process that is to come. She also thanked the movement for the struggle and presence at the Lula Livre vigil, which took place for more than 500 days, during the period of President Lula’s arrest in Curitiba. Soniamara Maranho, from the MAB coordination, presented the challenges of the women’s historical moment for the next period, among them, the maintenance of women’s self-organization to strengthen the MAB throughout Brazil, the monitoring of the situation, the continuation in the struggle for the construction of a popular energy project, where energy tariffs are accessible to the population, and the struggle against any kind of privatization together with the other left-wing forces of the country, building national unity, the defense of sovereignty and democracy and popular feminism.