AMNLAE marks 7 years of relentless commitment
1985 1985-03Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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The organized women's movement in Nicaragua, which celebrated its seventh anniversary last September, has grown out of an unusual combination of factors.
Women have, first of all, played a crucial economic role in the country. Women comprise 40% of the urban labor force, although they account for only 14%of industrial workers. An estimated 25% of rural workers are women. In Managua, 49% of all families have women heads, 85% of whom work (Source of statistics: Nicaraguan Institute of Statistics and Census).
Women are often "the first to be affected by unemployment, inflation, and shortages, Gloria Carrion, general coordinator of the Nicaraguan Women's Association (AMNLAE), told Margaret Randall ('Sandino's Daughters" New Star Books, 1981). Frequently they "face the task of holding the family together when the men lose their jobs....A large percentage of Nicaraguan women have been left alone with their children."
It is these conditions, Carrion concludes, which have compelled women to become involved in the revolution. Working-class and peasant women have had to fight for their very existence, and the intensity of their engagement is a result primarily of "their class condition."
In 1977, following a few abortive attempts to form a women's organization, the Sandinista Front launched the Woman's Association to Confront the National Situation (AMPRONAC). Originally composed of 70 professional women, AMPRONAC was soon broadened to include women from a wide range of backgrounds.
According to the Oct. 11, 1984, Barricada Internacional, these women came to the conclusion that "in order to solve their own problems, they also had to work toward solving those of society as a whole", and that the first necessity was the overthrow of the dictatorship.
AMPRONAC, with 8000 members by the end of the war, set up "safe houses" to hide guerrillas and equipment, administered first-aid in clandestine clinics, prepared secret arms and food caches, and distributed revolutionary propaganda.
After the triumph of the revolution, the organization took the name of tre first woman FSLN member to die in the struggle. It became the Luisa Amanda Espinosa Nicaraguan Womens Association (AMNLAE).
Today AMNLAE has 30,000 members. It includes women from all over the country and from different situations, but Gloria Carrion reports that the membership is still composed predominantly of working-class and peasant women. Today, she says, the "tasks of women and of the Revolution are one and the same.... Women's specific demands are also the Revolution's demands." •