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For the past five years, women from the deep interior of Argentina, where deep-rooted patriarchal cultural patterns persist, have taken their first steps in popular and peasant feminism.
There, in remote and forgotten rural areas, the division of labor in households remains rigid and they are the main responsible for food security.
The countryside reproduces the inequalities of the cities in the country: the ranches of thousands of hectares of wheat and soybeans contrast with the humble farmhouses of the peasantry without basic services, who still fight for possession of their lands.
The women of this “other field” tend to be invisible silhouettes who carry on from Monday to Monday with housework, child rearing and field work, without rest or recreation.
Data from the latest National Agricultural Census indicate that in Argentina there are almost 158 million hectares of agricultural use.
Two out of every ten producers are women and 38% of the resident and working population in the agricultural and livestock farm for export is female.
On the other hand, the peasantry in the mountains does not appear in a large part of the statistics.
Without data, there is a lack of public policies and access to rights.
Celesta and Camila Cuello harvest vegetables in the agroecological garden in the neighborhood of El Barrial, in the city of San José.RAMIRO PEREYRA
Information from the latest 2010 National Census (the 2022 census has yet to be processed) indicates that the rural population in Argentina represents 8.9% of the total and women are a minority (45%) because they migrate and suffer uprooting.
"The inequalities and structural violence suffered by peasant women are characterized by the difficulties of decent work recognized monetarily, and the lack of access to ownership of the land that is necessary for production and daily life," explains Carolina Moyano. , member of the Córdoba Peasant Movement and the peasant and popular feminism team.
The inequity in access to paid work and the extremely demanding conditions in the potato harvest in the west of the province of Córdoba, and other crops in several provinces, served as a motor for the search for alternatives for empowerment through ventures.
The National Indigenous Peasant Movement, which has been articulating peasant groups from seven Argentine jurisdictions for 20 years, and brings together nine thousand families, is also part of Vía Campesina, an international organization that seeks development, roots, better living conditions and food sovereignty.
Carolina Moyano, member of the Córdoba Campesino Movement.
inside one of the classrooms of the peasant school of Las Cortaderas.RAMIRO PEREYRA
These movements have been promoting feminist reflection and action for five years, which are born from the communities themselves.
In the last assembly that brought together 200 women this year (twice as many as in 2021) in Villa Dolores, in the west of Cordoba, it became clear that it is a feminism with "feet on the ground", which fights for equality: for a dignified life free of violence and oppression.
“You have to get women out of that format where they do nothing but are left (...) I have pushed [pushed] for us to have a women's meeting, but the men do not allow them to go, they want to know what we are talking about.
I don't know what they think we are going to plan," says Miriam Reinoso, 58, a pioneer of the Unión Campesina de Traslasierra (Ucatras) and inhabitant of Las Cortaderas, an arid rural area almost on the border with the province of San Luis, where He raises kids, collaborates with the health service, makes goat cheese and creams with medicinal herbs.
Miriam has been fighting for two decades for the economic autonomy of women, for the recognition of unpaid tasks and the elimination of historical subjugation.
"In the case of the sale of goat livestock production, the peasant women do not manage the marketing money, but rather the men," explains Moyano.
In addition, he points out, their animals are registered with official organizations in their name.
Ana Cuello, a 42-year-old farmer, producer of sweets (jams) in the town of San José, emphasizes that feminism in the countryside is different from that in the city.
“We do it from our roots as rural workers.
We have our production to defend our income and manage our money, ”she remarks.
Ana Cuello poses next to dozens of jars of orange jam.RAMIRO PEREYRA
The women explain that feminism is taking shape from popular education as a collective and horizontal intellectual exercise that allows us to understand how patriarchy manifests itself in relationships, family and social structures in peasants, and from there defend rights and a dignified life with actions. .
“In the rural and in the peripheral urban areas, hunger and poverty have the body of a woman.
It is a somewhat sad metaphor, but the effort and difficulties are not suffered equally between men and women”, says Moyano.
from sunrise to sunset
In the small town of Las Cortaderas, some 800 kilometers from the city of Buenos Aires, a road of dry and dusty earth separates the prosperous countryside from the impoverished peasants.
On the right, the soybean hectares with sprinkler irrigation.
In front, a hamlet of 41 families that survive without electricity, with well water, some kids in the pens, a multi-grade school and a modest health center that operates on Miriam's land.
She is an all-rounder, who, in addition to earning a living with field tasks, is the benchmark for health.
She has no studies, but she learned from community doctors: she does pap smears, advises young people on contraception and accompanies the health professional who visits the area once a month.
“It is a very sacrificed life in the field.
You are struggling day by day.
We work a lot, from sunrise to sunset.
We don't have a place to get together to drink mate or for recreation, you don't have the time, ”she details.
Miriam Reinoso with her kids, in the town of Las Cortaderas.RAMIRO PEREYRA
There, in the spring, it is 40 degrees in the shade, and the spiders scorch in the scorching sun.
In her house in her shadows to keep it cool, Miriam says that she knows her rights, something that her ancestors were unaware of.
That is why she was one of the promoters of the opening of the peasant school in an old warehouse.
“People don't know how women live in the countryside.
You don't have a holiday.
We have a lot of work that is not recognized even by the men who live with us.
'She is a housewife, she does nothing', they say.
If doing laundry, picking up the kids for school or cleaning isn't work, why don't they do it?”, she ironically.
little autonomy
Peasant feminism is built from the productive units led by women and from spaces for political formation managed by the Peasant Movement, an organization without political affiliation.
Nucleated in communities, they carry out their own collective undertakings: the elaboration of goat cheeses, jams, dulce de leche, honey, garden products or with aromatic herbs.
They market them at fair prices through the peasant organization and thus obtain profits that allow them independence.
“We had been working on the perspective of gender equality, but it was not enough.
We build peasant and popular feminism because it leads us to look at ourselves from the particularities of rural life.
The discussion has to do with access to rights;
we are disputing public policies from the beginning: there is no record of the situation of women, of how many are producers and how much food they produce.
We believe that if it is not named it does not exist and if it does not exist, it is not named.
The economy generated by women is very large, but the economic autonomy they have is very low”, says Carolina.
production and power
In El Barrial, a neighborhood in San José, a group of peasant women -the relatives Laura, Valeria, Lili, Romina and Ana Cuello, as well as Belén Agüero and two men- run a business making homemade sweets.
The work table works in Ana's patio where the sterilized jars are placed and the preparation is cooked over low heat.
All the sweet makers have experience in the potato harvest;
some, from the age of 11, with physical scars from years of extreme demands.
“People gather potatoes into a bag by hand that a machine throws away, without schedule.
You leave life”, says Valeria.
Neighbors of El Barrial make orange marmalade, on November 18.RAMIRO PEREYRA
That is why they are grateful for the opportunity to receive a state subsidy to produce food and market it.
But they still lack authorization for sale to the public;
They only do it through a network of peasant stores distributed throughout the country.
Valeria believes that the possibility of making jams is a step towards autonomy.
“We are no longer dependent on the man bringing you the coin.
Now I tell my husband: 'I manage my money, we divide expenses'.
He tells me 'they go to those meetings there (of the peasant movement) and they become stronger.'
We already feel more empowered,” she admits.