2. My road to the Encuentro

I found out about the existence of the Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Meeting) a few years ago, but only in this occasion I had the means to travel and attend it.

During that time, my curiosity for feminism evolved into a more solid knowledge, then comprehension and finally, thanks to the Encuentro itself, in political activism.

Image from Kelly Barnhill

Just like my awakening to political consciousness and citizenship, I made an effort to explore and understand the different points of view and strategies within the women’s movement.

I found myself within a world of ideas, considerably more complex, diverse and contradictory than an ideology or a political-party-oriented identity.

1. ¿What is the Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres?

The following excerpts were selected and translated from Spanish by me.

There are links to the original content at the end of each section.

Organization

Year after year, women from all corners of Argentina get together to try and make our thousands of voices heard, through an open, democratic and participatory system.

Logo image from the 28° Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres

These meetings are the most important expression of the fights and struggles we face in our different places, neighborhoods, cities, homes, works, etc.

In them, we all learn together, we say it is one big school. We share our experiences among women from very different places in our country. Thousands of us discovered through the Encuentros that the daily oppression we endure is not our destiny.

We do this through a practice that contradicts the social practices imposed upon women, and it is in the workshops of the Encuentro where we recover the voices of those of us who have no voice.

Thus we strengthen this democratic, horizontal and heterogeneous space, which has no owner because it belongs to all of us.

My experience at the 29th National Women’s Meeting in Argentina

This year, I participated for the first time in an event called Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Meeting) during its 29th edition, in the city of Salta.

The National Women’s Meeting takes place annually in Argentina since 1986. It is an ​​autonomous, self-organized, democratic, pluralistic, self-funded, federal and horizontal meeting.

It is held in a different city every year, the new location is chosen democratically in the final assembly of each meeting.

With the intent to enrich the debate around the organization of women with focus in Argentina, I’m sharing my experience of participating for the first time in the Encuentro and, from my subjective point of view, my personal and political reflections.