On Friday, January 23rd, the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras launched their campaign, Defending to Live and Live Well.

The event, enlivened by the musical group PURAS MUJERES, had a festive atmosphere: “We get together to enjoy the good and generous times that allow us to laugh with others over the gift of being in the world, enjoying our bodies and our awakened consciousness.”

It couldn’t be any other way. With the title, Defending to Live and Live Well, the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, proposes that we understand and take on self-care as a political position. This implies confronting the historical, systematic conditions of extreme precariousness experienced by the diverse collectivity of women under patriarchy, with the will to “turn this reality around, stick out our tongues, run for our lives, and come together to cry over what they’ve grabbed away from us....”

It’s definitely true, say the comrades of the Network, that Defending to Live and Live Well “is not only a legacy of the feminisms that have been opening roads into the communities, assemblies, homes, barrios and books for dècades. It’s the watchword that we’re using for the first time in 2017, like a new bicycle given to a boy or girl who wants it more than anything in the world, with high spirits, strength, and the common wish that our errors will teach us, that our blood will multiply in the lives of rebels, that our sorrow won’t repeat itself due to patriarchal evil and its hate.”

The many campaign activities include the recent presentation of the book, Marta, la de la Lopez: The way I learned and unlearned, written by Virginia Marta Velázquez and Melissa Cardoza (see photos of the presentation), and the community radio broadcasts in spaces produced by the Network with the support of many of its members.

Yessica Trinidad, Coordinator of the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, presented the campaign, Defending to Live and Live Well.

We congratulate the National Network for Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras for this initiative, as fantàstic as it is necessary, to foment self-care as an indispensable strategy for the comprehensive protection of women defenders and its maintenance in their struggles and their movements.

Here below we share a list of some of the programs featured on radio spaces produced by the National Women Defenders Network for the campaign.

[playlist ids="2348,2347,2346,2345,2344,2343,2342"]

We, of IM-Defensoras will be following the development of the campaign, Defending to Live, and Live Well, with high hopes. We’ll keep you informed.

Photos: National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras (See more)