Indigenous Congresswoman Hilaria Supa Huamán (Quechua from Peru) was recently in New York to speak at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. I had the honor of meeting and interviewing her briefly on May 22, 2009. In 2005, Hilaria Supa Huamán was one of the women who were nominated in for the Nobel Peace Prize campaign.
About her participation at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the rights of Indigenous peoples and her leadership advocating for our Native communities:
On racial and cultural identity of Indigenous peoples of Peru, why we must take pride on our Native heritage, the safety of Machu Picchu and what is the meaning of the Coca leaf for Andean peoples:
About the racist attacks she faced from newspaper Correo in Lima and other Congress members. Also about her life and struggle for social justice and women rights in Peru, and the richness of our Indigenous heritage.
On racial and cultural identity of Indigenous peoples of Peru, why we must take pride on our Native heritage, the safety of Machu Picchu and what is the meaning of the Coca leaf for Andean peoples:
About the racist attacks she faced from newspaper Correo in Lima and other Congress members. Also about her life and struggle for social justice and women rights in Peru, and the richness of our Indigenous heritage.
Hilaria Supa Huamán was raised by her grandparents -her mother Helena Huamán's side- who were peasants in a hacienda or big farm owned by rich families. During her childhood, she witnessed the abuses of the farm owner towards workers and local women who were constantly raped. Her grandfather who fought for farmers rights, was murdered in 1965.Photo by Carlos A. Quiroz
When she was only six years old, she was sent to Arequipa a city in southern Peru, where she was forced to work as a maid. When she finally was given back to her relatives and returned to Cusco, she found out that her grandmother had died.
Forced by poverty and abuse, Hilaria Supa had to work again as a house maid in the cities of Cusco, Arequipa and Lima. She was raped at 14 when she was working for a rich family in Lima, something that happens too often to rural young women who migrate to big cities to find work.
As a result of the physical abuse and forced labor she faced as a child, Hilaria Supa suffers of generalized body arthritis. When she was 22, her partner and the father of her children died in an accident. None of these tragedies have destroyed her soul or stopped her commitment with social justice. Hilaria Supa has wrote a book about her life titled "Threads of My Life" -available in Spanish, English, German, and soon in Quechua- where she tells the stories on how she became stronger facing these adversities.
In the 1960 decade she became involved with other Indigenous women organizing a community program that provided with free meals for poor children. She became the leader of the Micaela Bastidas Committee in Anta in the Cusco region, and took part in the struggle for for land rights, which finally resulted in the agricultural reform legislation under the government of president Juan Velasco Alvarado.
In 1991 she became the Organizational Secretary of the new founded Women's Federation of Anta (Federación de Mujeres de Anta FEMCA), where she was responsible for alphabetization programs, traditional medicine preservation and pesticide control in Indigenous lands. Ever since then, Hilaria Supa has taken part in numerous international women rights meetings, where she has actively used her Indigenous Quechua knowledge.
In 1995 she led a protest and lobby against Peru's government programs of forced sterilization of Native women and men, ordered under the Alberto Fujimori dictatorship through his Health minister Alejandro Aguinaga. This racist policy -funded in part by the U.S. government- resulted in enforced sterilization of 363,000 Indigenous women and over 22,000 men. Until today no one has been prosecuted for those crimes.
In 2005, Hilaria Supa Huamán was one of one thousand women from around the world nominated in for the Nobel Peace Prize campaign. She was elected to the Peruvian Congress in 2006, becoming the first parliamentarian in Peru's history to take the oath in the Quechua or any Indigenous language. She was followed by her fellow Congresswoman María Sumire and others. They were sharply criticized by racist Congresswoman Martha Hildebrandt and other members of Peru's Congress, but even today she still uses Quechua when speking at Congress.
Congresswoman Hilaria Supa has participated at this year's United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where she has denounced free trade policies and abusive mining and oil exploration decrees passed by the current Peruvian government in complicity with the U.S. government. She is currently working now to rescue Machu Picchu and other Native sacred sites, so they can get under the management of the Indigenous peoples of Peru.
During a protest against a free-trade decree that caused the June 5, 2009 massacre of Indigenous peoples in Bagua, Peru, the Peruvian Congress -controlled by the government of Alan Garcia- suspended seven Indigenous members of Congress including Hilaria Supa, until the end of the year. After national and international protests, the Congress have lifted the suspension by mid August. Hilaria Supe is currently recovering of health problems in the city of Cusco.
(*) Bio based on Wikipedia, my conversation with Hilaria Supa in these videos, and information available in her official website and her Facebook as well.
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1 COMMENTS:
I have not much idea about Hilaria Supa but i know Hilaria Supa Huamán was born in a rural community of Cusco, in the Andes of Peru. She grew up speaking the Inca’s Quechua or Runasimi language in an environment of poverty and centuries-old neglect from the Lima government. Sadly she had to work as a maid since she was 6 years old, when her father -a farmers rights activist- was killed and her grandparents had to sent her to Arequipa, a big city in the Andes.
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