Amplifying feminist struggle in the wake of March 8

March 8, 2023 in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo: Folil Pueller.

Opinion • Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar • March 17, 2023 • Leer en castellano

On March 8th, 2023, the streets and public squares of cities throughout Latin America were yet again occupied by thousands of women and dissidents in struggle, outraged and full of desire.

Mobilizations took place in Mexico City, but also in Cochabamba, Valparaíso, La Ceiba and Paysandú; in Buenos Aires, but also in Toluca, Sucre, Cali and Guayaquil; in San Salvador and also in San Juan, Santa Cruz, La Plata and more…

Beginning in 2017, this is the seventh year that a gigantic, noisy and heterogeneous, continental and simultaneous mobilization occurs on March 8th. Or the sixth occasion, taking into account the difficult, pandemic and still partially confined 2021.

8M is an earthquake, a tide, a powerful and radical hurricane that shakes old structures of subjection and control.

All kinds of telluric metaphors are used to describe what happens on March 8th. 

When moving with others in the streets, we can feel it in our bones: something deep begins to shift, something forceful subverts the crushing normality of patriarchal and colonial capitalism.

“You’re tired of hearing it, we’re tired of living it”

The most visible feature of these days in March is the massive rejection of the violences that are part of daily life, combined with the widespread capillarity of our mobilizations. One can feel the spirit of embodiment and togetherness and immense shared desire to occupy and transform public space.

Statues are defaced in bulk. The sacredness of monuments is challenged and reappropriated through graffiti and signs of all kinds. Broken windows, burned symbols and effigies are audacious practices of enthusiastic disobedience. Chants and proclamations, circular hugs, and secular prayers are repeated, invoking the collective force that nourishes and regenerates us all.

In this way, the rejection of all patriarchal and sexist violences takes shape in creative and playful ways, spilling over into neighborhoods, schools, squares and markets.

Among so many of us we “hear ourselves speak”, as Gladys Tzul Tzul writes, expressing different and similar words that reveal kinships and open up differences and distances.

In March, yet again, the capacity of thousands and thousands of diverse collectives and groups of women and dissidents to reactivate was felt. We gathered, played, prepared and took to the streets to nourish March 8, an overflowing river of purple, of rage, critique and joy.

Building a common ground

Over the past years a common ground of struggle that is both a call and a practice has been established: the wholesale rejection of the interlinked chain of patriarchal and sexist violences that appear from the private to the public sphere and vice-versa.

The effort to set a limit between the admissible from the inadmissible is enormous. Tectonic plates of resignation and silence are shifted, and daily life is shaken to the core.

Such common ground is recognized and reproduced thousands of times, in different tones and with different accents. Each time, what most irritates and attacks each of us is expressed in a unique manner.

During the preparations toward 8M, a sense of inclusion established by each and every one of us is collectively and practically co-produced and reinforced in the streets. It is legible through the enormous force that we constitute: feminisms that are standing up in opposition, to put an end to that which assails us, to subvert and disrupt the existing order of things, to put an end to that which is no longer admissible.

This massive, shared action happens without an organizing center, even as each local deployment is highly organized. There is no rigid code of belonging that monopolizes or delimits who is or is not part of the movement.

Being willing to mobilize together with others creates inclusion. Connections and resonances are created through shared practice, to be part of the flow of struggle is to to nourish and nurture it, and to feel eager to take part.

The assembly reappears as an organizing mechanism and key site for producing concordance and coordination, but not for disputing ownership or monopolizing the voice of the movement. In assembly, bonds that nourish and heal tired and damaged bodies are rehearsed.

“My friends take care of me, not the police”

The same energy generated by massive gatherings of all kinds of bodies vibrating in the streets undoes and disorganizes the fences and limitations that some self-servingly promote during the quieter, less mobilized months of the year.

The strength of mobilizations on 8M moves attempts to reduce the struggle against all violences to the margins. These reductions include decaffeinated appeals to ending “gender violence” proposals for “solutions” that include protocols, “perspectives” and institutional adjustments. Sometimes, they suggest police intervention.

It also exposes those who believe it is possible to dilute the patriarchal violence that circulates in thousands of homes by promulgating laws against “domestic violence”.

Many of us are aware of the inadequacy of laws and regulations, and put more trust in our shared capacity to protect ourselves and produce justice. In March, such capacities are cultivated and demonstrated in an accelerated manner.

Of course, there is some importance in altering certain laws and introducing useful, albeit partial, changes. But this is not the central issue, and we will not invest all of our energy in doing so.

We insist on encouraging other ways of cultivating and caring for our strengths. March combines the spirit of each of us with the impetus of everyone else. Our pain becomes struggle, and we leave the role of quiet victims, collectively becoming tenacious warriors in a difficult world.

Purple rivers of slogans and songs overflowed and rearranged some of the most severe fractures that traverse the movement: hatred of trans people and anti-sex work positions.

On March 8, these discrepancies are not dissolved, but the sterility of opposing each other in binary positions of reciprocal invalidation is exposed. Above all, the joyful presence of the youngest women, who come out in droves, dismantles exclusionary opposition, and reorganizes the flow of energies in struggle.

The youngest women and girls push us to see ourselves in the others, even as we strive to distinguish ourselves through the combative presence we constitute in the street.

The annual March gathering is a process of collectively generating an immense pedagogical action. By occupying public space, we allow our rage and desires to circulate, knowing that we can be together. We all learned a lot from what we experienced on March 8th.

What opens up now, after 8M?

It feels urgent to continue to build on the common ground established in all these years of massive and renewed feminist struggles and mobilizations. The attacks on our lives and capacities are increasingly harsh.

We must channel the overwhelming rejection of patriarchal and sexist violences that bring us together in March with greater clarity and force. Feminist self-defense, the practice of radical tenderness and the exercise of dissolving threads of hatred and ignorance are pressing tasks.

It is also essential to deepen our understanding of what we mean when we say that we defend life and that life is at the center of our struggles.

What political forms and what kinds of articulations are needed when the jobs we have are increasingly precarious, and the conditions for sustaining life are more and more difficult?

If our struggle against all patriarchal and sexist violences is also a struggle to produce justice, how do we amplify the basis of our agreements and methods?

How do we struggle against the injustices of degrading and underpaid jobs and the brutal rise in the cost of food, energy and water, on top of everything else?

How are we to repudiate the growing, tangled web of everyday hardships that ultimately fall on our shoulders, absorbing our time and vital energies?

These are all questions that emerge from these years of struggle. It is worth debating the paths we will walk over the coming years. It is worth doing so now, fueled by the vital energy that we have co-produced among so many, over the last seven years of 8Ms that have shaken the entire region.

Translated by María José López.