Glory to the Mothers of the People – People’s Women’s Movement
Glory to the Mothers of the People 1
By
People’s Women’s Movement
May 8, 1977
Oppression and exploitation keep our people in a hard and difficult situation, which with the current crisis is getting even worse, becoming almost unsustainable; in the face of this, the vigorous struggle of the masses has been developing against the three great mountains that oppress them: imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. the masses against the three great mountains that oppress them: imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. The situation and struggle of the mothers of the people is inscribed in this framework.
The Crisis Hits Low-Income Households with the Cost of Living Especially
The crisis and the measures intended to avert it, by means of the accumulated acceleration of capital and the consequent fall in real wages and increase in unemployment, have direct repercussions on the living conditions of the masses, with a persistent rise in the cost of living and shortages, which means that some foods, such as meat, milk, etc., have long been absent from the popular diet; while rice, sugar, vegetables, beans, kerosene, etc., have risen enormously and can only be obtained through long queues. have been absent for a long time from the people’s diet; while rice, sugar, vegetables, vegetables, vegetable stews, kerosene, etc. have risen enormously and can only be obtained by means of long queues. Thus, from 1976 to date, the cost of living has risen by 40.01% according to official data. However, the real increase of food products is much higher, for example: rice went from $13.30 to $23.50, increasing 77%, oil from $28.00 to $61.00, increasing 135%, milk from $13.00 to $20.70, 60%, bread from $0.70 to $1.00, 43%, just to mention a few. To this is added the lower quality of the products, with the consequent deterioration of their nutritional value, as well as the monopoly of the commercialization of agricultural products aggravates the problem of the cost of living in the countryside, where the peasants receive little for their agricultural products, making the products of the city almost inaccessible to them. All this exacerbates the chronic hunger suffered by our people, however, the government not only cuts subsidies, but aims to reduce them completely and the situation tends to worsen since the increase in agricultural production tends to decrease compared to 76 being similar to 75 or 1%, while the population increase is 3.1%.
The poor nutrition and living conditions of the masses are deteriorating their health, making them susceptible to diseases: tuberculosis, anemia, malnutrition, etc.; for example, the head of the Civil Registries of the Convention pointed out that 80% of the deaths registered in the last year were due to tuberculosis. Infant mortality is devastating children, as a result of malnutrition and lack of medical care due to low resources, 110 out of every thousand children die before their first birthday, this year misery and exploitation will claim the lives of 130,000 children. Health is still a serious problem for the masses, accentuated by the lack of medicines and hospitals and the deficient and palliative care where they exist, so death is part of the daily life of the popular masses.
The housing problem is worsening, the development of the construction industry in function of bureaucrat-capitalism and the state housing plans generate greater plundering and millions of masses live in overcrowded or cramped and unhealthy rooms. Education is becoming more and more expensive, uniforms and supplies suffer constant increases, for example, school textbooks have risen 40%; thus, to send a child to school in April, one spends at least 3,000 soles on uniforms, supplies, parents’ association, etc. Making the situation distressing when they have to send 4 or 5 children, considering that 50% of the workers receive wages below the minimum wage, which in Lima is 150 soles a day. On the other hand, the cost of education is increasingly falling on the parents through direct fees and free labor for the implementation of classrooms, furniture, etc., and moreover, this year some schools have been required to pay 1,000 soles in tuition. All of this means that 70% only reach the first grades of primary education, which is accentuated by the limitations imposed by the education law.
But these are not all the problems suffered by the masses, unemployment is another of the scourges which with the crisis has been accentuated and has repercussions mainly on the youth and women, considering that at present in the countryside two out of three are unemployed and there are millions of peasant women who are subject to unemployment, family wages and free labor. In the cities, a good example of female unemployment is that 56% of the street workers are women subjected to exhausting working hours and persecution by the repressive apparatus.
On the other hand, working mothers suffer reduced salaries, long working hours and job instability; there are also thousands of women who, as dependents, employees and domestic workers, work tirelessly for miserable salaries. Our situation is getting harder and harder.
Why is Our Situation Like this and Why is Its Perspective Worsening?
The root of our situation and the cause of all the ills of our people is none other than the weight of imperialist oppression and the exploitation of the big bourgeoisie and landowners who, with their plans, accentuate the semi-feudal and semi-colonial character of society. In our country, the backwardness that subsists in feudal modalities and the indebtedness of agriculture to the interests of foreign capital, as Mariátegui said, prevent agriculture from fulfilling its main function, to ensure the supply of the population.
It is the system itself that from time to time generates ever greater crises bringing with them economic and political difficulties that are aggravated by the world crisis but their root is eminently internal, these crises mean for the masses the loss of many conquests wrested in struggle and the aggravation of their situation. Thus, difficult moments were the years 1930-1934 and 1967 in which the country was in an acute economic crisis that generated, on the other hand, the sharpening of the struggle of the masses, a situation that, if it continued, would endanger the power of the ruling classes. To avoid this, in 1968, the current regime arose with the objective of deepening bureaucrat-capitalism and corporatively remodeling society. 8 years after the process, the country is facing a new crisis greater than the previous ones, generated by the application of the regime’s plans, the global crisis aggravates the country’s economic problems. The crisis is economic, political and ideological, and the regime, with the purpose of avoiding it, planted the general corporate readjustment with measures that have meant a greater offensive against the masses, expressed in the reduction of salaries, massive layoffs, establishment of salary ceilings, labor instability, denial of benefits, conquests and liberties, persecution of organizations and increasing repression. So far, this year shows that the difficulties have not ended, the crisis continues and threatens to worsen; to get out of it the regime will have to implement new readjustments that will bring further denial of gains and rights, new price hikes, shortages and further loss of purchasing power of the masses aggravating our already difficult situation. And the so-called “structural reforms” of the regime only lead to greater difficulties because they do not aim at destroying imperialism and feudalism, but on the contrary, they subjugate us more and more every day.
Thus, there is only one way left: to change the world, to transform it, but the world will not be changed from above; only the masses led by the working class and its Party are capable of doing so. And in a country like ours the first step is to aim at building a New-Democratic State for which we must follow the road of “converting the backward rural areas into advanced and solid revolutionary support bases” from where to march to take the cities, this road was pointed out by Mariátegui and we must strive to put this in service of it, the struggles that the masses develop day by day.
Let Us Pay Tribute to Mothers and Develop the Road of the People
The harsh conditions in which the crisis has brought to the population’s households are greatly affecting the mothers who have to take care of them. All these problems are suffered day by day by mothers, trying to make ends meet on meager wages or working long hours to bring in bread, facing the problems of housing and education for their children or in anguish that illness will take them away from them; it is mothers who most directly feel the rising cost of living and the shortages and low wages and salaries that bring with them greater misery and ignorance.
But, in the midst of these difficulties, the combative role of the mothers of the people was germinating and developing. The road of the popular struggle is also watered with their blood, sweat and tears, their actions fill entire pages of the unwritten but living history of the struggle of our people. Since the dawn of the working class, the working woman poured her blood for the eight hour [workday] and today continues to be a firm fighter in the picket lines, in the marches of sacrifice, in the common pots, in the confrontations with the police, in the rallies; the peasant women in the struggle for land; in the barrios [neighborhoods – trans], maintaining the struggle or carrying out the legal steps while their husbands go to the factory; she is also a firm fighter in the struggles against the cost of living, the 1919 struggle against the rise in the cost of living is a brilliant example. Her actions are also in the struggle for the relief of the persecuted or when she wipes their tears and, if she finds them, she continues fighting and is a determined supporter of the popular struggle.
Today, on Mother’s Day, when they try with sweet phrases to hide the hard situation of the mothers, and when the regime through the National Commission for Peruvian Women (CONAMUP), 2 Association for Cooperation with Peasant Women (ACOMUC) and its supporters; the social-corporativists of the Popular Union of Peruvian Women, try to use this date for their purposes of corporatization of the female masses; we must unmask and expose the true situation and point out the cause: the fascist regime that maintains and accentuates our oppression and exploitation; and reaffirm our decision to persist in the road of the people to destroy our enemies and build the new society.
THE PEOPLE’S WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, which has been promoting its construction as a function of the national democratic revolution, aiming to organize, politicize and mobilize the female masses, principally women peasants and workers under the banners of Mariátegui, SALUTES THE MOTHERS OF THE PEOPLE who today and tomorrow will always be firm fighters of the people’s road.
HONOR AND GLORY TO THE MOTHERS OF THE PEOPLE!
2 Footnotes
