Faye Cura & Gantala Press
#DefendPeasantWomen
Philippines · Writing
#DefendPeasantWomen was initiated by the Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, as a campaign to resist intensified attacks against peasant women across the country and hold the Duterte government accountable for the abuses of its armed forces. This information, fundraising, and protest campaign is joined by art and youth collectives including Gantala Press, other organizations, and advocates.
Peasant women have become targets of human rights abuses through Duterte’s counter-insurgency programs including the 2020 Anti-Terror Law. Amid surging COVID-19 cases, the government allocated billions of the nation’s budget to the military over the health and socio-economic sectors. This militarist pandemic response has systematically victimized peasant women asserting their rights to land and livelihood.
Gantala Press is an independent, non-profit volunteer-run Filipina feminist press that centers womens’ stories and issues via a range of outputs, such as publications, press fairs, discussions and workshops. Since 2017 they have published literary anthologies; cookbooks produced in solidarity with communities that suffer human rights violations by state forces; comics; lesbian anthologies; poetry; writings by peasant women; and feminist zines.
Faye Cura is a writer, researcher, and curator of history exhibitions in a private library for 11 years, pursuing residencies in museum studies and curation in the United States and South Korea. In 2019, she resigned from that job to focus on Gantala Press, she co-founded in 2015. Since 2018, she has been volunteering with Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women and is a member of Rural Women Advocates, the volunteer arm of Amihan.
Gantala Press on International Women’s Day, Manila, 2020. Image courtesy Gantala Press.
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