“From the maternity of the seas and oceans, the mangrove” were the words with which the leader of the Peoples of the Mangrove and the Sea, Líder Góngora Farías, began his intervention, representing the Redmanglar Internacional and the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP).
This message, charged with memory, strength, and hope, marked the active participation of our delegations in the Forum and allowed artisanal fishing and gathering to take their place with dignity as true “spaces of life” on the international agenda.
Our collective leadership demonstrated that we are not marginal actors, but millenary peoples — Black, Cholos, Montubios, Indigenous, and coastal communities — who have inhabited and cared for the South Pacific for more than 10,000 years before Christ. We are guardians of seas, rivers, mangroves, and coasts, and protagonists in the defense of the commons.
We also reminded the world of an irrefutable truth: women shellfish gatherers represent around 50% of the artisanal fishing sector, according to the FAO, and their visibility is a historic right that can no longer be denied.
Manifesto of the Peoples of the Mangrove and the Sea
At this World Forum we declare:
We demand the recognition of our sea territories (maritorios) as territories of life, where sea and community intertwine.
We denounce the “blue economy,” industrial fishing, intensive aquaculture, and imposed conservation, which generate dispossession, violence, and destruction.
We defend community solutions: restoring mangroves and reefs, guaranteeing fish and shellfish as food, protecting life and not the market.
We reaffirm that women are caretakers and decision-makers, and must be fully included in spaces of power and decision-making.
We demand climate and energy justice, as well as solidarity with all peoples facing militarization, racism, and dispossession, from Palestine to coastal communities around the world.
At this Forum, we placed our voices, struggles, and proposals to be heard on the international stage. We do not leave invisibilized: we leave strengthened, united, and committed to continue defending seas, rivers, mangroves, and coasts as commons for the present and the future.
“From the maternity of the mangrove, we continue weaving life, resistance, and hope for all the peoples of the sea.”