The invisible support of the system:

The Woman

The current economic system does not stand on factories, markets and banks alone; it stands on work that appears on no payroll and yet holds up everything else: the care and household work women perform, day after day, their whole lives.

Without this sacrifice by women, this system would not exist.

The numbers

Measurement, not interpretation

Women perform 76.2% of all unpaid care work in the world (ILO).
Every day they devote 16 billion hours to cooking, cleaning, carrying water, caring for children and for the sick and the elderly (UN Women).
That work is worth between 10% and 39% of global GDP: about 11 trillion dollars a year, in conservative terms (UN Women).
In Mexico it equals 8 trillion pesos, 23.9% of national GDP — and women contribute 72.6% of that value (INEGI, 2024).
A woman's total workweek in Mexico —paid plus unpaid work— is 61 hours, and about two thirds of her time go unpaid (ENUT 2024).

The system calls “unproductive” the work that literally sustains life.

The root

An ancient injustice

This injustice is neither recent nor accidental. Since the consolidation of the monogamous family alongside private property, women became one more possession —first of the father, then of the husband— and their work became an obligation with no name and no salary.

On top of that historical expropriation comes the violence women suffer every day, throughout their lives: physical, mental, emotional and economic.

Those who contribute the most receive the least. And for that very reason it must stop now: not as one more claim on the to-do list of the system that produces it, but as part of the change in material conditions that is the cornerstone of this organization.

The violence

Violence is not an accident: it is permanent

So far we have spoken of work and money. What is missing is the worst part: the constant, permanent violence that accompanies women throughout their entire lives. It fits on no payroll because it is collected in the body and in the soul.

One in three women worldwide —840 million— has suffered physical or sexual violence in her lifetime (WHO).
In 2024, 50,000 women and girls were killed by their partner or by someone in their own family: 137 every day, one every ten and a half minutes. The most dangerous place for a woman is not the street at night: it is her home (UNODC / UN Women).
More than 230 million girls and women alive today were subjected to genital mutilation: for many, the violence began before they learned to read (UNICEF).
In Mexico, seven out of ten women has experienced at least one act of violence (ENDIREH 2021, INEGI), and in 2025 2,798 were murdered —nearly eight every day— (SESNSP).

These are not isolated acts or a collection of “bad men”: the violence is structural —produced by institutions, customs and the economy— and symbolic —presented as natural, as “what is hers to bear”, until it is internalized by the very women who suffer it—.

The chain is a single one, reproduced every generation:

control of the body
control of sexuality
control of reproduction
unpaid labor
economic dependence
objectification
violence

Violence against women is not an accident of the system: it is one of its operating conditions.

Male consciousness

We saw it

For women, violence is not an event: it is a biography. It begins in childhood and never ends: it continues at school, on public transport, at work, in relationships, in old age. Years and years, day after day.

And we men saw it: in the joke we celebrated, in the friend “better left unchallenged”, in the “she must have done something”. Every man alive knows several women who suffer or suffered it, even if he does not know it, because they swallow it in silence.

Let it shame us: there was no ignorance, there was tolerance.

Possession

It only hurts when she is “ours”

If someone touches our daughter, our sister, we are capable of anything. The same violence against a woman we do not know leaves us indifferent. If it only hurts when she is “ours”, we are not defending women: we are defending a possession. A woman's dignity does not depend on a man loving her: it belongs to her by itself, by the sole fact of being.

The change

This has to stop now

Not tomorrow, not when the new system arrives: now, in every man reading this. Interrupt the joke. Do not look away. Believe her when she speaks. Raise children who do not repeat what we saw. Yield the space, the microphone and the salary that were never ours. And change the material conditions: violence thrives where there is dependence, and a woman who depends economically on the man who abuses her cannot leave.

Forgiveness

And yet, woman, before asking anything of you, we owe you something we have never given you whole: an apology spoken standing up.

Forgive us.

Forgiveness for the hands that hurt and for the hands that did not rise to stop it; for the voices that wounded and for the voices that stayed silent. Forgiveness for the joke, for the silence, for the gaze that turned you into a thing. Forgiveness for the work you gave for free and that we called “what is yours to do”. Forgiveness for every night you walked in fear while we slept soundly. Forgiveness for teaching you to care without ever teaching ourselves to care for you. Forgiveness for every pain you swallowed in silence so that our life could stay comfortable: so the food would be ready, so the children would not see, so nothing would break —even though the one breaking was you.

You gave us life, and we answered by turning your life into a service. You gave us love, and we answered with a world where loving you costs you your body, your time and your name.

We do not ask your forgiveness to close the wound or to feel better about ourselves: the word erases nothing, and you owe us nothing —not even forgiveness—. We ask it to open, in writing and before everyone, the account of reparation: let it be on record that we know, that we name it, and that no silence will ever cover it again.

The material side of this organization is in charge of that reparation. Of the shame, we men take charge.

Forgive me, Love. Forgive me, woman.

Because even though I do not know you, I Love you, and I recognize you as a source of Love and of Life.

Forgive me

The call

To the heart of women

Altepetl does not ask you to carry this project on your back too, the way the system taught you to carry everything; it invites you to build it, because it is yours.

No one knows better than you what it costs to sustain life without recognition; no one has more authority than you to define what a system should look like where sustaining life is the center of the economy and not its invisible labor.

Your daily experience —managing scarcity, caring, organizing, holding up— is exactly the wisdom this organization needs in its Calpullis, its councils and its government.

Not as a guest: as a pillar.

I want to participate

Values of the organization

Woman

She is Life

If one of our Values is Life, then in this new organization we honor Woman as the giver of Life.

Your voice, your decision

We need your voice

If the current system stands on your silent sacrifice, the new system can only be built with your voice and your decision.

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