Anti-colonial Feminist Ramblings About Everything and Anything

Nash, June and Helen Icken Safa. Introduction and Chapter 1: "A Critique of Social Science Roles in Latin America". Pp. x- 24. In Sex and Class in Latin America. Praeger Publishers: New York, 1976. In the introduction the editors acknowledge the conflicts that erupted in the 1975 UN sponsored conference in Mexico between women delegations from industrialized countries and from the "Third World": the first insisted in an agenda of exclusively women's issues, while the second refused to abandon issues of global unequal development and political issues for the analysis, arguing that in their contexts, class inequalities take priority over sexual inequality (xi). For instance, the fact that cheap and unprotected female labor is needed for First World production and consumption of goods. In the first chapter, Nash seems to be in dialogue (and take issue) with dependency theory and Marxist analyses that have blatantly ignored women's activities or seen them acriti

Bunster, Ximena. “Surviving Beyond Fear: Women and Torture in Latin America”, pp. 297-325. In Women and Change in Latin America. Edited by June Nash and Helen Icken Safa. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1986. Bunster looks at the gender specific forms of institutional violence under Pinochet's dictatorship, which operated as a punishment for women's involvement in political activity: in the Southern cone this kind of punishment was administered in a systematic, methodical (scientifically) and bureaucratic ways and under discourses of "security". [Pero se me cayó doña Ximena, por qué usa Kathleen Barry, una feminista anti-prostitución, como marco teórico? :(] Bunster departs from the idea of a universal patriarchal oppression, and of Machismo/Marianismo as a local expression of a global schema. Under this cultural paradigm, women are recognized and valued only as mothers, and they themselves have internalized this pattern. The torture of female political prisoners

Nash, June and Helen Icken Safa. "A Decade of Research on Women in Latin America". Pp. 3-21. Women and Change in Latin America. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1986. The authors indicate the lack of interest, and therefore data about women's contribution to economic, political and social life (3) in Marxist predominated analyses. Buenos Aires 1974 is seen as a benchmark of the efforts to put together ehtnographic research that deals with the ways women are involved in modes of production. Some studies at this point showed the segmentation of the work force by gender and ethnicity; especially regarding the fact that women are concentrated in the non-market areas of economy, which is frequently overlooked by researchers, or even rendered invisible by assumptions of male-headed households and of paid work as equivalent of work. The authors also note that the first feminist Marxist analyses by de Beauvoir and others departed from the universality of women's oppression

Vaughan, Mary Kay. “Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930-1940” in Dore and Molyneux, Hidden histories of gender and the state in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Vaughan analyzes post-revolutionary state policies that were aimed to modernize family, not to emancipate women but to accommodate the household to the interests and ideology of national development. One of the features of 20th century state policies was they sought to rationalize the domestic, private sphere; so mothers had to be disciplined and educated in order to have a healthy family that would contribute to national progress. In the same way, school was the space for children to be indoctrinated on patriotism and modernity, preparing them to be good productive workers. Throughout these policies, women were viewed as conduits for national progress, not as subjects with their own interests outside the family or the nation (for instance, women's sexualit

Franco, Jean. Plotting women. Gender and Representation in Mexico. “Part II. The Nation”. Pp.79-228. New York, Columbia University Press, 1989. Franco builds on Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities to document the emergence and development of national ideologies in Mexico, emphasizing the racial and gender hierarchies within this discourse: for instance, to see the peasants and indigenous as backwards is a necessary idea for the notion of national industrial progress; likewise, women, peasants and indigenous are seen as children —pupils— by the male intellectual elite who promise to incorporate them to national progress through education. The development of a modern subjectivity, akin with the modern nation, required instilling the ideology of the modernized family: one that did not challenge patriarchal authority but situated women as the imagined mothers of the nation, and linked them to the realms of the domestic stability and decency (81), either as sings of purit

Putnam, Lara, “Work, Sex, and Power in a Central American Export Economy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”, in Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence. William French and Katherine Elaine Bliss (eds.). Pp.133-162. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Putnam uses gender to analyze the household arrangements and the informal service that sustains the whole export economy in Central America carried out by US corporations such as the United Fruit, as well as to look at the consequent gendered patterns of labor migration. Putnam suggests that when we expand our analysis to the ways that gender and sexuality are mobilized in discourse, we can understand how state power itself is constituted (134). In fact, Putnam suggests that political power unfolds through completely gendered and sexualized discourses and practices. This kind of analysis also insists on the complex and multilayered nature of power that surround enclave economies or export zones.

Cano, Gabriela. “Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles's (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution”. In Jocelyn Olcott,; Mary K. Vaughan, Gabriela Cano (Eds.). Sex In Revolution. Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Cano analiza el caso del coronel Amelio Robles, nacido Amelia Robles y quien desde su adolescencia y al descubrir la "libertad del campo de batalla", vivió casi toda su vida como hombre, luchó en la Revolución Zapatista y se ganó el respeto y legitimidad de sus pares como modelo de hombría, valor y masculinidad zapatista. Gracias a que Amelio se ganó éste reconocimiento en el campo de batalla, su sexualidad era raramente cuestionada o rebatida en público, en un acuerdo tácito entre los que lo rodeaban de que era un tema del que no se hablaba. Amelio una vez mató a dos hombres de un grupo que lo atacó para verificar en forma violenta su genitalidad para resolver el misterio que de todas maneras

Hurtig, Janise, Rosario Montoya, and Lessie Jo Frazier. "A Desalambrar: Unfencing Gender's Place in Research on Latin America.” Pp. 1-18. Nash, June. “Postscript: Gender in Place and Culture”. Pp. 289-296. In Gender's Place: Feminist Anthropologies of Latin America. R. Montoya, L.J. Frazier, and J. Hurtig, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Both articles emphasize the notion of place in relation to gender, as a way to address the situatedness and specificity of historic and cultural contexts; and also point at gender as a useful to category to analyze broader social problems, making connections between gender, language and other power structures. Nation for instance, as a meaning constructed and negotiated in everyday's practices. Note the contradictory and paradoxical effects that economic reconfigurations have on gender relations and local power dynamics. The use of the metaphor of "unfencing" ( desalambrar ) responds to a desire to interrogate disci

Franco, Jean. “Death camp confessions and resistance to violence in Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy, Volume 2, Issue 1 January 1988 , pages 5 – 17. Franco's argument is that there is a continuity in the use of violence in Latin America to bring on economic exploitative systems and label them as "modern", but there is a qualitative change in the effectiveness of the methods that the military regimes used in the 70's. As proof of the first, the building of commercial centers (malls) after the coup to proclaim a modern country in Chile and erase the past. As a proof of the latter, the new methods involved more systematic, calculated and regular practices of terror that combined bureaucracy and high-tech techniques with savagery. However, the excess of these practices cannot be explained by the economic factors alone, but we need to look at regimes of racism and misogyny and religious metaphors that enabled the specific practice of torture. For instance, torturers

Nelson, Diane. “Introduction: Body Politics and Quincentennial Guatemala”. A Finger in the Wound. Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. . Pp. 1-40. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. In her study of race relations between Mayans and "ladinos" in Guatemala, Nelson makes some very key observations that can be used to analyze the situation of Chileans dealing with political violence at the aftermath of Pinochet's dictatorship. For instance, the fact that racial differences are portraited by the state as dangerous for national unity. Also, that individual bodies are disciplined so as to produce the "body politic", because efforts to form a national "whole" require material proof on material bodies by racial, sexual and gender marking. In the attempt to "fix" conflictive racial relations, the state circulates the metaphor of the family and of conviviality at home: we all have to live in the same house. This metapho

Matear, A. (2002) “”Desde la Protesta a la Propuesta”: The Institutionalization of the Women's Movement in Chile”. Development and Change 33(3). Pp. 439-466. Institute of Social Studies. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA, USA. Oxford, 2002. Matear supports the idea that the strong base of the Chilean women's movement of the 80's was given by interclass solidarity and alliances between women in political parties with grassroots groups, and that this was key for the creation of state-level institution like SERNAM to deal with gender specific issues once democracy was achieved. But she also adds that these alliances broke down when grassroots and working-class women were excluded during the actual moment of institutionalization, and as professional women and women from political parties took positions of power. Thus, the women's and feminist movement of the 80's was altogether ineffective in articulating feminist demands. This is in part explained by the

Olea, Raquel (ed.) “Capítulo II: Vicisitudes del feminismo en la transición chilena”. Escrituras de la Diferencia Sexual. Pp. 43-64. Santiago: Colección Contraseña, LOM Ediciones/La Morada, 2000. En este capítulo las presentaciones de Norbert Lechner, Tomás Moulian, Raquel Olea y María Antonieta Saa en el seminario "Políticas e imaginarios de la diferencia sexual. Feminismo a fin de siglo" (organizado por la Morada al cumplir 15 años). Lechner le reconoce como aporte a las feministas chilenas incorporar más el mundo de los afectos al análisis de la política (!), pero les pide profundizarlo. Argumenta que la ciudadanía ha transitado desde un concepto universal y abstracto hacia una ciudadanía basada en las identidades particulares, por lo que un desafío para las feministas sería compatibilizar las diferencias que constituyen a las mujeres con un concepto más universal e inclusivo. (Pft!) Moulian reconoce que no ha pensado mucho el tema de las mujeres. Pero hace notar que la tr

Munizaga, Giselle and Lilian Letelier. “Mujer y Régimen Militar”. Mundo de Mujer. Continuidad y Cambio. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CEM, 1998. pp. 523-562. El artículo analiza los textos emanados desde las instituciones de la dictadura para examinar la "acción hegemonizante" de ésta hacia las mujeres, pero constatan que no se trata de un gran discurso coherente, sino que de una serie de retazos que se superponen y contienen fracturas y contradicciones. "El régimen militar no inventa nada; recupera y reorganiza los espacios de poder y de no poder existentes para utilizarlos en función de sus propias estrategias." (p.536) La dictadura sólo recupera arquetipos culturales largamente asentados sobre el rol maternal de las mujeres, su papel asistencial y como defensora de la tradición y el orden jerárquico "natural" de la familia y la nación. Capitalizando en las crisis subjetivas que experimentan las mujeres frente a las fuerzas modernizadoras que desestabiliz

Bunster, Ximena. “Watch out for the little nazi man that all of us have inside: The mobilization and demobilization of women in militarized Chile”. Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 11, Issue 5, 1988, Pp. 485-491. The way women were involved in resisting and denouncing the military dictatorship has been a large focus of attention, but the ways that women also collaborated and lent their support to the regime has been an issue avoided by Chilean feminists. Bunster argues that it is crucial for feminists to examine gender ideologies contained in the doctrine of national security, and how femininity is mobilized to promote military values. At the core of this doctrine women are interpellated as mothers and bearers of the moral values of the Fatherland, ideas that previous governments —both right-wing and Popular Front— had used in their rhetoric as well. However, the military mobilized the image of "a patriotic, self-sacrificing mother whose “apolitical-feminine-private” so

Franceschet, Susan. "Gendered Citizenship in Chile: An Overview", pp. 19-33 and "Gendered Citizenship and the Future of Chilean Democracy", pp. 167-176. Women and politics in Chile. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005. Franceschet argues that women have played a significant role in Chilean political history, but have remained marginalized from formal politics due to the gendered patterns of citizenship, also pervasive in Chile's processes of democratization. This has to do with the historical construction of formal politics as masculine and with the fact that the expansion of social rights in Chile has linked citizenship with one's identity as a worker (in the formal labor market). Both left and right discourses in this sense, have articulated their political projects departing from the idea of a male-headed household with women as dependants of male workers, deeming the rest of them —defined as "abandoned women"— as objects of charity.

Arteaga. Ana María. “Politización de lo privado y subversión de lo cotidiano”. Mundo de Mujer. Continuidad y Cambio. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CEM, 1998. pp. 563- 592. Este artículo busca analizar la organización de las mujeres en dictadura en parte para explicarse "en que falló" este movimiento de mujeres, "por qué no pudimos consolidar nuestra experiencia en interlocución, propuesta, movimiento o fuerza?" (p.566), así como también examinar los contenidos valóricos e ideológicos asociados a dicha participación. Las autoras reiteran la ya mentada tipología de las organizaciones de mujeres en dictadura: organizaciones territoriales de base, organizaciones de derechos humanos y organizaciones propiamente feministas, y se hacen cargo de que no es posible operar con una categoría universalizadora como "las mujeres", sino que es necesario mirar la experiencia específica de la opresión que vive cada uno de estos grupos y sus particulares prácticas de resisten

Lancaster, Roger N. 1998 “Transgenderism in Latin America: Some Critical Introductory Remarks on Identities and Practices”. Sexualities 1(3): 261-274. Lancaster's article is an introduction to a series of study cases that deal with gender power, sexual resistance, corporeal norms, and performative subversion in Latin America. To the question of how and when do transgendered performances deconstruct or re-stage normative gender identities?, Lancaster warns us about reading all transgendered and transexual practices as already subversive because this depends always on the specific context that they take place. Along with this, Lancaster makes an argument against a global agenda of international gay politics based on a unitary gay identity imported acritically from an urban, middle-class, North American context. In this sense, Lancaster reminds us that identities are always contingent and a product of specific practices. "When we say that a practice either ratifies or subverts