IWD In Ciudad Juarez: Why class is a key issue

As we contend with a pandemic that has claimed thousands of workers’ lives, making it clear that for business owners, the preservation of profits is more important than the preservations of our lives, we must revisit the lessons of those women who, together with their male comrades, took to the streets, bringing their workplaces to a halt, demanding better working and living conditions.
 
In Ciudad Juarez, exploitation in the make-up industry is a distinctly female injustice. Besides the gruelling working hours and the harassment in the factories, unpaid domestic labour increased during the pandemic. It was in this same context that we also saw an increase in murders and disappearances of women.
 
Meanwhile, the municipal government limits itself to launching useless campaigns against violence towards women and against street harassment – safe zones, panic buttons, purple patrols*, as well as the delivery of rape whistles to women in outlying neighbourhoods. As we have reported before, these are superficial methods that, far from stopping misogynistic violence at its root, serves only to clean the conscience of this women-murdering state.
 
Which direction will IWD take this year?
 
The 8th March of last year was historic. Thousands of women marched in more than 70 cities across the country, with multiple demonstrations like the one that saw Mexico City painted purple. It was a day that showed that there are millions of us in Mexico prepared to fight for our rights and against the violence we’re living through.
 
Knowing the power that we women have when we take to the streets, this year they used the excuse of the public health crisis to try to quarantine the women’s movement. In Ciudad Juarez, we experienced those attempts when, on 5th September, more than 30 women were detained after a demonstration against police violence was repressed.
 
Another example of the repression of protest was on the 28th September in Mexico City, where in spite of the fact that Claudia Sheinbaum is a woman who represents the 4T and calls herself progressive, hundreds of women were detained for more than three hours. But in spite of their attempts to lock us up, we didn’t stop!
 
What is the winning strategy?
 
This 8th March, in the middle of the pandemic, there arose various calls to mobilise, which illustrates the different positions on how to further advance the fight for our rights. Yesterday, a procession was held, from Puerta del Milenio to the Campo Algodonero, orchestrated by civil organisations who are the self-appointed representatives of the women’s movement in the city. These organisations claim to fight for the rights of women through institutional routes. Essentially, they’ve put their confidence in the city’s institutions that, until a week ago, had Armando Cabada at the helm. They’ve put their trust in rotten institutions to look after our safety and guarantee our rights like the right to an abortion and to decent jobs.
 
The strategy proposed by this sector of feminism ignores the fact that, for decades, Ciudad Juarez has been a shining example that women can be murdered, insulted and trafficked, all enabled by the complicit silence of the authorities. It’s not even that they’re negligent or careless; they use scapegoats to divert investigations, create more victims, and even use their podiums of power to hide those responsible for the murders and disappearances of women. The best example of this? Armando Cabada himself.
 
It must be said that, contrary to common belief, it’s not that the capitalist, patriarchal state just makes mistakes. It’s that it deliberately serves to reinforce the social order that business owners and the monied classes want to perpetuate in order to maximise their profits and interests. It’s for this reason that they don’t want to solve or stop violence against us. On the contrary, their actions make it clear that for them, women’s lives and women’s labour are merely commodities to be exploited.
 
Because of this, a women’s movement that looks to triumph should trust in their own power, independent from the authorities and from all political parties of the regime. Although at times they engage with our demands, they only ever do it opportunistically, like we’re seeing in the current electoral context, or in the case of the paedophile Aristeo Baca. There, a problem as serious as extreme violence against children is presented to us through the lens of one individual case; this one punishment doesn’t serve to examine the root of the patriarchal structures, it ends up legitimising the institutions of justice. “Times are changing”, they said, in reference to the ruling, yet it’s only one case solved in a sea of impunity.
 
Yes, it’s true that prosecuting a paedophile is progress, but it’s not the justice that our children deserve. We can’t lose sight of the fact that the problem is not one priest, but an entire, age-old institution that has multiple connections to state powers.
 
The clearest sign of this is that, despite decades of fighting through institutions, there hasn’t been any decline in femicides and trafficking networks. On the contrary, there have been cases of female activists who have been killed and justice still has not been served. It’s time to change strategy.
 
IWD: Combative and with a focus on class
 
In the context of the politicisation that the women’s movement has awoken across the country, there also exist collectives of feminists who identify as separatists. That is to say that they see the fight for our rights as a uniquely female fight. These sectors in Juarez have organised the Jornada 8M: Juntas nos cuidamos”. [IWD: Together we look after ourselves.]
 
It’s true that we need spaces for women where we can discuss and talk strategy for the movement. Nevertheless, these should be democratic spaces, accepting all voices - students, young women involved in collectives and organisations - but also voices from the sex diverse community. Trans men and women who live under the same misogynistic and patriarchal violence should be welcome in spaces where we can have frank, direct discussions about what is the best strategy to combat violence.
 
This should also involve the perspectives of women who live through this violence in an even more pronounced way - female workers, the majority of whom have to deal with double or triple shifts.
 
In a city like Juarez, with an enormous economic dependence on the make-up industry, which itself relies on the hyper-exploitation of the female workforce, there’s a vested interest in making it clear that women’s lives don’t matter and that those who dare to raise their voices will be disciplined.
 
For this reason, if we want the women’s movement to triumph, organising and taking to the streets, we have an urgent task in rejecting the notion that we are just impotent victims, and instead asserting that we can stand up to the capitalist, patriarchal monster that oppresses and exploits us.
 
For that, we need the power of working women at the helm, in alliance with our class comrades, since it’s only together that we can halt the means of productions that facilitate the capitalists’ earnings. A fight, shoulder to shoulder with our class comrades, to force our demands, as we have in the past.
 
Let us not forget, for example, how the male workers of Foxconn took up the demands of their female colleagues against the sexual harassment and assault they were subjected to by their supervisors and managers. This was during the work stoppages of 2016. That is an examples of how we, the exploited and oppressed, should fight.
 
For this reason, from Pan y Rosas Ciudad Juarez, we’ve proposed a day of inclusivity, with a focus on class and combat. To quote the North American socialist Louise Kneeland in 1914, “The socialist who is not a feminist lacks breadth. The feminist who is not a socialist is lacking in strategy.”
 
 
*In 2019, a police unit specialising in preventing crimes against women was introduced in Mexico City, identifiable by the use of the colour purple on their patrol cars and uniforms.

Original article: www.laizquierdadiario.mx/8M-en-Ciudad-Juarez-Por-que-una-jornada-con-perspectiva-de-clase

Translated by Molly Shevlin.