Emancipation from Latin American and Caribbean feminisms
Within the Collection of “Notebooks of Latin American Critical Thought”,
CLACSO presents the research “Emancipation from Latin American and Caribbean feminisms” by Alba Carosio, co-coordinator of the Working Group
“Feminisms, resistance and emancipation.”
Emancipation from Latin American and Caribbean feminisms
Alba Carosio
Latin American feminisms have become a significant political force, capable of mobilizing large-scale street demonstrations, offering transformative political proposals, and generating explanatory frameworks that broaden perspectives. At this historical juncture, feminist movements are making visible a powerful force that challenges crucial issues that politics has thus far overlooked: the body, love, desire, sexuality, motherhood as a choice rather than an obligation, the right to abortion, women's poverty, an economy that sustains life, and women's participation and effective rights.
The current third wave of feminism (or fourth, depending on how you look at it) began with denunciations of male violence against women's bodies and has grown into a force proposing a new social pact and a radical transformation of all sectors of social life. Today, it is about speaking to all of society, about challenging patriarchal power, a historical ally of capitalism and neoliberalism. The women's social movement has been exposing the system and its cultural pretexts, which justify discrimination to legitimize the exploitation of women—an exploitation that is paradigmatic and intertwined with oppression based on class, ethnicity, race, territory, generation, colonialism, and imperialism.
Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean feminisms raise a struggle over meaning regarding models of civilization and the organization of human communities. From feminist reflection, production, and action, old and hidden forms of discrimination are revealed, enriching and transforming politics and its concrete objectives. This fosters democratic deepening and warmer, more diverse forms of social participation, challenging top-down decision-making that is deaf to the realities of life. Latin American and Caribbean feminisms are building a distinctly counter-hegemonic movement.
Based on a pluralistic and democratic conception, feminisms propose a different way of doing politics and a different way of interpreting reality, denouncing denied or excluded problems, making women visible in their experiences of suffering but also in their contributions to society, denaturalizing the patriarchal systems of violence in which men and women have historically been socialized, and proposing alternative ways to express themselves and mobilize politically. Resisting the brutal attack on social reproduction, women have entered the political arena with their positions, their strength, and their strategies. Given that other transformations have failed, the challenge now is to avoid repeating old practices. The demands of the feminist struggle are, in essence, demands for women's citizenship rights, but a diverse and inclusive citizenship that recognizes those who have been oppressively invisible. The Latin American and Caribbean feminist movement, emerging and becoming visible in the occupation of public space, and as an instance of collective action of protest and proposals, brings with it new challenges to respond to the changing realities of our region.
A feminist perspective is essential to enriching and completing the struggle for social transformation and human emancipation. Women's movements today have undeniable demands and power on any path toward justice and emancipation. The oppression of women and genders has become visible as political discontent, filling plazas and avenues. Latin American and Caribbean feminisms have contributed and continue to contribute significantly to transformative change; they are a clearer guarantee that such change will actually occur.
We continue our search for radical social change, for the realization of emancipation, aided by the utopian visions conceived and driven by the river of dreamers and fighters that have flowed through our communities. Through voices and silences, movements and stillnesses, which for more than five centuries have contributed ideas and thought to our current movements, we have accumulated strength in our region. Networks and sisterhoods are organizational forms that cross borders, over walls, strengthening national and regional movements, and also forging international connections. Feminisms are internationalist by birth and by definition.
Feminist utopias emerge from movements, struggles and debates, reflections and exchanges that allow us to draw possible alternative worlds, and to demand concrete transformations.
We continue to envision a civilization that is not patriarchal, not capitalist, not colonial, and not imperialist, because it will be more humane, diverse, and happy.
Feminist traits and aspirations can be stated:
Caring for life
Since the last century, we have known that "point of view" is crucial for social analysis, for understanding and making visible the phenomena and problems of our shared life. In this sense, women's perspectives offer an epistemologically privileged way of understanding the framework through which our civilizational model maintains a social contract, which implies a sexual contract that divides labor between the sexes and diminishes the value and renders invisible the reproduction of life.
In today's late capitalism, we are witnessing the conflict between the processes of capital accumulation and the processes of sustaining life. Life processes are invisible in the traditional economy, not only in the sense of the undervaluation of the effort required to regenerate life, but also because profit is based on dedicating life's time and bodies to operating the mechanisms of the market and the exploitation of nature. The capital-life conflict refers to the hegemony of accumulation, which places the sustenance of life at its service, generating new forms of business and exploitation in the provision of care. The market colonizes the family life of the wealthiest segments of society, who contract out care for children, the elderly, and other dependents, while simultaneously creating service providers who must neglect their own family responsibilities. This establishes a profound inequality in the access to care. Care is neglected in order to provide it. Care is a privilege in our patriarchal capitalist societies.
The lack of social responsibility for care work is one of the key factors in the feminization of poverty: having to participate in household chores is often a factor in school dropout for girls or adolescents; poor women frequently find few job options other than domestic work, which in turn does not allow them to improve their situation (it's a sticky or cement floor job and professional advancement is not possible in that sector); poor women are overburdened with care work (because worse socioeconomic situations imply greater care needs), their work is not valued and prevents them from fully participating in the market.
Care work and the sexual division of labor are fundamental pillars of the current system of domination: economic exploitation, precarious employment, and the gender pay gap; and the social servitude inherent in unpaid care work. Care work must be considered in its potential as a lever for transformation: we must not forget that globalized capitalism is sustained by enormous amounts of invisible labor organized according to a heteropatriarchal ideology. The hierarchical class economy cannot be dismantled without dismantling that ideology.
When the state fails to assume responsibility for well-being, the outcome is that the well-being of the upper classes becomes highly commodified, while that of the lower classes is largely dependent on domestic subsidies or, more accurately, dominated by women. However, this is not simply about rights and equality, but about transforming the model of life, production, and consumption. Today, we envision a broad reorganization of production and reproduction processes, of life and work schedules, assuming shared responsibility among the state, men, women, communities, and generations.
From a feminist perspective, care is an inseparable part of the production-reproduction processes. Life, both human and natural, is interdependent and inherently precarious, which is why it needs care. The values of interdependence, affection, and co-responsibility, which are present in care, should guide social life in a non-patriarchal civilizational model. We propose a feminist society—that is, caring societies and communities that accompany and support each other in order to live livable lives—and for this reason, as Verónica Gago says, the feminist power lies in the desire to change everything.
Right to a life free from violence
Caring for life means living without fear and violence; for many women and other marginalized and discriminated people, this is impossible. Patriarchal civilization is inherently violent; power is exercised based on the ability to control and/or take life. Within this framework, the possibility of violence that inflicts pain and death is ever-present. Violence is used to express dominance and demonstrate possession.
At the end of the 20th century, Latin American and Caribbean feminisms began to grasp the magnitude of violence against women, but it is in our century that sexist violence has become visible, although still largely misunderstood. Our societies continue to be dominated by misogyny, which blames women themselves for the violence perpetrated against them.
Blaming the perpetrator prevents solidarity with the victims, humiliates them, and masks all forms of domination, abuse, and cruelty. And thus, social tolerance of violence against women is established, which in turn underpins general social violence. Murder is legal if the killer has enough power to have the law on their side. Domination over certain individuals creates conditions that increase the propensity for aggression and cruelty.
Violence does not affect everyone equally; femicides disproportionately affect poorer young women. Violence does not attack all social strata equally. In our America, the history of inequality, imperialism, and colonialism is inscribed on women's bodies. The female body tells the story of inequality and reflects a hierarchical system of gender, age, and race. Through objectification and devaluation, the stage is set for any type of direct violence, which is then legitimized, and the victim is blamed. If a woman/adolescent/girl is raped, the question is asked: what was she doing there? If she is a victim of trafficking, why was she so trusting? If her partner killed her, why did she accept his presence and not take action sooner?
In highly unequal societies, a systemic cruelty develops, manifesting itself in indifference and a lack of attention to victims. In cases of gender-based violence, the apathy and indifference of institutions and communities are evident, and this forms the basis and gateway to widespread social violence. The abuse of women's bodies demonstrates the disciplining to which those deemed disposable can be subjected.
Violence against women, girls, and feminized bodies is rooted in the mandate of masculinity imposed by the patriarchal system. Normatively “successful” masculine identities encompass attributes such as social status, material wealth, sexual potency, aggression, and the use of violence as a mechanism to express and impose power. Masculinity in patriarchal contexts is a process that constantly needs to be updated and demonstrated; violence is thus a demonstrative, symbolic act of masculinity that is deemed legitimate and protects those who practice it. This phenomenon is evident in the formation of gang-like fraternities, which serve as spaces for the accumulation of male capital, and also in legal spaces such as the armed forces and police. Control over women becomes an indispensable demonstrative part of dominance over those in subordinate positions.
In the late-stage globalized capitalist model, violence in general, and gender-based violence in particular, are highly profitable businesses. The trafficking of arms, drugs, and people are constantly growing and interconnected businesses; estimates indicate they account for almost 10% of global GDP. Human trafficking and migrant smuggling serve various purposes: prostitution, forced or servile labor, slavery or practices analogous to slavery, servitude, exploitation of begging, forced marriage, organ removal, production of child and adult pornography, sex tourism, forced procreation for the sale of minors, forced egg retrieval, sale of children, or any other form of exploitation. According to the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2018 (United Nations publication), 49% of trafficking victims are women, with an additional 23% being girls. More than 70% of trafficking victims are female. Sexual exploitation (59%) remains the most frequent crime. Central America and the Caribbean are the regions with the highest percentage (66%) of children and adolescents among the victims.
Prostitution is a social practice that guarantees men free access to women's bodies, and this occurs in almost every corner of the globe. Prostitution, as an international and globalized institution, is based on the premise that every man has the right to satisfy his sexual desires for a variable amount of money. Consumers don't reflect on how these girls or women ended up in this situation, nor on the origins of the misery and exploitation that, from certain parts of the world, fuel the markets for recreational sex and the mafia networks. Prostitution is a vast school of human inequality, violence, and human rights violations. Although prostitution has existed for centuries, it was with the development of capitalism, specifically early industrial capitalism, that it reached significant and infamous proportions, as Flora Tristan described in Walks in London: “Prostitution is the most horrifying of the plagues produced by the unequal distribution of the goods of this world” (1840).
Feminist theory and practice not only draw attention to these cruel forms of human relations, so that the rights of women and girls become a genuine part of human rights, but also so that, through the visibility, denunciation, demonstration, and denaturalization of the most customary and habitual forms of exploitation, a radical social transformation and real emancipation can be foreshadowed. To envision a society without violence, it is essential to consider a model of coexistence where women and girls live without the threat of death, pain, and enslavement, allowing their interconnectedness with general social violence to contribute, from the ground up, to a society of peace. This type of peaceful society implies new forms of masculinity, femininity, and diversity, based on freedom and without hierarchies.
We are committed to valuing and prioritizing bonds of affection and closeness, forms of support, experiments in raising free-spirited children, and the spaces of care we can turn to in order to combat violence. Feminisms today constitute a political and civilizational proposal, a vision of a radically different and peaceful world.
Transforming democracy
Democracy, as classically identified with government of the people, has historically been masculine. Feminist movements, both global and Latin American and Caribbean, challenge the very foundations of democracies. They question who the political subject of democracy is, and how and for whom decisions are made. The public-political sphere of democracy remains patriarchal; the voices that resonate and are heard belong to powerful male leaders with established organizational bases. But Latin American and Caribbean women have a public presence and are organized, and from there they have been participating and contesting the narrative. A process of building a feminist people, as Graciela Di Marco calls it, has been underway.
In our region, since the 16th century, resisting the colonization that spread over the violated bodies of Indigenous women and the kidnapped and enslaved Black women, pioneering feminists demanded women's right to be considered rational subjects and to have the right to the spiritual development of reading and education. This exposed the bias of the supposedly universal colonial Enlightenment, and it was thanks to the struggles of women in the 19th century that classroom doors were opened for girls in our nascent independent republics. At the beginning of the 20th century, the status of political subjects was demanded, and by articulating the struggle around the right to women's suffrage, the limitations of a democracy that could not exist without including women were revealed. And then, in the second half of the 20th century, amidst the radicalization of student, anti-war, and anti-racist movements, libertarian and in search of social transformation, feminisms re-emerged with more force than ever. “The personal is political” and “Democracy in the street, in the home, and in the bedroom” were slogans that highlighted and pointed to patriarchal domination in all spheres of life as one of the enormous oppressions to be combated. Through their actions and reflection, they broadened the concept of the political in the face of what all currents of thought up to that point had overlooked. In 1982, the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting stated in its final declaration: “The Women’s Liberation Movement is a political movement that seeks the economic, political, and social transformation of our society in a radical and absolute way,” and affirmed that the Women’s Liberation Movement guarantees that the process of transformation and change is truly irreversible and touches all social groups and sectors, transforming life from within and without, as a single, unified whole, and in a radical way.
From these struggles emerged institutions, international and national mechanisms, and regulatory frameworks to promote gender equality; however, these have had limited reach and poor operational effectiveness. States remain completely reluctant to acknowledge the conditions of inequality and continue to be structurally patriarchal institutions. In the 1990s, “autonomy” and “equality” were redefined through a liberal discourse of individual rights, and a “feminism of the possible” took hold in the region, without reference to global transformations.
In the first decade of the 21st century, constitutions were drafted in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia with the participation of feminists and women's organizations. These constitutions fostered new, more inclusive conceptions of equality and broader perspectives on democracy, new social pacts, and reconfigurations of the state. The new frameworks for coexistence brought recognition of social diversity, based on highlighting the intersection of discrimination and oppression related to gender, ethnicity, and class. In short, they promoted the expansion of democracy. Today, the goal is to achieve parity in representation, to realize Parity Democracy, as a proposal that contributes to building more just, egalitarian, and democratic societies. Therefore, it is possible to assert that the more feminist a democracy is, the more democratic it will be. Democracy must constantly broaden its boundaries, creating methods that, instead of restricting or homogenizing, enable differences.
What is evident, however, is that despite regulatory frameworks and restructuring, institutions have not changed their sexist practices, customs, and behaviors, and unequal, discriminatory, and oppressive treatment persists. Most Latin American states continue to maintain control over women's bodily sovereignty, reproduction, and labor. Biases persist in public policies based on gender, class, ethnicity, age, and many other factors. Furthermore, political violence against women has occurred. Violence and harassment against women for political reasons carry the implicit message that women do not belong in the political sphere; there are limits to their social participation. There are numerous institutional declarations against violence against women, but no real measures have been taken.
Feminist movements have not only brought other voices to social discussions, but their organizational forms also prefigure new models of collective action. They practice constant networked dialogue, with the greatest possible horizontality; the concept of sisterhood is a rule of coexistence that implies mutual care and affection. A popular feminism has been built and consolidated, establishing alliances with other movements: labor unions, peasants, Indigenous peoples, community members, etc. Throughout this network, feminists propose alternatives that involve “the total social reorganization of power and its objective and symbolic expressions, embedded in our subjectivities, relationships, and institutions, from the family to the national and international order” (Olivera, Mercedes, 2019).
Contemporary feminisms have emerged from the margins confined to certain sectors of activism and have become a mass movement. Feminist thought is beginning to be integrated into the traditions of struggle of popular movements and organizations, though not without contradictions and obstacles. Prejudices and political stances continue to relegate it to a secondary status, and, above all, men's resistance to democratizing power and relinquishing their privileges remains a persistent challenge.
However, Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing a period of renewed intertwining between politics and religion, leading to processes of de-democratization with strong anti-rights implications centered on anti-gender discourses, the restoration of the traditional patriarchal family, and the resurgence of sexual and social discipline. The formula and label "gender ideology," which acts as a symbolic unifying force, was invented to devalue and create fear of a possible moral collapse and chaos caused by the legitimization of women's human rights, especially sexual and reproductive rights, and the acceptance of sexual diversity. States are closing themselves off, austerity measures are being implemented, social policies are being cut, and hard-won rights are being attacked; migrants are being persecuted; right-wing parties are in power and advancing, criminalizing popular sectors.
The intertwining of politics, morality, and religion divides reality into absolute good and absolute evil, fostering loyalties and enabling dogmatic justifications for authoritarian decisions and logic in the exercise of power. Fundamentalist values have brought together a neo-integralist Catholicism with conservative Pentecostal and Mormon evangelicalism, and even, on occasion, with Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Transnational alliances and coalitions have been formed with ultraconservative religious ideologies, demonstrating a strong desire for direct political influence.
As early as the 70s, the American Christian right promoted the spread of its ideology in Latin America. In the 90s, Catholic neo-fundamentalism gained strength. Currently, the presence of Pentecostal evangelical churches is evident in every neighborhood of our region, especially in the poorest areas. Their spread has accelerated in the last 30 years, with direct social action and a strong propaganda presence on radio and television. Some claim that there are more than 19 Pentecostal denominations in Latin America, organizing more than 100 million people who participate directly in politics and hold legislative and executive positions.
In the second decade of the 21st century, faced with the restorative-conservative waves that have been taking hold in Latin American governments and societies, feminist ideas are an indispensable impetus for continuing the struggles. For this reason, they are presented by the right as an enemy to be eradicated and by some on the left as childish rebellions; the truth is that feminisms are among the strongest and most accustomed forms of resistance, fighting in the face of adversity. Despite the instrumentalization of demands into a formal, convenient, and disciplined equality, radical feminisms persist in our America. From within feminism, far from limiting ourselves to resisting in defense of what has been achieved, today we are taking on offensive tasks, something that can be a source of inspiration and influence for other social movements.
Feminizing politics
It's not just about including women equally in all spaces of participation and decision-making, with all the symbolic importance that parity holds; it's about ensuring that women's perspectives, with the epistemic privilege that comes from viewing things from a position of subordination and subalternity, are part of politics. It's about changing the order of priorities. The feminization of politics is understood as a generational task, banishing a masculinity exercised as a power structure. And with a feminist agenda that today proposes to discuss everything: the care economy, politics, the nature of sexual and affective relationships, education, the characteristics of the spaces we inhabit, among other things. And to change it all.
Public policies have focused on a conception of human life in which self-sufficiency and personal independence are the ideal. Therefore, social protection policies are considered a compensation, always temporary, in the face of unforeseen catastrophic events or situations, or temporary aid for the poor and vulnerable to escape poverty. Social protection is not at all understood as the necessary social security that the State should provide to everyone, the support of society for all living human beings—that is, the care of human life, which must also extend to natural life as a common good and the great living home we inhabit.
Feminizing politics also means prioritizing relationships, building community, and fostering a caring community based on the ideal of co-responsible interdependence, so that support and nurturing become shared priorities between the state, communities, and genders. The knowledge and practices of care and connection, historically exercised by women, should become central to governance and serve as a model for policymaking. This involves extending feminist practices to the entire political and social sphere. And this application must be understood as historical, not as essential, immutable, natural, and outside of history. It is about circulating the values of feminist ethics (non-violence, co-responsibility, contextuality, relationships, compassion) to reflect on politics and policies.
Feminisms propose a transformative, non-heroic change rather than promoting totalizing emancipation projects, which are conceived from disembodied and abstract positions that subordinate everyday life to an ideal world. Feminisms prioritize life rooted in relational and concrete realities, with situated and lived steps in both the subjective and objective realms. This means preferring utopias with provisional manifestations that point the way in the present, without postponing transformations for the sake of an intangible radicalism. It is a movement that proposes building life in common based on different ethical and political criteria.
We envision “domesticating politics,” debureaucratizing it, humanizing it in a domestic key, a repoliticized domesticity. Women are called upon to reformulate political life from a feminine perspective, and men can join in and learn to think about politics differently. A politics of relationships, a relational management, of closeness, and not of protocol distances and bureaucratic abstraction. (Segato, Rita, 2019)
The collapse of civilization is also the failure of masculinized values, of politics conceived from a competitive masculinity that has generated a necropolitics, originating from the savage ideology of the market, where the strongest competitor prevails; from a democracy conceived as an instrument for business; and from a relationship of unlimited exploitation of nature. War and violence are instruments of patriarchal politics that have created an unlivable world.
Broaden cultural horizons, banish patriarchy
The history of men is audible; the history of women has been canceled, censored, and lost in the transition from the village world to colonial modernity. The contributions of women as a collective—their labor, production, struggles, and emancipations—have been erased, rendered invisible. Therefore, it is a fundamental militant action to reclaim women's participation in social phenomena and changes. This means making visible the marks of women's actions, not by reducing them to a history of events, but also by including those silent, invisible traces, generally stripped of their political and epistemic character.
The feminization of poverty, widespread in our unequal region, has its counterpart in the masculinization of wealth and political power, the right to speak and to memory—a status quo endorsed by patriarchal culture. Patriarchy has kept thought and reflection within the narrow limits imposed by sexism and misogyny, which constructed the inferiorized “otherness” of women, expelling them from the realm of what is considered valuable as human beings. This is even more pronounced in our region, where colonization, with its mechanisms of racialization and enslavement, was superimposed upon it.
A feminist proposal from our region is the two-way relationship between depatriarchalization and decolonization. The bodies of Indigenous women were a fundamental part of the colonial spoils. Colonialism produced a particular combination of the male-female hierarchy with the racial-ethnic hierarchy. The "patriarchy plus colonization" model structured all social relations in our America. White men were entitled to sexual access to the bodies of Spanish women and also Indigenous women, under different rules. In the context of colonial patriarchy, mestizaje (racial mixing) is thus a highly conflictive social space, producing illegitimate beings. For this reason, decolonization cannot occur without depatriarchalization.
We are witnessing, at this historical moment, a regression driven by the global and Latin American right wing. They are clearly antifeminist, reclaiming the central role of the family, which brings with it a return to patriarchal customs centered on the traditional role of women, and curtailing their rights, especially their sexual and reproductive rights. Patriarchy is also a central dimension in the destructive dynamics of life; there is a repatriarchalization of territories dedicated to resource extraction. The attack on so-called “gender ideology” has become an important cohesive factor for the new right wing. With these arguments, a conservative discourse is expanding, one that appeals to social order in the face of a potential chaos fueled by social movements. Patriarchy is essential to bolstering this order. The merit of patriarchal values is that they educate for inequality and help maintain the hierarchical order, and the system of possession and dispossession.
For all these reasons, eliminating patriarchy is a revolutionary task of the first order.
REFERENCES
Barrancos, Dora. The Paths of Feminism in Argentina: History and Trends. On youtube.com, published on May 15, 2014, by the channel Voces en el Fénix. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhXvfui6vJI, accessed 24/2/2020.
Di Marco, Graciela (2011) The feminist people. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.
Freire, Victoria… [et al.] (2018) The fourth wave of feminism. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires: Emilio Ulises Bosia.
Gago, Verónica (2019) Feminist Power or the desire to change everything. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños.
Galindo, María and Ochy Curiel (2015) Decolonization and depatriarchalization of and from the feminisms of Abya Yala. Acsur: Las Segovias.
Olivera, Mercedes. (2019) Popular Feminism and Revolution: Between Militancy and Anthropology. Essential Anthology/ Mercedes Olivera; contributions by Alain Basail Rodríguez; edited by Montserrat Bosch Heras. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
Segato, Rita. No patriarch will make the revolution. In Gabbert, Karin and Lang, Miriam (2019) How is life sustained in Latin America? Feminisms and re-existences in times of darkness. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation/Abya-Yala Editions.
Tristan, Flora (1840) Public Women in Walks in London. Available at https://www.marxists.org/espanol/tristan/1840/londres/viii.htm, accessed 29/2/2020.
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