Latin American Feminist Research Articles

When Resisting Is Not Enough: The killing of Latin American Feminist Activists (2015–23)

ABSTRACT The article analyses an original database of 177 Latin American women activists killed that had some connection with feminist social movements from 2015 to 2023. A growing body of literature has focused on the killings of socio-environmental activists in Latin America and where they occurred. However, their activisms are under-researched, precisely because feminist social movements and activists have frequently been killed while advocating for women’s rights in the subcontinent. This article focuses on the circumstances, a few reasons portrayed in newspaper events, and the perpetrators of such violence. Based on a literature review, I argue that taking into account the recent narcodynamics of the region, it is possible to understand such violence within the context of drug-related violence, but also—and more likely—to consider those killings as political feminicides. Political feminicides are then examined largely through transfeminicides and peasant/communitarian activists.

‘We live to write, from our life, the best of stories’: exploring Colombian women’s embodied narratives of displacement through body mapping

Drawing on research conducted in June 2019, this article explores the narratives produced by eight Colombian women to examine the embodied nature of their experiences of displacement and trauma. We frame this examination both through recent feminist geographic scholarship on displacement, trauma, and the body, as well as through the concept of territorio cuerpo-tierra, which has recently emerged from Latin American feminist communitarianism. These narratives used in this research were produced through the process of body mapping conducted as a part of an eight-day workshop in which research participants engaged in multiple arts-based methodologies. The results of this research underscore how the concept of territorio cuerpo-tierra is materialized in the experiences of displaced women through a sustained connection of self and place. They also highlight the ways that displacement and trauma connect the body/territory; refuse to be spatially or temporally contained; and provide the resources for healing, emplacement, and spatial repossession.

“Some Do it Out of Necessity, Others Because They Like Money and Others Because They Find it Easy”: Motivations for the Involvement of Women in Drug Trafficking in Peru

ABSTRACT Latin American feminist scholars have constructed valuable analyses on how structural inequalities, feminization of poverty, and patriarchy are the main reasons women get involved in drug trafficking. As the primary material and emotional providers of their families, and to fulfill their gendered responsibilities as reproducers of care, it has been shown that women participate in illegal activities mainly out of economic “necessity.” Nonetheless, this approach may create a homogeneous and passive imaginary of women involved in drug trafficking that is linked to Marianista femininity. The paper contributes to Southern Criminology in the task of constructing localized knowledge from the South. It aims to acknowledge women’s diversity to pursue a more nuanced perspective of women’s motivations and start to contextualize and analyze the concept of “necessity.” The paper analyses 22 interviews of women sentenced for drug trafficking in Peru and proposes six motivations for their involvement: (1) Strengthening autonomy and independence, (2) Pursuit of material-hedonistic fulfillment, (3) Desire for recognition and power, (4) Trust-based involvement, (5) Involvement driven by addiction, and (6) Involvement as unwitting participants due to deception. It concludes that the notion of necessity is influenced by class and territory, shaping women’s motivations and involvement in drug trafficking. Additionally, their motivations are not solely driven by economic needs but also by psychological and affective ones.

Body Mapping: A Decolonial Method Towards Intergenerational Healing

In this paper, I examine the embodied transformative memory of GuateMaya feminist group, GuateMaya Mujeres en Resistencia-Los Angeles (GMR-LA). Through a decolonial feminist perspective and feminist ethnographic approach, I built intimate relationships with the grassroots group in Los Angeles. GMR-LA comprises Guatemala’s 36-year (1960-1996) war survivors and women in the diaspora who continue to amplify the cultural memory of the disappeared. The article will delve into the concept of healing cartographies and the ethnographic work I employed in Los Angeles from 2019 to 2023. A particular method I used was body mapping to examine the embodied transformative memory of the groups and women who seek justice. Body mapping has been used with HIV-positive patients and migrant children. Latin American feminist decolonial geographers (Cabnal 2010; Zaragocin 2020, GeoBrujas 2021) are using the method of body mapping as a decolonial, counter-cartographic perspective that highlights Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. I use the method to explore the relationships between the body, memory, and healing from intergenerational trauma. Informed by decolonial feminists, I aim to center the oral and embodied testimonios of the GuateMaya feminist group and be guided by a body-mind-spirit perspective to amplify the concerns, visions, and futures of GuateMaya feminist groups across the hemisphere.

Gendering Toxic Contamination: Toxic Risks, Bodies, and Pregnancies in Gold Mining and Coca Farming Communities in the Bajo Cauca Region

AbstractThis paper investigates women's everyday reproductive struggles in contexts of toxic contamination and the tensions emerging between toxic exposure and care in women's experiences of motherhood. While scientific framings of reproductive disruptions understand social identities as pre‐existing the experience of toxic risks, in this paper I argue that, in toxic territories, the categories of “contaminating” and “contaminated” actors interact with other categories of identity, such as gender and race, shaping social relations. Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Bajo Cauca region among gold mining and coca farming communities, I investigate the everyday processes of gendered subject formation that unfold in toxic territories and the emergence of “faulty” gendered identities for rural mothers. Building on scholarship in feminist geography and Latin American feminist science and technology studies, I argue that ineffective forms of integration of gender in the institutional debate on toxic contamination reproduce, rather than challenge, the invisibility of rural women before the state.

The Care Economy al América Latina: A Multi-scalar Feminist Project

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) created an opening to put the care economy on the global agenda, but the idea found particularly fertile ground in Latin America and the Caribbean well before COVID. This article examines the way the idea and practice of a care economy has been developed by feminists in the region. It looks at the role played by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the triennial Regional Conferences on Women in putting it on the regional agenda. Turning to the Uruguayan example, it looks at how feminists were able successfully to push for a national care system, using the idea of the care economy as a coalition magnet. When facing blockages at the national scale elsewhere, however, Latin American feminists have adopted a multi-scalar strategy, finding openings especially at the local scale, as the examples of Bogotá and Mexico City suggest.

When Latin American Feminism Shapes Psychoanalysis: Acts, Defiance, and Appropriations

ABSTRACT Research on psychoanalysis and politics has traditionally focused on the emancipatory potential of psychoanalysis. The relationship between activism and psychoanalysis has been less extensively studied. There is a gap in the literature regarding the impact of collective action on psychoanalysis, including its theories, institutional policies, and clinical practices. This article aims to address the gap by analyzing the impact of the recent wave of Latin American intersectional feminist mobilizations on psychoanalysis. Through a multi-sited ethnography conducted with psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic organizations in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina in 2022 and 2023, I argue that intersectional feminist mobilization has influenced psychoanalysis through acts of citizenship that are expanding the boundaries of the psychoanalytic field. This impact is evinced by collective acts of defiance, the diffusion of feminist protest tactics, and the adoption of reactivation practices that challenge, reframe, and reconfigure psychoanalytic concepts.

The discursivity of the covers of The country of women, by writer Gioconda Belli on utopia and dystopia

Nicaraguan author Gioconda Belli, born in the city of Managua on December 9, 1948, wrote the novel The Country of Women. In addition to being an activist and militant, she is a writer who brings to her literary productions love for her country and the search for gender equity in public and private spaces. This article provides a brief discursive analysis of the covers of this novel, from the perspective of utopia and dystopia. The problem presented is: what is the discursive nature of the covers of O País das Mulheres about utopia and dystopia in the context of contemporary feminist critical theory in Latin America? The general objective is to reflect on the aspects of utopia and dystopia on the covers of the aforementioned book, observing whether they corroborate feminist critical theory and cultural studies in Latin America, reflecting on the discourses of utopia and dystopia. The methodology used for theoretical and analytical production is of a bibliographic nature, as authors of feminist literary criticism and utopia and/or dystopia were used. For the analysis, covers of the book O País das Mulheres were collected on the public domain website – Google Images – for analysis and discussion purposes on how the structure of patriarchy is deconstructed on these covers. From this approach, it was understood that the social roles of men and women are redefined in a utopian characteristic of equity and in a plan of hope and transformation, widely discussed and claimed by feminist literary criticism, in addition to also bringing dystopian moments necessary for the deconstruction of patriarchy. It is believed that this work is fundamental for thinking about Latin American feminist demands, as it brings up struggles that sister countries also experience in contemporary times, involving gender politics between men and women.

A Chola Sex Party: Anal And Concha Art

This piece explores the visual art and performance of Wynnie Mynerva (1992–), interpreting their aesthetic use of violence and sadism. My reading of Wynnie’s work articulates cholanness in relation to Blackness, unearthing the colonial etymology of “cholo.” I argue that the body of chola women is at very center of the “abigarrado cholo sex,” a sexual/reproductive system of extraction of labor and pleasure. Wynnie’s visual experimentation toys with castration and revenge, and with the non-generative pleasures of anal sex and anti-natalism. To think through the contemporary uses of chola, I use the work of Black feminist scholars in the US and the Caribbean, establishing hemispheric connections with Latin American feminist scholars and activists.

The body as territory: a movement perspective

ABSTRACT Drawing on my background as a Mexican dancer and researcher, I analyse my practice-research on the body as territory, referencing the Latin American feminist concept of Cuerpo-Territorio (Body-Territory), which is rooted in the claim that ‘there is no ontological difference between territory and the body. Hence, what is done to the body is done to the territory and vice versa’ (Zaragocin and Caretta 2020: 1508). Within this methodology, the body-map serves as a ‘fixed locus’ where significant places such as the home, family, work place, or natural entities are located, allowing for a cartography of personal and collective connections to territory. I propose that the body, the space it occupies, and the place it inhabits are profoundly interconnected. I argue for the necessity of exploring Cuerpo-Territorio from a movement-based perspective in order to shift the notion of the body as fixed locus to a body in movement. I analyse two components of my approach: the body as territory as concept and metaphor that shifts from the static to the dynamic body; and workshops as spaces for collective embodied reflection. Each encompasses new ways of perceiving and moving from the body as a territory and, significantly, expands the Cuerpo-Territorio methodology.

Rooted-South Feminisms: Disobedient Epistemologies and Transformative Politics

ABSTRACT Recent writing by Latin American feminists offers a unique political philosophy based on a novel and transformative analysis of the relationship between capitalism, coloniality, patriarchy, and terracide. Focusing on the work of Rita Segato, Julieta Paredes, Lélia Gonzalez, Raquel Gutiérrez-Aguilar, and Moira Millán, this paper introduces the term “Rooted-South feminism” and outlines its epistemic-rationality. I first show how these thinkers root their epistemological frame in the collective struggle of racialized women. Through this account I then make explicit the relational political ontology that grounds their thinking, paradigmatically expressed in the notions of “territory-body-land” and “terracide.” In describing how patriarchy functions as a system of domination that desensitises subjects to the suffering of the Other, I argue that Rooted-South feminists expose the structural relationship between capitalism, coloniality, violence against women, and the destruction of the Earth. Here, the feminine is conceived as a social function produced throughout the long histories of women. This “politics in a feminine key” uniquely understands the sphere of reproduction not simply as a vector of domination, but as the foundation for the liberation and regeneration of life in its totality. Rooted-South feminists propose an authentic historical pluralism engaged in the co-construction of an inhabited earth.

On women, pans, and politics: imagining decolonial gendered urban spatialities

ABSTRACT Over the past decades, several collective urban experiments led by women in Latin America have revealed female reproductive work as a critical element in effectuating the right to the city. Amid a global crisis of social reproduction exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is pressing to ask: What tools are available to imagine a production of space that is effectively feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial? Drawing from proposals from Latin American feminist authors, I discuss how the combination of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism has shaped social reproduction and modes of resistance. To do so, I reflect on the experience of a group of women living and working together in an ocupação in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The analysis uses data from research carried out in 2018, involving interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation. These women’s experiences allow us to understand how these practices create theory that relates to their reality.

Critical Latin American Feminisms: Community-Based, Experience-Based, and Gender-Unraveling

Objective/Context: In the following pages, I describe three political feminist projects from Latin America, which we can characterize as critical, given that these projects endorse positions historically attributed to the political left. Methodology: Since I am addressing specific feminist experiences that are not eminently theoretical, I use the few theorizations produced by the movements mentioned above and interviews and descriptions of the activism of these feminist political projects. I apply aspects of a cultural studies perspective with a non-hegemonic methodology, deploying the creativity that characterizes the article’s subjects, and some elements of Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology. Conclusions: I show that all three of these political proposals—although there are differences among them—have common ground and points of convergence that are important for thinking differently about critical Latin American feminisms. Specifically, I demonstrate that some of them share three characteristics: first, they are not born out of or made in academia; second, they are/live in the community; and third, they seek to unravel gender. Originality: This article presents an overview of these feminisms that have been of interest to feminists while providing academic readers with insight into social movements and their language. It could serve as a tool to discuss the relevance of these feminisms and expand the ongoing discussion in Latin America.

La trayectoria emocional del duelo en El invencible verano de Liliana de Cristina Rivera Garza y Punto de cruz de Jazmina Barrera

Abstract: El invencible verano de Liliana by Cristina Rivera Garza and Punto de cruz by Jazmina Barrera create a sentimental trajectory from the loneliness of shame and fear to the anger and love of the feminist alliance. The first weaves the femicide of Liliana with other stories of gender violence to interrupt the logic of victimization through an imaginary exercise of co-writing with Liliana and others, through her archive, the testimonies from the ones who loved her, and the Latin American Feminist Activism. Differently, Punto de cruz suggests that a text is as collective as the embroidery. By knitting parallelisms between the affective responses to gender violence of the fictional characters and unseen stories of feminist resistance in Women's history, it shows the single female narrator as a product of co-writing with other women. Through different practices of disappropriation they reveal the normalized ways in which femicide violence acts upon the sociality of emotions to isolate women. But, as well, they display feminist anger as a productive affection that can change our response to pain into an ethical one: a feminist love that embraces otherness as an alternative to the patriarchal love that supports femicide violence.

The feminization of resistance: the narratives of #NiUnaMenos as social transformative action

ABSTRACT The Argentinean movement #NiUnaMenos (NUM) represents one of the most relevant transnational examples of Latin American feminist mobilization against gender-based violence and can be understood as vanguard of a current tide of feminized resistance on a global scale. This article addresses two central narratives in the discourses and social practices of three founders of the NUM; one about feminist mobilization as a social transformative moment that creates distinctive protest performances in the pursuing of a liveable life despite the challenging restrictive possibilities; and the other about the intersection between gender and class in the struggle against the neoliberal patriarchal precarization of life, related to the lack of the collective systems of social protection against gender-based violence. The analysis of these narratives highlights a feminization of resistance that promotes a radical transformation of the social system, where politics also at a micro level question capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy by producing alternative knowledges, subjectivities, and epistemologies. Particularly, the study of the experience of enhanced precariousness created by the operation of patriarchal violence, and the resistance expressed in engendered alternative ethical and non-violent responses, reveals in the narratives the strength of a precarity awareness becoming a network of transnational and cross-identities solidarity.

Mi casa de los Espíritus (My house of spirits): Challenging patriarchy with magical feminism

AbstractThis paper draws on magical feminism, a writing that engages in a critic of patriarchy through inexplicable events that address gender inequality and the power of the oppressed. This magic has always been in me but always dormant in my academic writing. To let this magic out has required to let myself go into a form of magical embodiment in my methods: I engage in a spiritual excavation to let emerge three Latin American feminist myths and legends that are in me to recover from vicarious violence and come back to the world. This experience opens the gates to engage with a colonial past and to celebrate other systems of belief. This paper is an invitation for those who will join to mobilize our magical forces for the recognition of knowledge production in moments of magic as legitimate.

Reproductive Justice Beyond Borders: Global Feminist Solidarity in the Post-Roe Era.

The global impact of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and the backlash towards reproductive justice that it represents warrant a global feminist response informed by broad theoretical and geopolitical lenses. We consider how a solidaristic, transnational feminist movement might learn from Latin American feminist movements that have been successful in uniting broad coalitions in the fight for reproductive justice as situated within far-reaching political goals. The success of such a global movement must be decolonial and must contend with the fact that overlapping realities of global inequality, severe poverty, extractivism, and western-backed violence are fundamentally implicated in reproductive justice.

Pedagogía feminista en las humanidades en salud: una aproximación al cuerpo de la mujer a través de la literatura y el cine

This article presents a university course that intersects humanities and women’s health in order to encourage students to develop a critical attitude towards the mistreatment of women’s bodies by the medical institution and the patriarchal establishment. To this end, the pathologization of the female body and its counter-discourse in literary texts and films relevant to the Latin American feminist movement are explored. The course uses the tools of feminist pedagogy based on dialogue and action for social change; it also includes literary and film materials, such as the poem “Menstruation” by the Nicaraguan Gioconda Belli, with which it aims to inspire the actors in the class, beyond developing an academic analysis, to talk about their own experiences around this bodily processes. The aim is to translate these reflections into action in order to establish links with vulnerable communities and feminist activism.

Pan American Organizing and Latin American feminists - A Hemisphere of Women: The Founding and Development of the Inter-American Commission, 1915–1939. By E. Sue Wamsley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. xiii, 203. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00 cloth; $60.00 e-book.

Pan American Organizing and Latin American feminists - A Hemisphere of Women: The Founding and Development of the Inter-American Commission, 1915–1939. By E. Sue Wamsley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. xiii, 203. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 60.00 e-book. - Volume 79 Issue 4

Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba

Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba