BRASILIA – Women farmers planned, yesterday morning, the 7th Marcha das Margaridas, in Brasília. Around 9:45 am, the group arrived at the National Congress, at the Esplanada dos Ministérios, where a ceremony was held in which federal government programs were announced.
The event, which is held every four years, brings to the federal capital the political guidelines of women from the countryside, forests, waters and cities. The last edition was in 2019. This time, the motto is “For the Reconstruction of Brazil and for Good Living”.
Marcha das Margaridas is the largest joint action by working women in Latin America and has been on hiatus since the pandemic. The march was held for the first time in the 2000s and is named after a symbol of rural women’s struggle for rights: Margarida Maria Alves.
Margarida fought for formal employment, payment of the thirteenth salary, the right of male and female workers to cultivate their land, education for their sons and daughters, and the end of child labor cutting sugarcane. She was a rural worker, lace maker and the first woman to assume the presidency of the Rural Workers Union of Alagoa Grande (PB). Margarida had her life ended with a shotgun blast on August 12, 1983, at the age of 50, at her home, in front of her only son and her husband.
In a speech given in Sapé on Labor Day in 1983, Margarida said:
“It is better to die in the fight than to die of starvation.”
According to the organization of the event, there are delegations from 26 states, the Federal District and other countries. In all, 100,000 women participated.
