GABRIELA Women's Update

Editorial Collective:
Liza Largoze-Maza
Marion Jimenez-Tan
Ruth H. Manglalan
Janice Lee-Monte

GABRIELA Women's Update is published by GABRIELA National Alliance of Women's Organizations in the Philippines. Articles, news, artworks and captioned photos from all member organizations and international contacts are most welcome. Please send manuscript and correspondence to:

GABRIELA
Public Information Department
P.O.Box 4386
Manila 1800
Philippines

Or send us e-mail

We recognize that the 1896 Revolution exhibited the significant role of women in liberating the nation. Like Gabriela Silang and Teresa Magbanua, many women from the peasant and working class transcended their traditional feudal roles intituted and perpetuated by the Spaniards. We commemorate the thousands of grassroots women -- women armed revolutionaries, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the Katipuneros -- who offered their lives for the country.

The commemoration of the Philippine Revolution should also serve to rouse the people into realizing that the struggle is far from over. The local ruling elite continues to this day to collaborate with foreign monopoly capitalists to sell the lives and livelihood of the Filipino people. The recently concluded national elections paved the way for "new" leaders with hundred-year-old values -- that is, being servile to US imperialist dictates. Filipino women continue to face the heightening poverty and exploitation of workers and violence against women under the aegis of "globalization". . . human rights violations of the Filipino people abound. Despite the CAR-HR-IHL forged between the National Democratic Front and the Philippine Government.

Definitely, the struggle is not yet over. The Filipino women together with the rest of the basic masses will continue what our forebears had begun. The struggle will persist until we achieve true liberation and genuine democracy.