Firstly, we want to send our Mexican sister our dearest respect and revolutionary greetings from the mountains of Kurdistan to the mountain ranges of the Sierra Madre beyond the oceans. In spite of the rivers, mountains, deserts, valleys, and canyons that separate us, we are Indigenous brothers and sisters, regardless of which part of the world we are located.
We hold in common our struggle, our resistance against occupation and colonialism, our dream for a free life. In this sense, as the Kurdish Liberation Movement, we consider the struggle for self-determination, self-administration and self-defense in the Indigenous communities of Mexico organized in the National Indigenous Congress as our own struggle. We support it in the principles of revolutionary solidarity.
Indigenous peoples are the veins through which the principal cultural and social values of humanity have been transmitted from the first moment of socialization until our time. Without doubt, no people are superior to others, but in a moment in which capitalist modernity tries to destroy all communal values, the Indigenous peoples are the protectors of the social ties of all of humanity. Thousands of years of collective memory resurge in our songs, rituals, prayers, tattoos, dances and traditions. Thus, the struggle for ones own identity against the goals of capitalist modernity to erase the roots and memory of our people becomes the most valuable resistance.
In Latin America, like in Kurdistan, women lead that resistance. In our countries that were the birthplaces of thousands of years of culture of the mother goddess, women and life, women and freedom, women and earth, women and nature, are inextricably connected. In Kurdistan we express this reality in our motto “Jin Jiyan Azadi, that means “women-life-freedom”.
The body and soul of women are the reflection of the universe in the earth. Thousands of years ago, during the Neolithic revolution, women were, through their social organization, those that lead the changes making possible the tilling of the land and the beginnings of a sedentary life in harmony with nature. That is the reason for which the patriarchal civilization of the state, taking the form of a counterrevolution based in domination, exploitation and occupation, enslaved women in the first place.
Parallel to the domination of women accelerated the domination of nature. It was through the oppression of the first nature that became the second, both becoming the clamps that capitalist modernity uses to forcefully pressure historical society and thus being able to destroy it. The contemporary domination exercised against our people is the result of that mentality. Thus, legitimate resistance embodied in self-government, self-determination and self-defense represents the most important struggle for freedom that can be exercised.
We in Kurdistan have developed our own defense against the modern capitalist forces and the attacks of the colonial state that occupy our lands, illuminated by the expressions of struggle of the Indigenous peoples of Latin America. We want you to know that we receive constant and special inspiration from your experiences of self-government, of good government and of communalism. We hope that our experiences and achievements in struggle likewise represent sources of inspiration for you.
One of the greatest achievements of our movement is the equality of participation and representation of women. This was the result of great sacrifices and intense struggles carried out by women, finally achieving equal participation in all of the modes of making decisions. Not as individuals, but as representatives of the voluntary and collective organization of the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement, we are taking our place in each aspect of struggle. With our system of co-chairs, established from below upwards, the will of women is represented in each decision and we develop a democratic politics against the centralized and patriarchal forms of traditional politics. For that, it was necessary to definitively convert ourselves into an organized force, to be organized is the most important criteria to achieve triumph. In the way in which we are organized, we are capable of resisting the colonial and dominant system and constructing our own alternative of government.
In this sense, organization is our best arm of self-defense. In the past, many peoples and movement have not been able to reach the sought after results because they were not sufficiently organized. It was not possible to transform some historical moments into grand victories precisely because the lack of organization. Perhaps the significance and importance of this has not been sufficiently understood, but today we have reached another level. We are faced with the necessity to multiply our forces, to increase our levels of organization amidst this new opportunity of triumph—in a moment in which the modern capitalist system again is passing through a profound crisis in its most determinant aspects. History is demanding this of us. You as the National Indigenous Congress have recognized this reality, by declaring the presidential elections in Mexico as an important component of a process that will lead to greater levels of organization.
As the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement we want to express our support for this decision, based in the conviction that the objective will be fulfilled, taking organization to a much higher level than the elections themselves and the strategies developed for that purpose. Our leader Abdullah Ocalan, that has been incarcerated in the most severe isolation by the colonial Turkish state since 1999, made a very important analysis in relation to the end of the 20th century. Our leader anticipated that the 21st century would be the century of the liberation of women, if we are able to expand our capacity and determine our modes and mechanisms of organization. The reason for this conclusion was the evident structural crisis of the patriarchal system that has been based in our slavery.
The patriarchal system intends to overcome this crisis by increasing its attacks against women until we are brought to a level of systematic war. By concentrating these attacks against women everywhere in the world with different means and methods, the system attempts to stem the pathway toward liberation that we have initiated. The assassination of women that has reached a level of genocide in this country, and the assassination of women leaders in Latin America are the most concrete indicators of this reality. We want you to know that we consider all assassinated women and assassinated leaders of Indigenous communities by the arms of the dominant system as our own martyrs, and we too struggle to make our dreams and hopes a reality. For us martyrs don’t die. From them we draw strength and they are reborn in every struggle that we initiate.
Within this context, the decision of the Indigenous Mexican people to declare a compañera as representative of their will making her the candidate in the upcoming presidential elections is very significant. In this sense, compañera Marichuy is not only the voice of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, but at the same time of all of the women of the world. We want to express that we consider the candidate of the compañera Marichuy very important and valuable as representative of the negated peoples, of enslaved women and of the thousands of years of ancestral wisdom that capitalist modernity wants to make disappear.
As the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement, we declare our support and solidarity for the compañera and for the National Indigenous Congress, not only in this electoral situation but also in the struggle that their movement is carrying forward. We know that the result of the elections is not relevant in itself, but that it is only one of the pathways that the Indigenous peoples of Mexico have taken in this process and in this particular moment of struggle. In this sense, the victory is already given. Because the modern capitalist system feeds off the division of forces and the disorganization of the peoples and societies that they want to dominate, you already have constructed the terrain for success by forming organized unity.
From now on it is important to not lose sight of this objective, which is nothing more than to increase organization. Your triumph will be our triumph. Our struggle is your struggle. We are the brotherly people of the mountains that have surged from the same deep waters. Even from our different languages we share the same dreams. We are in love with the same utopia and we resist for the sake of the same love. From here, we send you the most genuine revolutionary sentiments and we hug you with all of our solidarity and comradery.
Long live the sisterhood of the people!
Long live revolutionary internationalism!
Women-life-freedom! Jin Jiyan Azadi
Coordination of the Kurdish Women’s Movement Komalén Jinén Kurdistan (KJK)
June 7th, 2017
Translated from the original here: https://www.centrodemedioslibres.org/2017/06/19/carta-del-movimiento-de-mujeres-de-kurdistan-a-maria-de-jesus-patricio-martinez-vocera-del-consejo-indigena-de-gobierno-cig-cni/
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