|  | LIMA, (IPS) - The traditional image of rural women in Latin America, marked by the survival and care of his family, gives way to one of the protagonists of trade and production in small and large scale, a change that is behind success stories and exploitation. 
From central Huancavelica, the poorest region of Peru, the Quechua Gladis Vila has been with other women who make environmental fairs in 22 of the 25 regions of the country as proof that it is possible to produce food without degrading the environment. "Women are the conservative indigenous production of bio-diversity and respecting nature we do business," he told IPS. She, in addition to working the land, chairs the National Indigenous Women's Organization and Amazon. Rural women produce between 50 and 80 percent of the world's food, according to a report by the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), 2008. The ratio increases with increasing the poverty of nations.
| experiences in the field are diverse in the region and so are the women from different corners of Latin America met in Lima this month to participate in the international seminar on "Rural women: change and persistence." Among them was the anthropologist Kirai de León, who narrated the success story of the producers of medicinal herbs and Uruguay. | are 17 farmers who are part of the Cooperative Calmañana 25 years and which will incorporate 14 other women to continue to expand their domains in the southern department of Canelones. | The cooperative supplying supermarkets in Uruguay, arrive its products to Europe and part of the national certification of organic products in their country. "They are very respected by condimenteros (traders of spices). They have achieved a great space," he told IPS De Leon, who accompanies them from the beginning. Uruguayan Specialist explained that one of the herbal medicines that have more international demand is marcela (anchyrocline satureioides) that has antioxidant and cellular protection, besides being an anti-inflammatory and antiviral. According to the World Health Organization, 85 percent of the world's population relies on medicinal plants for primary health care. And these Uruguayan women not only help to make this possible but also perform this task without using chemicals. "We must change the way we produce not only look after husbands, but caring for the environment. That's a major transformation," said Jeanine Anderson, an anthropologist and specialist in gender issues at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.
care of the environment is related to land management. Bolivian activist Elizabeth Lopez, the Latin American Network of Women Human Rights Defenders Social and Environmental, said it is important for there to be economic empowerment of rural women.
"The issue is not only access to land but territoriality to ensure that women have the ability to use water, biodiversity, soils, and other natural resources. If they can not have it, will be limited" , the expert told IPS in Bolivia. López
considered that the emergence of other economic activities such as mining cut the rights of rural women over the territory. Them, despite being the major suppliers of food on the planet, they own only 10 percent of the land, according to the UNDP study.
In the Andes, mining coexist with livestock and agriculture generate impacts different in women. "There is a total devaluation of what women do in livestock against the development of mining," Lopez said, recalling struggles with female role against mining companies in Bolivia and other Andean countries.
Another phenomenon of growing importance in Latin American agro-industrial production is the migration of women from the countryside to the city in a region where they represent 48 percent of the rural population, some 58 million.
In Peru, for example, large-scale agribusiness has led to women moving from the Andes to the coastal areas within and outside their regions. Gladys is the case Campos, former employee of the company Sociedad Agricola Viru, a producer of asparagus benefited from the country's agricultural export boom.
Campos left Cochabamba, the people in the mountains of northern department of La Libertad, to work in the company located in the coast region. But it only worked there two and a half years in October 2004 because she was fired for being a labor union to protect their rights.
"We worked 17 hours a day for a miserable salary. We are not paid overtime. They bring you to your people you recruit, make you work as a slave, they tell you will help and then you deduct the cost of food and lodging. Then they can you, "Campos told IPS in a story repeated many times.
Now, she is secretary of the National Federation of Peasant Women, Artisan, Indigenous, Native and Salaried Peru.
The salary of the leader was only $ 214 a month. The women said they were not hired as temporary workers between January and April, when there is the great harvest, but they worked all year and no holidays.
In contrast, Peru's agricultural exports increased only 27.8 percent between January and September this year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Within this dynamic, the items nontraditional represent 74 percent of exports, with outstanding fresh asparagus, carmine of cochineal (red pigment Dactylopius coccus insect), grapes and mangoes.
"Those who truly support the economy at the cost of overtime, are workers, not companies," she complained.
Anderson is important to analyze the impacts of the new rurality with the participation of rural women in various economic activities in small and large scales.
In Colombia, migration occurs indefinitely, driven by decades of civil war. "A field is hope," is the phrase of one of those displaced recalling the social worker Edilma Colombian Flor Osorio and reveals "the longing to the field to the misery that exists in the city," he said.
"In the field may be poor but you do not need to eat, but in the city but you have silver (money), not live. There is a total loss," she explained.
For Anderson, the challenge is to create a productive system for women and men from rural areas to enable them to enjoy as well as city dwellers. No public policy can simplify precarious aid to poor families, he said. (FIN/2010)
Source: IPS Spread: Ukhamawa News http://ukhamawa.blogspot.com (Bartolinas.blogspot.com)
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