Latin American Feminisms.


Saporta, Nancy; Marysa Navarro-Aranguren, Patricia Chuchryk and Sonia E. Alvarez “Feminisms in Latin America: From Bogota to San Bernardo”. Signs, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1992), pp. 393-434. The University of Chicago Press.

The authors take issue with the North-American assumption that Latin American women do not define themselves as feminists, or that feminism is not a priority or even relevant for women in Latin America. For this purpose, they trace the trajectory of the feminisms in the region through the Encuentros held biannually since 1981. They situate the emergence of contemporary feminisms as part of the broader women's movements in close connection to the Left in the context of the repressive regimes of the 1970's and '80s. There was a tendency then to reject the label "feminist" or to perceive feminism as another cultural imperialism from the North. This is explained here by the way it was stigmatized among male-dominated and sexists politics of the Left.

In the first regional meeting of feminists, the conflict between "feministas" (or "autónomas") and "políticas" was evident. While the former saw feminism as a project in its own right, the latter considered that feminism needed to be part of a larger struggle for socialism. The second one made evident not only fractures of interests among women of diverse backgrounds, but also proved that there was a clear difference between the "movimiento feminista" and the "movimiento de mujeres." Progressively the Encuentros demonstrated that feminist and women's movements were becoming broader, more diverse and heterogeneous in terms of class, race and sexuality, which has posed further challenges in terms of organization, representation and political priorities.

Comments

  1. JonOctober 29, 2009 at 5:32 AM

    I note that some of the articles you're reading are pretty old; this one was published over fifteen years ago, for instance. I wonder if you have the sensse (from other readings or from your own experience) that the issues that Saporta et. al. identify are still current ones, or whether things have moved on, and if so, how?

    For instance, I suspect that there's little debate these days about the relationship between feminism and socialism. (Perhaps there should be, but my sense is that there isn't.) How else have things changed?

    ReplyDelete

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