A Russian neighbor last night asked me in the street, “What are you? Are you Spanish?”
I shook my head and said, “No, my family is Puerto Rican.”
“So not European?”
“No, Caribbean”
” So you don’t celebrate International Women’s Day?”
“Of course I do”
and we proceeded to congratulate each other on being women.

Yesterday was International Women’s Day and Latin American Women celebrated all we do and continue to do around the world.

The Chilean Planning Ministry is venturing online for their Women’s Day Campaign, and for today, they bring us a poem read by several women. The poem is Ode to the Washerwoman by Pablo Neruda, which paints us the image of a woman washing laundry for a living at night, with a lit candle and the moon as company:

La nocturna
lavandera
a veces
levantaba
la cabeza
y ardían en su pelo
las estrellas
porque
la sombra
confundía
su cabeza
y era la noche, el cielo
de la noche
la cabellera
de la lavandera,
y su vela
un astro
diminuto
que encendía
sus manos
que alzaban
y movían
la ropa,
subiendo
descendiendo,
enarbolando
el aire, el agua,
el jabón vivo,
la magnética espuma.

I’m curious as to why a poem by Gabriela Mistral, the first mujer Latin American Nobel Prize winner, wasn’t used.

In Peru, women members of the Colective Canto a la Vida marched in Lima, demanding the respect of women’s rights as well as sexual and reproductive rights: the right to therapeutic abortions, against forced sterilizations and for access to the Day After Pill.

In Cuba, the 8th Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) is held a discussion on the organization”s daily and international work and female presence in the country”s economic life.

Latina Lista featured the words of Latin American women confronting violence in their lives.

How did you celebrate International Women’s Day yesterday?

Via / Global Voices Online, Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo/The Intelligent Aboriginal News Service