Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Nora Cortiñas joined the march (photo: Patricio Murphy)
Indigenous women marched yesterday from the Julio Roca monument, on Diagonal Sur and Perú, to Congress. There, they talked to a group of deputies about introducing a bill to create a ‘Council of Women for Good Living’.
Some 500 people participated in the First Indigenous Women’s March for Good Living. Thirty-six nations were represented, including the Mapuche, Wichí, Qom, Quechua, and Guaraní peoples. They were accompanied by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mother of Plaza de Mayo Nora Cortiñas, and writer Osvaldo Bayer, among others.
Once the march reached Congress, some 200 women were received by a group of deputies from different parties, to whom they gave a draft bill for the creation of a ‘Council of Women for Good Living’. The draft indicates that each indigenous nation must appoint “two councillors according to their ancestral philosophy” and that the Council should carry out a process of consultation, participation, and information “to elaborate and propose rules and policies to guarantee Good Living and to make it effective.”
“It is the first time in the 200 years the Argentine state has existed that us indigenous women have come to bring our word. Our proposal is for Good Living and we hope the Argentine people will wake up and follow our steps,” said Mapuche leader Moira Millán in an interview with Télam as the march approached Congress.
The deputies committed to putting forward the draft bill before Parliament.
Nilda Wayna Tusuy, a Quechua woman who participated in yesterday’s march, defined the indigenous concept of ‘Good Living’ as “balance and harmony, and it’s the opposite to what the capitalist system proposes, which is about living better individually, at the expense of the majority of people being worse off.”
“Good living implies, in the first place, not to live better at the expense of someone else being worse, and when I say someone else I mean human beings but also plants and animals; it’s about living with dignity, with harmony, it is inclusion, cultural and national diversity, it is considering that we are brothers and sisters,” said Tusuy.
The day’s activities finished with an evening festival and concert on a stage set up before Congress.
The march finished in Congress (photo: Patricio Murphy)
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