Nadine Altounji met poet/dancer Marcia Castro Gamarra at a party in Cusco, Peru in 2018 and their connection was instant. The two women spent time together working on concepts for songs as they bonded over discussions about art, women’s rights, colonialism, dispossession, and privilege in addition to their individual personal experiences with dealing with the complexities of embodying and existing within intersecting cultures and identities. Marcia offered to write a poem for Nadine about the women’s rights protests that had been ongoing in the region. “I ran home and looked for inspiration,” recounts Marcia. “I watched the news and started to think, why are we protesting? What are we looking for? What happened to the women in the protests?”

Marcia’s own lived experience of surviving an abusive relationship had transformed her understanding of feminism, herself and domestic violence. Being victimized by an intimate partner is isolating and humiliating, and far too often fatal, but for those who survive the healing begins when women stand together and demand change. From Warsaw to Cusco, women have taken to the streets demanding liberation from oppressive religious laws that seek to control our lives and our bodies. Inspired by how women across South America have been fighting the patriarchy for their right to live in peace, Marcia wrote Marcha de Flores. This poem examines the ground, watered by women’s blood, in which the flower of resistance bloomed.

The video for Marcha de Flores was filmed, compiled and edited by Victorine Sentilhes. The video’s imagery includes photographs from the feminist activist group Genero Rebelde which document the Cusco protests, video footage Victorine had previously filmed in Chad and Haiti, as well as additional footage she shot in Montreal with a range of women to illustrate the universality of the issue of violence against women and to demonstrate solidarity with this important cause. We chose to release this video on Women’s Day in honour of our sisters, mothers and daughters and our collective struggle for equality and freedom. Violence against women, in all forms, must end.