In recent days, the Eritrean Community in Italy has been celebrating March 8, Women’s Day. The Community is present in many cities in our country, in more or less large groups: Bologna, Milan, Rome, and Florence, just to name the largest, but woe betide anyone who forgets the others, such as Parma, Reggio Emilia, Pisa, Genoa, Turin, or Catania, Bari, Pescara, Pistoia, and so on and so forth. I apologize to anyone I may not have mentioned, but the list is so vast that it even encourages some… “memory drift”. Each group traditionally celebrates this and other anniversaries, such as the Anniversary of Independence or that of Operation Fenkil, or Martyrs’ Day, according to the date on which it is possible for everyone to gather: usually Sundays and holidays are the favorite days, precisely because they see everyone released from their work duties. For this reason, some city communities held the celebration of March 8 last Sunday, and others on the previous Sunday: for practicality and respect for all, it was the right thing to do. So what is an important common day, as well as a community event, also becomes a great family event: women and men, elderly and children, all come together accompanied by the memory, by the music and by the national cuisine, not least by the many opportunities for dancing that, truly, spare no one: impossible to stay out of it, even the least “skilled” in such an art cannot at that point not get on the dance floor and have their say.
I like to remember all this, after a few days, to make the many Italian friends who read us understand how profound the importance of Women’s Day is for Eritrea and for Eritreans, many of whom have been active parts of our country for decades, model citizens of families historically rooted in their city, already in the second and third generation, sometimes even more. Although most of the Eritreans of Italy arrived in the Peninsula in the 70s, when the War of Independence between the Ethiopian government of the time and the FPLE (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) was raging more than ever, quite a few of them had already landed in the previous years: some in the post-war period, when Eritrea had begun to suffer the first dramatic hardships linked to the Second World War and its subsequent annexation, after the interlude of the English military government, by Ethiopia at that time still dominated by Negus Haile Selassie. There were also some Eritreans who arrived in Italy between the two World Wars, for casual or even family reasons, but we are really talking about very few personalities, who nevertheless anticipated what would one day be a much larger presence.
Well, the contribution that the FPLE was able to give to the Eritrean female condition, in the midst of the conflict, in one of the most dramatic moments in the history of that land, was such that it could be said to be well beyond the revolutionary. The woman, for the FPLE, was much more than equal to the man: one could almost speak, hopefully not improperly, of a female emancipation that in the face of the urgencies of a conflict of national liberation also became a warrior. Compared to the previous FLE (Eritrean Liberation Front), from which the FPLE had arisen between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the new movement, following socialist, Marxist and patriotic values adapted to the historical-national specificities of Eritrean society, had immediately identified the full equality between men and women and the centrality of the latter in the new vision of Eritrean society as one of the essential cornerstones so that a true war of emancipation and self-determination could take place and, above all, could triumph.
Soon over 30% of women went to make up the ranks of the so-called Tegadelti, the fighters for the Liberation, covering themselves with great acts of heroism and warrior courage. In truth, the percentage should even be revised upwards, since many women collaborated with the cause and the movement even from the outside, and in the most disparate ways: from caring for the wounded and children, to the custody and transport of documents and deliveries, or even in the search for funds, as other men did. One of the reasons why in the 70s such a large Eritrean Diaspora formed in various countries of the world, Italy first, lies precisely in this reason: women in all of this also had an important role in promoting the triumph of the Liberation from abroad, and not only at home. Thus, against the enemy there was a real “people in arms”, not a simple political or military group, and when we mean “weapons” they could also be social, family and cultural ones, or even others: powerful, feminine weapons, which the enemy did not foresee and did not know exactly how to counteract.
Another important factor in which women played a role that was nothing short of irreplaceable was that of the care and control of prisoners: against the Tegadelti, not infrequently, the Ethiopian troops played on quantity, resorting to massive but also poorly motivated contingents, often composed of men who did not want that war or did not know exactly why they had to fight it. However, the many weapons made them capable of leaving very serious wounds on the field and to the detriment of the population, so much so that not even Napalm or bombs not permitted by international conventions were excluded from use by the regime of Menghistu Haile Mariam, who in the mid-1970s had replaced the Negus at the head of the DERG. However, numerous Ethiopian soldiers fell into ambushes or, defeated in combat and surrounded, ended up prisoners of the feared Tegadelti: not a few of them were wounded, hungry, certainly desperate. They expected death or at least the worst from their enemies, also because that’s certainly what the Commands had led them to believe.
Instead, contrary to their most dire predictions, the Tegadelti cared for them and fed them, and when they were healthy they accompanied them back, obviously with no small risks, beyond the front. There, back among their comrades, they told a different story from what the regime had led them to believe: on the other side there was a “human” enemy, made up of maternal women, who had cared for and fed them with the pity that mothers or sisters would have had. Word of mouth, spreading in Ethiopia, contributed significantly over time to undermining much of the DERG’s propaganda and to further demotivating an army that was no longer satisfied with the powerful arsenals received from abroad to remedy the growing gaps, both internally and on the front. Women were truly the “weapon within the weapon” of the FPLE and of the cause of Eritrean Liberation. It is no coincidence that Eritreans always remember, with the utmost pride, that “without women, today’s Eritrea would never have been possible.”
Also in Eritrea, the Day of March 8 has received enormous attention, with various anniversaries and celebrations; but the political and educational aspect has not been lacking either. It is no coincidence, for example, that just last March 12 in Asmara the Sixth Congress of the Women’s Agro-Business Association was held, chaired by Mrs. Letekidan Kahsai: it is also through the promotion of credit to farmers, following them in the improvement of agronomic techniques and in the development of business, brand management and entrepreneurial promotion, that women’s emancipation is carried forward in a progressive and modern State, which aims to place itself also in this field as the vanguard of the entire Continent. An example of this is what was declared, coincidentally, by Mrs. Takea Tesfamichael at the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, in New York, last March 13, who recalled the enormous contribution given by Eritrean women to the cause of National Liberation, precisely through their added value given by an approach of femininity and resilience, then recalled how as soon as the country became independent it adhered to the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action aimed precisely at ensuring, in the signatory countries, full gender equality and the participation of women in every national, economic and social sector.
Recalling the dramatic level at which Eritrea found itself in the recently concluded war for Independence, Mrs. Tesfamichael then recalled how a huge amount of work has been carried out by the State in this sense, guaranteeing women full rights in the Public Administration and in the right to property, in decision-making power and in inheritance rights, as well as in every other field. Just think that in Eritrea it is possible to find women in the Army, in Health, in Education, in the Government, and so on: it is not a given in the entire Continent, and not even elsewhere, especially in those social percentages. As a strongly progressive country, Eritrea in just over thirty years of Independence has thus reduced infant and maternal mortality by over 70%, guaranteed women childbirth in the safest possible conditions and fought fiercely against female genital mutilation, aspects that are equally far from a given in other parts of the world. With all this, these are not a point of arrival for the Eritrean leadership, but only a starting point: for women and for gender equality the future path is destined to be long and much brighter. To all Eritrean women in particular, we therefore feel we must extend our warmest and most sincere wishes!
