Saturday 20 March 2010

Against Miss Bolivia & mass idiotization of society

Eva Morales is spending $20m to satisfy Donald Trump. A Soas student provides a rough translation of the brilliant protest literature against this. 

The miss universe benefits the entrepreneur, the industry of objectification of women and feeds patriarchy. The miss universe is the machista idiotization of society)

For the dignity of women in Bolivia, No to miss universe!

March 8th, International women's day. The president Evo Morales called to hundred of women, among female ministers, deputies and candidates, to the 'Palace of government', to present them a tribute. The invitation was an excuse to give them a comfortably machista sermon in which, among other things, blamed them for being "the machistas" themselves. They were all facing down accepting their "fault".

Further down, the Mujeres Creando arrived to the Minister of Cultures and, in front of everybody's gaze, we put 2 big wall papers showing the president and the vice-president  Álvaro García Linera masturbating while watching a miss, on a typical model pose: on her knees and with her hands on her neck, her body contortioned, and of course, in bikini. She carries a sash that reads "miss humiliation" and instead of the characteristic loose sight, on her face it is written "I don't have a face, I am a thing"

That was our tribute for all the women in Bolivia, to the girl children that deserve to live on a different way, to the thousands of young women that at this very moment are living thousands of contradictions about their bodies, about freedom, about being a woman.

Like that we disordered and paid a tribute to this March 8th, protesting against the governmental plan that plans to have Bolivia as the world host of the mega event of beauty; that it is nothing but the machista idiotization of society, for which the government is willing to waist nine million USD building stages that fulfill the demands of Donald Trump, the capitalist from the US, owner of miss universe. In the meantime, thousands of women are unemployed and have taken the streets to survive, despite the municipal violence exercised against them.

(...)

The guards policing the streets nearby the Palace didn't even realized that we used a big ladder and post the walls. They only noticed our presence when we stop the circulation to spread colorful "papel picado" (short pieces of paper, like confetti) on the street to parade (like on a catwalk) on that carpet, the same way we do it on the local parties in Bolivia.

In our sashes we were not carrying beauty titles with which the machism and patriarchy identify and qualify women with, measuring their size to legitimate them and locate them on a place of thing, with no capacity of thinking, and even less of reflection and revelry. 

In our sashes there was the day to day lives of women (in spanish miss can also be read as 'my'): miss/my abortions, miss/my lovers, miss/my declassified files, miss/my debts, miss/my sadnesses, miss/my collapses. The craftswoman who made then, using the Bolivian flag and bright golden letters, have done thousands of sashes for objectifies girls in school age, objectifies university students, to objectified cholas (in Bolivia the word cholo, or chola, is a widely used term which generally refers to people with various amounts of Amerindian racial ancestry), but never for a protest against a beauty contest. She cunningly accepted these job.
(...)
Mora than 30 police arrived to the place and tried to stop us. Lots of people passing by criticized us, they though that we were being disrespectful against the president of the government by showing him naked, but the same amount of people, among men and women, were supportive because they though that both the miss universe and some other actions and attitudes from the government were humiliating on daily basis against women.

With the same clumsiness as ever they pushed us away: more than 30 against 7 of us. That didn't stop our claim. In our way, we got into a police office nearby the Palace: on the reception desks there was no one. We also got into the offices of the vice-presidency of the republic, avoiding the police control: there was no one neither. It was 11 AM and no one could told is where people went; someone sad that everybody had been called to a governmental reunion. 

(...)

for pictures have a look at http://www.mujerescreando.org/ and just click on (leer mas) underneath the imaged posted here

Sent from my iPhone

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