Translated from the collective’s website:
The Red de Migración, Género y Desarrollo was born on March 21, 2011. We are a defiant community made up of women and organisations of women from around the globe who use our firsthand knowledge, diverse feminist geneologies and activism in our regions of origin to promote collective and transformative involvement with decolonial feminism.
Our name, the Migration, Gender and Development Network, includes three causes:
Migration: because we come from diverse latitudes and cross physical and mental borders. Because we stand by our origins in order to transform and contribute to human diversity. Because we are analysts of and legitimate experts in migrant experiences and trajectories, and we promote human coexistence from the “inclusive we”, without racist, macho, capitalist, LGBTI-phobic, anthropocentric, classist or ableist violence.
Gender: because we legitimately question gender oppression and, with a decolonial feminist critique, reappropriate a new reading of gender theory beyond the relationships of power dichotomies by constructing diverse autonomies and expanding freedoms. We do this, above all, to demonstrate and denounce how human diversity has been made invisible and subjugated through colonial gender oppression.
Development: because we question the global monopoly of a development model that is anthropocentric, male-centred, eugenic, racist, classist, heteronormative, capitalist, predatory and consumerist. We promote developments in diversity that promote self-care within the community, the protection of vital networks, care for our living environment and peaceful, decolonial coexistence.
Specific authors from the Red de Migración, Género y Desarrollo featured on the Guerrilla Translation blog:
Bombo Ndir has experience, both in her homeland Senegal and now in Spain, in teaching, organising, the arts, caregiving and promoting the autonomy of women through training and work. Having created a women’s network, she now works as a cultural facilitator and continues her training work with a consistent focus on gender equality. She has also been a human rights activist for many years.
Sara Cuentas Ramírez, author of Análisis Interseccional para el Cambio (Intersectional analysis for change), is an expert in applied methodologies with a focus on gender, human rights and intersectionality. She monitors and evaluates programmes, policies, development and research strategies that promote the empowerment of diverse collectives, particularly of women and girls.
Arlene Cruz Carrasco (bio pending)
Feminist resistance must be anti-racist or it is not feminism at all. Of course, as feminists, we are not immune to assuming patriarchal, racist, Eurocentric, classist and transphobic practices, because as activists, we have been socialised, just like everyone else, by a hegemonic, colonial system that rules the western and westernised world. Therefore, in order to eradicate this oppression, we must practice denunciation, reparation and restitution.