After 20 years of constant advocacy, Afro-Peruvian women organizations’ efforts for recognition are paying off. At the beginning of July 2020, amid a world pandemic and the global outrage due to the George Floyd murder by the Minneapolis police, the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Peoples of Peru in collaboration with 14 Afro-Peruvian organizations, presented a bill to declare 25 July the National Day of Afro-Peruvian Women. The bill was approved unanimously by the Committee of Women and Family of the Peruvian Congress and will be presented for plenary approval in the following months. This bill is a big step for Afro-descendant women in Peru. These women’s activities and spaces have been at the centre of the Peruvian social fabric since colonial times, from their participation in urban life and agricultural labour to representing the nation in sports competitions, the arts, and the academy. A day to honour Afro-Peruvian women’s lives is long overdue. It is one of the steps the Peruvian government has taken for the United Nation’s International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). We hope this day marks the beginning of CONCRETE and TRANSFORMATIONAL actions favouring our dreams, hopes, and position in Peruvian society.

Roxana Escobar is PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, Canada. @TurulekA

For more on Antipode’s “Conjunctural Insurrections” series – an experiment to amplify voices often unheard and invisibilised in politics, daily life, and academic discourse – see https://antipodeonline.org/2020/06/23/conjunctural-insurrections/