When I lived in Mexico during the
1950s, I used to visit
Alaide Foppa de Sol6rzano,
who many years later would
die, cruelly tortured, at the
hands of the Guatemalan mili-
tary. An incredibly cultivated
woman, she was then in exile,
her talents on hold, and
patiently attending meetings
where men discussed politics
and the women sat aside as
nonparticipants. At that time, I
thought her somewhat apoliti-
cal. I could not have been more The
mistaken. It was just that she & Jess had to invent her own brand of
politics. In the 1960s, she started a
series of radio programs on women
for Radio Universidad in Mexico
City and later founded the feminist
journalfem. In the late 1970s, when
two of her children were fighting
with the Guatemalan guerrillas, she
December 1972 cover of NACLA’s Latin Amel Empire Report, featuring a police photograph sie Macchi, a leader of the Uruguayan Tupamar
volunteered her services as a
courier. When I was asked to write
this thirtieth anniversary reflection
on feminism, Alaide was the first
person who came to mind, not only
because of fem but also because her
feminism was profoundly related to
a feeling of exclusion from the
orthodox left and an urgent need to
find new forms of political
activism.
Looking back over the past 30
years, I realize that the early
expressions of the feminist
movement in Latin America
have become an immensely
complex, heterogeneous and
often contradictory manifold.
Nowhere was this heterogene-
ity more evident than at the
Fourth World Conference on
Women held in Beijing and the
parallel meeting of nongover-
mental organizations (NGOs)
at Huairou in 1996, attended by
20,000 government representa- rica tives and 30,000 women from
of NGOs throughout the world.
s The Latin American presence was significant-representatives
from 250 feminist organizations
came from Mexico, while over 300
Brazilian women attended the
Huairou forum. Such diversity can-
not possibly be registered in a single
article, and these reflections do not
claim to be exhaustive. Rather, they
focus on certain feminist issues
which are inflected rather differ-
ently in the south-issues of mili-
10 NACL4 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
Jean Franco is the author of Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in
Mexico (Columbia University Press, 1990)
and a member of NACLA’s editorial board.
10 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ FEMINISM
tancy, citizenship and transnational-
ization.
The participation of women in the
public sphere today is a leap for-
ward of such proportions that it
could scarcely have been imagined
in 1972 when NACLA first high-
lighted women’s oppression in a
transformation into the proletariat
requires the elimination of the
social traits acquired under capital-
ism.” As we know, the “class sui-
cide” of the Soviet housewife left
most women washing the dirty
dishes and standing in line for pota-
assumption that women’s liberation
in Latin America would be achieved
as a result of armed struggle that is
the most glaring difference between
then and now. The idea that revolu-
tionary change was on the horizon
for the entire continent was not an
unreasonable assumption in the
For many armed movements, the gun was the signifier of equality, but it
was a poor substitute for democratic theory and practice.
special issue entitled “Women
in Struggle.” In this period, Cuba was still considered to be
the vanguard of revolutionary
change. In its 1972 issue, NACLA noted the dearth of s
research on “the concrete con- e
ditions which exist in Latin t
America and the effects of h
imperialism on women there.” t
The theoretical backbone of this a
report was an essay reprinted b
from the Cuban journal, Casa c
de las Americas, entitled “To- s
wards a Science of Women’s
Liberation” and co-authored by
Isabel Largufa and John a
Dumoulin.’ Drawing on canon-
ical texts by Engels, Lenin and
Castro, the authors listed a whole
set of “universal” factors in
women’s oppression-the sexual
division of labor, consumerism (the
authors called it “female econo-
mism”) and ideology-but they
sidestepped some intractable prob-
lems. Largufa and Dumoulin did not
analyze why the subordination of
women has been so persistent
throughout history, for example, or
why women’s entry into the work-
place did not change their subordi-
nate situation. In what now seems a
rather vain attempt to model
women’s oppression on that of the
proletariat, the authors made the
rather odd suggestion that “the class
suicide of the housewife and her
NACLIA’
LATIN AMERICA & EMPIRE REPORT
rhe liberation movement cannot be
eparated from the liberation of soci-
ty in general. There can be no libera-
ion for a social group consisting of
alf of humankind, as long as exploita-
ion of man by man continues, as long
s the meansof production are owned
y an exploiting minority. A woman
annot have any political, economic or
ocial rights in a capitalist society vheree he uffers from class oppres-
ion and discrimination because of sex
nd race.
-Vol. 6, No. 10, December 197;
toes on top of a hard day’s work at
the factory.
More significantly, the essay, and
the entire NACLA report, assume
that arm.d struggle is the purest
form of militancy and the gun the
instrument of liberation. Largufa
and Dumoulin say, for instance, that
“the mass of women must be pre-
pared for participation in defense,
and must be admitted to the armed
forces.” Along with illustrations of
women in the workplace, the issue
carries several illustrations of
women carrying weapons, and the
cover bears a police mug shot of
Jessie Macchi, a leader of the
Tupamaros, the Uruguayan guer-
rilla movement. I suppose it is the
early 1970s, as Wilma Espin,
director of the Cuban Women’s
Federation, said in an interview
that appeared in the NACLA
report. Yet time would demon-
strate that the gun was not in fact
the ideal instrument to achieve
women’s liberation.
Many women did indeed parti-
cipate valiantly in armed strug-
gles in the 1970s. But despite
some enlightened policies in rev-
olutionary Cuba and Nicaragua
and in Chile under Allende,
many real problems were never
confronted. Though Cuba intro-
duced a progressive family law,
its record in other areas related to
gender was less impressive. In
1974 Fidel Castro himself acknowl-
edged that only 6% of cadres and
party functionaries were women. In
fact, Cuban policy towards women
emerged not from a careful analysis
and revision of Marxism but from
pragmatism. This accounts-and of
course there is nothing wrong with
this–for the strong emphasis on
bringing women into the work force
and on men sharing familial respon-
sibilities. But other policies, such as
the persecution of homosexuals
especially in the 1960s and early
1970s, reinforced the very ma-
chismo that the family law was sup-
posed to combat. Compounding the
problem was that government poli-
cies were based on assumptions
Vol XXXI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1998 11 Vol XXXI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1998 11ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ FEMINISM
cies were based on assumptions
about women’s problems rather than
gender issues. The Cuban govern-
ment’s pragmatism in relation to
sexual politics has been most blatant
in its recent policy shifts on prostitu-
tion. Whereas in the 1960s prostitu-
tion was regarded as a pernicious
effect of capitalism and efforts were
made to reeducate prostitutes and
incorporate them into the work
force, today the sex trade is tolerated
if not encouraged in the interests of
the tourist industry. 2
Women’s participation was cen-
tral to the 1979 Sandinista revolu-
tion, with women in leadership
positions like Dora Maria Tellez,
one of the comandantes who led the
assault on the national palace. Yet
pragmatism also dominated policy
making regarding women’s issues
in Nicaragua. The Sandinista
women’s organization, the Asso-
ciation of Nicaraguan Women
(AMNLAE), named after Luisa
Amanda Espinosa, the first woman
combatant to fall in the struggle
against Somoza, worked hard to
mobilize women. 3 Yet AMNLAE’s
support of reproductive rights did
not result in legislation because the
Sandinista government was unwill-
ing to alienate the Catholic Church
by legalizing abortion. Nor could
the Association do anything to alle-
viate the food shortages caused by
the U.S. blockade or the discontent
over the conscription of young men
to fight the U.S.-sponsored contra
war-both major issues for women.
As an observer during the 1989
elections, I was struck by the vehe-
mence of women’s opposition to the
Sandinistas-a factor which
undoubtedly contributed to their
defeat. The Sandinista leadership
failed to understand that many of
the “undecided” voters registered
by public opinion polls were
women who were not really unde-
cided at all. On the eve of the elec-
tions, then President Daniel Ortega
sent a hastily mimeographed letter
to housewives. The letter contained
little more than a vague promise
that things would get better, and did
nothing to stop women from rush-
ing to the polling stations, some of
The September 1980 cover of NACLA
Report on the Americas, featuring a
Sandinista fighter and a Nicaraguan
mother and daughter in a health clinic.
them at dawn, to be first in the line
to vote for Violeta Chamorro.
There were admittedly external
factors, such as the U.S. blockade
and civil war, that hindered revolu-
tionary change in Cuba, Chile and
Nicaragua. But external factors can-
not account for the surface response
of revolutionary and socialist gov-
ernments to “women’s problems.”
In the end, the seductive image of
the woman revolutionary foreclosed
rather than encouraged further
analysis. Indeed, former militants,
like Ana Marfa Aradjo of the
Uruguayan Movement of National
Liberation (MLN), began challeng-
ing this romanticized image of the
gun-toting woman. In Tupamaras,
Aradjo says that although a third of
militants in the MLN were women,
they were not proportionately repre-
sented in the leadership, and that
more often than not they acted as
couriers or as guardians of safe
houses. 4 Aradjo reports that the
women militants she interviewed
acknowledged that while they dis-
seminated party values, “they could
do nothing to influence them.”
“Moreover,” she wrote, “as a revo-
lutionary organization, the MLN
has never referred to the oppression
of women. As far as the leadership
was concerned, participation in a
revolutionary organization replaced
the specific struggle of women for
their liberation.”
For many armed movements, the
gun was the signifier of equality, but
it was a poor substitute for democ-
ratic theory and practice. The
Zapatista movement in Chiapas,
which has incorporated women’s
rights into its program, has since
shown that it is possible to learn
from history. 5 But the Zapatistas,
however praiseworthy their efforts,
remain an exceptional case and not
necessarily a model. Increasingly,
women on the left began question-
ing the belief that women’s libera-
tion was a necessary outcome of
social revolution. In her reflections
from exile, the Chilean militant Ana
Vdsquez acknowledged that contact
with European feminism had influ-
enced many exiled women, con-
vincing them that “the relation of
cause and effect between social rev-
olution and women’s liberation”
was no longer a given. 6
The record of the orthodox left
and progressive political par-
ties was no more enlightened
than that of those engaged in armed
struggle. Much thinking on the left
still relied on traditional definitions
of public and private spheres, blind-
ing it to the fact that the so-called
private sphere was also a political
space. And, because many on the
left identified democracy exclu-
sively as “bourgeois democracy,”
they overlooked the importance of
women in the grassroots activism
that was taking place outside tradi-
tional political organizations. One
of the major contributions to Latin
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12ANNIVERSARY E55AYI FEMINISM
American feminist thought, Julieta Kirkwood’s Ser polItica en Chile
(Being a Political Woman in Chile) was a piercing indictment both of
the failure of progressive parties to
encourage the political participation of women and an explanation of the
success of the right in mobilizing
women against the Allende regime.7
By the late 1970s, many Latin American women on the left had
reached the conclusion that femi- nism was not another bourgeois
deviation but had something pow-
erful to contribute to revolutionary
thinking. A 1980 NACLA report
entitled “Latin American Women:
One Myth-Many Realities” re-
flected this change. The report dealt
with issues like abortion, women’s
political participation and women in the work force. It criticized the
fact that women had not been con-
sidered participants in history, not-
ing that “until recently, the subject of women has not been considered
sufficiently interesting to warrant categorical reference in Latin American history books.” Yet,
“prior NACLA work has done little
to correct this tendency,” reads the
report’s editorial, acknowledging NACLA’s own sins of omission.
“We, too, often fall into the com-
mon practice of generalizing male experience to cover all people
instead of acknowledging that cer-
tain conditions affect women dif-
ferently.”8
This was a period of dramatic rethinking for the left in Latin America. State violence in many
Latin American countries led many
on the left to reevaluate the impor-
tance of democratic freedoms that
they might have once dismissed as
“liberal” or “bourgeois.” Yet femi-
nists like Julieta Kirkwood took this
a step further, arguing that “there is
no democracy without feminism.”
“Women,” she says, “live the repub-
lican values of Equality, Democracy
and Fraternity as inequality, oppres- sion and discrimination.” Yet once
the private is accepted as a political
arena, “once domestic violence, prostitution and the prohibition of
family planning are recognized as violations of human rights,” says Kirkwood, “then an area which
women ‘know’ and through which they are empowered becomes a
political space.”9 Her words would
prove to be prophetic for, in the late 1980s, the key words were no longer “revolution” and “armed
struggle” but “citizenship” and “human rights,” especially in those
countries that were emerging from
civil war and dictatorship.
Women’s transformation of the
political arena and of the concept of
citizenship became evident during
the military regime in Argentina, for example, where the Thursday demonstrations of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo drew interna- tional attention to the disappear-
ances of thousands of people in that
country’s “dirty war” in the 1970s and early 1980s. Although the
Mothers’ demonstrations were often
interpreted in essentialist terms as
the archaic resistance of injured
motherhood, in fact, they trans-
gressed the public/private distinc-
tion by making the private public and using silence as a political
weapon that packed more power than empty rhetoric. Elsewhere in Latin America, women were also
learning how to organize for sur-
vival, showing that however much they had been programmed into
rigid gender roles, the stereotypes could be transgressively exploited and turned into a positive force.
T
hese “new social movements” seemed to offer women
access to citizenship outside
traditional party structures and were
welcomed as evidence of the devel-
opment of participatory democracy. How then are we to understand the
very real tensions that arose between
grassroots women’s movements and
feminist groups, especially over the
issue of reproductive rights-a grave problem in a continent where
the Catholic Church has succeeded
in keeping issues like abortion off
the agenda in many countries.
The arena where differences and
similarities between feminists and
women from grassroots organiza- tions were worked out were the
The Association of Women Confronting National Problems (AMPRONAC), for
med in 1977
with the support of the FSLN, played an important role in the battle to
oust Somoza. While
underground, it encouraged women to actively join the struggle, counteri
ng the threat of
harsh repression from the National Guard and frequent disapproval from h
usbands, fathers
and even mothers who still saw women’s place as in the home.
Vol. 14, No. 2, March/April 1980
Since the days of Spanish colonization, Latin American society has vener
ated women as
spiritually strong, self-denying and long-suffering-the repositories
of morality. The extremely powerful Catholic Church has played a consistent historic role
in reinforcing the
strength of this ideology by teaching that women’s God-given role is to
be the mainstay of
the family-an ever-nurturing mother and an obedient wife.
—Vol. 14, No. 5, September/October 1980
Vol XXXI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1998 13ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ FEMINISM
feminist encuentros, or gatherings,
which were initiated in Bogoti in
1981 and have taken place every
two years since in different Latin
American countries. These encuen-
tros have been amply documented
elsewhere, so I will only mention an
issue that has continually surfaced
and was succinctly expressed by
feminist scholar Sonia Alvarez
when she asked, “How can we pro-
mote and advance a more ideologi-
cal, theoretical and cultural critique
of dependent capitalist patriarchy
while maintaining vital links either
with poor and working class women
organizing around survival strug-
gles, or with revolutionary women
organized around national liberation
struggles?”10
The positive effort of feminists in
the encuentros to form an umbrella
for many kinds of organizations and
tendencies was thwarted by real
divergences not only of class, sex-
ual preference and political agen-
das, but also by the very growth in
the number of women’s organiza-
tions, which has inevitably led to
fragmentation. The initial enthusi-
asm for the new social movements
as a proving ground for participa-
tory democracy gave way, more-
over, to sober questioning, espe-
cially when many of these
movements developed into interna-
tionally funded NGOs, often with a
paid professional staff. This devel-
opment accounts for the acrimony
that surfaced in the most recent
encuentro in Cartagena, Chile in
1996, during which “autonomous”
feminists, who want to guard
against the absorption of feminism
into other social struggles, sharply
criticized these new NGOs. The
issue was already latent in Chile,
given the divergent goals of the
Concertaci6n of Women for
Democracy (an organization that
includes many women in the politi-
cal parties that form the ruling
Concertaci6n) and the Coordinator
of Women’s Social Organizations
(groups independent of political
parties that seek to preserve the
autonomy of women’s movements).
This division raises the question of
how citizenship is to be practiced–
whether women’s organizations
should be acting as pressure groups
within the parameters set by gov-
ernments or whether they should act
independently. And this, in turn,
puts a spotlight on “citizenship,”
which is by no means as straightfor-
ward as it first appears, especially in
light of the neoliberal reorganiza-
tion of the state.
In retrospect, the 1980s was an
extraordinary decade for Latin Ame-
rican women. Research and out-
reach institutions such as the Fund-
agao Carlos Chaga in Sdo Paulo, the
Centro Flora TristAn in Lima, and
Casa de la Mujer La Morada in
Santiago became internationally
known. Feminist journals such as
fem and debate feminista in
Mexico, Estudos Feministas in
Brazil and Feminaria in Argentina
drew attention to research on
women’s issues and the growing
importance of women’s contribu-
tion to the arts. Women’s publish-
ing houses have emerged in many
countries in the region, and Latin
American women writers are
increasingly found on best-sellers
lists.
This brings me to the third
development-the globaliza-
tion of feminism and the
restructuring of priorities by neolib-
eral governments. In the 1990s,
both governments and international
organizations have focused on
women’s issues as never before.
Government councils and commis-
sions in many Latin American
countries have been established to
identify and design policies for
women. Such commissions have
been founded in Brazil (the
National Council on Women’s
Rights), Venezuela (the National
Council of Women) and Ecuador
(the National Office of Women).”
In Chile, Josefina Bilbao, the head
of the National Women’s Service
(SERNAM), was given ministerial
rank. Funding for women’s organi-
zations is now available from many
sources, especially from European
and North American governments
and foundations. International
4NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ FEMINISM
funding which formerly went to
research institutions and grassroots
organizations increasingly funds
NGOs, as well as local, regional
and global networks of women’s or-
ganizations. Many of these NGOs
are increasingly engaged in plan-
ning public policy, often in concert
with state agencies like those men-
tioned above.
All this attention to women does
not, of course, signify a conversion
of governments and funding orga-
nizations to feminism. Rather, it
signals the strategic position of
women in globalization and the
unresolved contradiction between
traditional family values embraced
by conservatives and religious
organizations, on the one hand, and
the crucial role of women in the
labor force on the other. Indeed,
who benefits from much of this
attention remains an open question.
The emphasis on the “empower-
ment” of women through interna-
tionally funded self-esteem and
leadership seminars, for example, tends to further the individualism of
the neoliberal agenda, while the
professionalization of NGOs chan-
nels political energies into control-
lable spaces. This is one aspect of
what Sonia Alvarez has called the
“transnationalization of feminist
organizations, agendas and strate-
gies in Latin America,” which
raises questions over how women’s
roles are being defined in the global
economy and
them. 12
who is defining
The July/August 1993 cover of NACLA Report on the Americas.
For many on the left, feminism is
still viewed as if the “woman ques-
tion” were somehow separate from
the big macho topics of globaliza-
tion, the financialization of the
world, pauperization and the envi-
ronment, when in fact it is crucially
involved in these issues. If the left
is to be proactive rather than reac-
tive, it will have to recognize that
women no longer occupy a separate
place on the agenda but are central
to the global market as producers
and consumers, and as the targets of
often insidious population policies.
The issue that divides many femi-
nist and women’s organizations
especially in the so-called Third
World is one that implicates us all,
for it raises the question of where
resistance and opposition lies given
the depoliticization of the state,
which now exists largely as the
vehicle for the implementation of
transnational neoliberal policies.
Can women further structural
change at the national level by par-
ticipating in elections and introduc-
ing social policies, or should they
become involved in global organi-
zations, such as the people’s forum
against the Asian Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC), which are
challenging the policies of corpor-
ations and international organiza-
tions?
Despite impressive gains, the
problems of discrimination, repro-
ductive rights, marginalization and
the exploitation of female labor are
still acute. But neither the persis-
tence of these problems nor the
fragmentation of the movement
licenses us to dispense with femi-
nism’s real contribution to social
change. Even so, the point, as I see
it, is to look beyond the good news
in order to arrive at a “critical” fem-
inism that is not only conscious of
the differently inflected struggles in
the south, but that is also able to
build on these struggles in order to
forge a deeper understanding of the
changing significance of women in
globalized economies.
Notes
Author’s note: Although this work is a personal reflection, I am
deeply indebted both to debate feminista, which has consistently dis-
cussed the issues I raise here, and to Sonia Alvarez’s work on the
encuentros and nongovernmental organizations.
1. Isabel Largula and John Dumoulin, “Toward a Science of
Women’s Liberation,” NACLA’s Latin America & Empire Report,
Vol. 6, No. 10 (December 1972), pp. 3-20.
2. Coco Fusco, “Hustling for Dollars,” MS Magazine
(September/October 1996), pp. 62-67.
3. Patricia Flynn, “Women Challenge the Myth,” NACLA Report on
the Americas, Vol. 14, No. 5 (September/October 1980), pp. 20-32.
4. Ana Maria Araeijo, Tupamaras. Des Femmes de l’Uruguay (Paris:
Des Femmes, 1980).
5. Guiomar Rovira, Mujeres de maiz (Mexico City: Era, 1997).
6. Ana Vdsquez, “Preface,” Les Chiliennes (Paris: Des Femmes, 1982).
7. Julieta Kirkwood, Ser politica en Chile. Las feministas y los par-
tidos (Santiago: FLACSO, 1986).
8. “Latin American Women: One Myth-Many Realities,” NACLA
Report on the Americas, Vol. 14, No. 5 (September/October
1980).
9. Julieta Kirkwood, Ser politica en Chile.
10. Sonia Alvarez discusses the encuentros in Sonia Alvarez and
Arturo Escobar, eds., The Making of Social Movements in Latin
America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1992).
11. Giulia Tamayo, “La maquinaria estatal: LPuede suscitar cambios a
favor de las mujeres?” Socialismo y Participaci6n, No. 79
(September 1997), pp. 9-18.
12. Sonia Alvarez, “Articulaci6n y transnacionalizaci6n de los femi-
nismos latinoamericanos,” debate feminista, Vol. 8, No. 15 (April
1997), pp. 146-170.
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