NEWS CENTER – “If there is no meaning in life, we are dead people walking”, said one of the Jineolojî companions, responsible for the formative education of the Jineolojî Camp 2022, which took place between August 2 and 8 in Euskal Herria, in the Spanish State.
The camp was named after Şehîd Tolhildan Raman, who was martyred on the night of August 28-29, 2021 in the mountains of Kurdistan. Our Şehîd was present on an altar and all the Şehîds present on the walls, on the posters and in our words, were the representation of the life we carried inside. On a clothesline was the image of Marielle Franco, hung by the comrades of the movement, the image of her smile, of the colors she always wore on her clothes. They shared the mourning that we Brazilians carry as part of the strength of the Kurdish struggle. It is a bridge between our pains, between our rebellions and it is an invitation for us to share a democratic horizon towards freedom.
We were 50 women in the camp, women of different roots, different backgrounds, each one bringing elements unknown to the others to education. I did not know the historical struggle of Euskal Herria, the importance of its language, of its revolutionary political movements. It was in this camp that I was able to understand the duels of this territory that one day was called Spain, to understand that the contradictions are also lived here, the struggle against the processes of colonization is done from many spaces, even inside the beast.
The comrades from Valencia contributed with the sensitivity and strength of their struggles, sharing with us the expressions of the body in the theater of the oppressed, because the struggle and liberation are expressed in our own bodies; I learned with them that commitment and joy are linked. Two Catalan companions presented the history of women in the struggle against Franco’s regime. Some of the women who felt the violence of Franco’s regime in their formation were present at the camp. Listening to the stories from their voices allowed us to connect more with this territory as a space of rebellion, rebellion of the compañeras who from a very young age did not accept the impositions that were formed on being a woman. The presence of these compañeras and of a child, son of one of the camp participants, was a gift for me, because they are perspectives normally very distant or entrenched in political movements, but for the Jineolojî it is a fundamental part of education: to be democratic is to be plural.
I was not the only Latin American in the camp. Compañeras from different territories of Abya Yala participated, some organized in migrant collectives, others supporting the struggle without necessarily having an organization. All of them contributed to the analyses we were making of the realities, of the capitalist and democratic rivers, talking about the experiences of violence in their territories of origin and in their diaspora processes, and also of the resistances of the democratic river that cross our memories. It was in this memory of shared resistances that I learned, thanks to an Ecuadorian companion, the story of Dolores Cacuango (Mama Dulu), an Ecuadorian indigenous fighter who was remembered as the name of my commune.
Knowing women who are martyrs in other territories is a way to broaden our horizons of struggle, it is the common thread that links us as women: resistance. Dandara Quilombo (1694), Bartolina Sisa (1781), Mamá Dulu (1971), Sakine Cansiz (2013), Berta Cáceres (2016), Marielle Franco (2018)… there was not even a moment in history that women did not resist patriarchy, capitalism, ecocide, racism, the many forms of violence they had to live through. From their own experiences, our martyrs managed to resist power, as our Şehîd Tolhildan Raman said: “The times we live in were written with the blood of women who resisted oppression and sacrificed their lives for freedom”.
Each camp that the comrades build in the different spaces of Europe, Middle East and Latin America were and are germinated by the blood of our martyrs, the land we occupy was sown by their bodies and from them is born our struggle for freedom.
In the education we had during the seven days, the history of the Kurdish movement was narrated by a Kurdish comrade from the trajectory of Sakine Cansiz (Heval Sara), from her footprints in the struggle of Kurdistan. Based on that, we learned that collective care is a fundamental part of the militant ethics of the Kurdish comrades, caring is criticism, it is the trust that is created between comrades so that one does not betray the others, it is understanding that some will give in, others need more support, and that the cure is collective, always collective. I learned there that caring is also remembering the others, those who left and those who continue in the struggle on this plane. This sense of care as memory and as consideration of the other dialogues with the Aymara sense of care, since in Aymara the word uñjaña is used both for “caring” and for “seeing”, perceiving the other person and remembering her, removing the paternalistic sense of care as a hierarchy between the one who cares and the one who is cared for. Care is reciprocity, it is collective and it is a horizon for more democratic societies, a horizon that is built in the present of the struggle.
In this sense, we learned from Jineolojî’s companions about different elements of women’s science, from their critiques to their proposals. We made an exercise of discovering where we got lost because, according to Rêber Apo, “it is right there that we have to look for”. A practice of listening to the silences of history that shout in our ears, the history that was silenced but that lives in our territories, in the practices of women, in their way of building a democratic modernity in the fairs, in the communities of origin, in the cities and in the different spaces they occupy. We also learned that emotions must be taken into account in political movements, politicizing emotions is a very important step for social transformation. All the knowledge produced by Jineolojî was offered to us in the course of these seven days with much affection, with sensitivity and the characteristic strength of the internationalist comrades.
The space “Basoa” that hosted us in the Valley of Artea, Euskal Herria, is a space self-organized by comrades to receive refugees from different struggles around the world, people who are forced to build a life far from their territories. Bringing these debates of Jineolojî to the interior of Basoa, occupying it among 50 women, diverse, bringing our cultural expressions, our dances, our voices and listening to their voices, their verses, was a very productive exercise, an exchange that is also part of our education for liberation. There, in Basoa, we laughed, we cried, we danced, we felt traversed by each other’s stories, we were enraged by the injustices against which we were fighting, expanding our horizons of struggle and our references of the world. There we learned to take care of ourselves, looking at each other and remembering this experience.
I will carry you with me always, Jallalla, sisters!
