The Comité de Mujeres Patricia Marín (CMPM) is moving forward with the work around the child care campaign, political education and fund raising. We have much work ahead, with the campaign for child care. Child care has become a crucial necessity for Unión del Barrio, and our members. We have revisited our study sessions on Revolutionary Cuban Women for newer members and are completing the final summation of women in the Cuban revolution which will be appearing in a future issue of ¡LA VERDAD!
The CMPM has had it’s contradictions this year with the health campaign and deciding what was going to be our focus. Our approach to the health campaign depended on outside forces, including health practitioners and premed students from local universities. Although these forces showed much interest in the beginning, they were reluctant in developing practical work around this question. Other contradiction developed because of student schedules and maintaining contact, which made it difficult to organize events because their activism revolved around academic quarters. Thus, we have decided to put the Health Care Campaign on hold until we have made an assesment if this campaign and decide if this is going to be feasible or not.
The CMPM is self-critical in this area because of our own lack of understanding exactly what the campaign would encompass. The Comité is also critical of not comming out with a political analysis of the oppression of Mexicana women and our role in the struggle. The former Women’s Commission was assigned the task by the 1995 Plenary. This challenging task began with contradiction, which we have not yet resolved. Specifically related to the small percentage of women within Unión del Barrio’s ranks, many of whom were very new to organization and political struggle.
The women that did join up with the commission lacked the political development and articulation necessary to make such an analysis. Clearly this was the obstacle that prevented us from making a concrete resolution, and little was created from this commission. The women who were in the commission approached this question by creating study session as a way of gaining our own political development. We have worked on this through analyzing past struggles of compañeras within the context of revolutionary movements. We looked at Cuba, Nicaragua, México and we also looked at the many manifestations of feminism and its tendencies.
The positive aspect of our efforts is that women within Unión learned much about the struggles of other revolutionary women which has helped to shape the CMPM and our participation in the organization and the movimiento. The initiative was taken to expand our understanding and has helped us to progress, but there is still much work to be done towards developing an analysis on the oppression of Mexican women. We can truly say that the compañeras within our ranks have a clearer understanding of what our role as activists are. The clearest example of this has been our affirmation of struggle in every aspects of political life.
March 1997 marked our third retreat, where we concluded to commit ourselves to working in a more practical way. We decided to take on a campaign that would secure child care at all meetings, study sessions and events. In addition this would serve to politically educate the children of the organization. We see this issue as critical since at any one time we have up to 12 children within the group and many more on the way. This is an issue which, with out a doubt, has been a contradiction facing the organization for some time. Some of the reasons for the urgency of this issue are: 1) the realization that the lack of child care for families and especially compañeras of Unión del Barrio has resulted in a lack of time, dedication and productivity of tasks; 2) stagnation of the overall political development of our compañeras has been the result; 3) political development of our children is a crucial part of our struggle as a people; 4) to make meetings, study sessions, and events more productive for the individual cuadro and for the movement in general.
For reasons stated, the CMPM has taken up the task in building the Child care campaign. The structure of the overall campaign shall be: 1) the coordination of child care at all necessary events; 2) the political education of the children of Unión del Barrio, and the community through a type of school. The name of this campaign will be decided at our next meeting.
Some of the objectives of the campaign are:
To provide parents, specifically compañeras of Unión the opportunity to dedicate themselves to completing necessary political tasks and enhancing their overall political understanding.
The CMPM had also created a manual for militantes that explains how to set up child care in any given situation. It contains a curriculum, logistical information and a theoretical map for running a Child care/school which emphasizes teaching the children collectivism, responsibility, self-dicipline, pride, and tools for preserving a healthy social environment necessary in the psychological development of our children.
The Comité de Mujeres will be kicking off this campaign Saturday August 22 at 10:00 am with a breakfast for the children and families of Unión del Barrio, and the community.
¡Que Viva La Mujer Revolucionaria!
To utilize child care as a tool for the overall education and political cultivation of the children of Unión del Barrio and the rest of the Mexicano community.
To use the child care as a training and educational practice for militantes.
To facilitate smoother running meetings, study sessions, and political events
¡Que Viva La Raza!