The document we are presenting on the occasion of the commemoration of 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is the first of a series of documents to be submitted to the UN.
November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is composed of a series of 25 photographs taken during the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter (EFLAC), held in Bogotá, Colombia, in July 1981.
We have selected this document because it was during this meeting that the Latin American feminist Latin American feminist movement decided to embrace 25 November as the International Day of Non-Violence of Non-Violence Against Women. The date was chosen in memory of the Mirabal sisters, revolutionary political activists assassinated in 1960 by the military dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. In this way, the feminist movement in Latin America reflected on the intrinsic relationship between the fight against between the struggle against patriarchal violence and the struggle against authoritarian and military regimes, between violence in the public political sphere and the private sphere.
The first actions took place in Colombia and other Latin American and Caribbean countries on 25 November 1981. Caribbean countries on 25 November 1981 and spread until, in 1999, the United Nations General Assembly recognised the General Assembly of the United Nations recognised this emblematic date of popular origin, instituting it as a popular origin, instituting it as an official day to denounce and raise awareness of patriarchal violence against women.
The idea of EFLAC was first proposed in 1979 by the Venezuelan group La Conjura, later proposed that it should take place in Colombia, as they considered that there were better conditions to carry it out. The meeting was held at the premises of the National Institute of Social Studies, a trade union school for rural workers, and was attended by more than two thousand individual women “committed to a feminist practice” representing ten countries. As the women themselves put it themselves, “this meeting is not the product of a finished conception of feminism or of the meeting itself”, but rather a desire to come together, to recognise each other and to learn.
The photographs are accompanied by an envelope and a letter, in which it is emphasised that were a donation from the personal archive of Clara Mazo, an activist in the Colombian women’s social movement, to the Colombian women’s social movement to the Historical Archive of the Documentation Centre of the Corporación Vamos Mujer (C.V.M). The C.V.M. had custody of these photographs until 2021, when they were donated to the National University of Colombia and passed into the custody of the Historical Sources Laboratory as part of the Historical Archive Vamos Mujer-Movimiento Social de Mujeres (AHVM-MSM).
These are colour photographs showing medium shots, general shots and portraits, indoors and outdoors, of the women gathered. They are talking, writing, making music, taking photos, hugging each other. Posters and banners can be read: “We demand contraceptives so as not to abort, free abortion so as not to die”; “Denounce rape. Support Centre for Raped Women”, “Cine Mujer”, “Chilean Woman”, among others.
In the images you can identify emblematic activists such as Clara Mazo, Cris Suaza, Main Suaza, Gloria Rendón, Marta Velez, Flora Uribe, Claudia Montoya, Socorro Montoya, Gloria Upegui, Graciela María Gutiérrez, María Helena, Beatriz Quintero, Marta Quintero, Rita, La Chiqui, Margarita, Marta Lamas, Socorro, Mara Viveros, Lucero Galindo.
This document bears witness to a milestone in the history of feminism and the women’s social movement in Colombia and Latin America, a meeting in which Latin American and Caribbean feminism Latin American and Caribbean feminism recognised itself in its coincidences and differences, and from which it differences, and from which they began to build a joint agenda in the defence of women’s human rights.
AUTHORS OF THE TEXT
Camila De los ríos Muñoz and Ruth López Oseira
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Primer Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe”, (Bogota, 1981) in Archivo Histórico Vamos Mujer – Movimiento Social de Mujeres (AHVM-MSM), Documentation Centre, CO.AUN.AHVM.001.001.92.6.1
NAME OF THE IBERARCHIVOS PROJECT
“Access, preservation and dissemination of the Historical Archive Vamos Mujer – Women’s Social Movement of Medellín (Colombia) 2022/012”.
