Women and Social Movements in Latin America
Women and Social Movements in Latin America
Power from Below
Women's grassroots activism in Latin America combines a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to women's subordination to men. Women activists insist that issues such as rape, battering, and reproductive control cannot be divorced from women's concerns about housing, food, land, and medical care.
This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women's grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile. Lynn Stephen communicates the ideas, experiences, and perceptions of women who participate in collective action, while she explains the structural conditions and ideological discourses that set the context within which women act and interpret their experiences. She includes revealing interviews with activists, detailed histories of organizations and movements, and a theoretical discussion of gender, collective identity, and feminist anthropology and methods.
A gendered analysis of the National Security regimes that dominated South and Central America in the 1970s and '80s reveals a pattern of abuse of women that failed to register in the public consciousness.... The evidence compiled by Stephen, a feminist ethnographer, from archives and interviews with women in grassroots movements in El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile reveals the breakdown of the patriarchal bargain: men in power withdrew protection from women, and women rebelled against the male domination that crippled them and left them unfit to lead their own lives.
This book promises to make a significant contribution to the literature on women and social movements in Latin America. The fact that it draws upon collaborative relationships with the women written about is a further strength, making it of interest to activists and academics alike.... It would make an excellent teaching text, and it would also be of interest to general readers.
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. Introduction:Gender and Politics, Experience and Structure
- Part I. El Salvador
- Chapter 2. Women's Rights Are Human Rights: The Merging of Feminine and Feminist Interests among El Salvador's Mothers of the Disappeared (CO-MADRES)
- Chapter 3. Women for Dignity and Life: The Emergence of Feminisms from El Salvador's Revolutionary Left
- Interview. Morena Herrera, Women for Dignity and Life
- Part II. Mexico
- Chapter 4. The Politics of Urban Survival: The Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUP, Mexico
- Interview. Irene Soto, Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUP
- Chapter 5. The Unintended Consequences of "Traditional" Women's Organizing: The Women's Council of the Lázaro Cárdenas Ejido Union, Nayarit
- Interview. Doña Kata Moreno and Aurora Cruz, Lázaro Cárdenas Ejido Union
- Part III. Brazil
- Chapter 6. Class, Gender and Autonomy: The Rural Women Workers' Movement of Southern Brazil
- Interview. Gessi Bonês and Marlene Pasquali, Rural Women Workers' Movement
- Part IV. Chile
- Chapter 7. Sweet and Sour Grapes: The Struggles of Seasonal Women Workers in Chile
- Interview. Antonia Gómez, Interindustry Union of Seasonal and Permanent Workers of Santa María
- Chapter 8. Conclusions: Women in Action
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
