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...
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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.
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsCh. 1Introduction: Gender and Politics, Experience and Structure1Pt. 1El SalvadorCh. 2Women's Rights Are Human Rights: The Merging of Feminine and Feminist Interests among El Salvador's Mothers of the Disappeared (CO-MADRES)29Ch. 3Women for Dignity and Life: The Emergence of Feminisms from El Salvador's Revolutionary Left56Interview: Morena Herrera - Women for Dignity and LifePt. IIMexicoCh. 4The Politics of Urban Survival: The Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUP, Mexico111Interview: Irene Soto - Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUPCh. 5The Unintended Consequences of "Traditional" Women's Organizing: The Women's Council of the Lazaro Cardenas Ejido Union, Nayarit158Interview: Dona Kata Moreno and Aurora Cruz - Lazaro Cardenas Ejido UnionPt. IIIBrazilCh. 6Class, Gender, and Autonomy: The Rural Women Workers' Movement of Southern Brazil209Interview: Gessi Bones and Marlene Pasquali - Rural Women Worker's MovementPt. IVChileCh. 7Sweet and Sour Grapes: The Struggles of Seasonal Women Workers in Chile243Interview: Antonia Gomez - Industry Union of Seasonal and Permanent Workers of Santa MariaCh. 8Conclusions: Women in Action267NotesBibliographyIndex
\ ChoiceA 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.\ \
