Women Challenge the Myth
Flynn, Patricia
Lagunilla, Mexico, seems an incongruous place for a women's group to exist. It is a squatter community that sits on a hilltop a few miles outside of Cuernavaca, accessible only by a rutted...
...0 5The Women's Movement Although responding to the very real oppression of women in their societies, the Latin Americans who began to organize around women's issues in the 1970s took inspiration from the feminist movement of the United States...
...organizations sponsoring demonstrations, producing educational materials and running women's centers...
...In sum, the continuing exclusion of women from the political sphere not only makes them bystanders in their own destinies, but also robs progressive and revolutionary movements of women's significant force...
...they only washed, ironed, cooked, had children and that was it...
...Interview by Liz Maier quoted in "Mujeres e insurreci6n popular: La mitad de la revoluci6n nicaragiiense" (unpublished manuscript, 1980...
...Not surprisingly, the women's movement is most advanced in countries where industrialization has been more intense and repression less severe.' There is a move to cohere these diverse groups into more effective coordinating bodies, or at least to share their experiences in order to evolve toward a clearer understanding of women's oppression and a strategy for addressing it...
...For one thing, Nicaragua does not have the material resources to fully socialize these tasks, though a few concrete measures are being taken as indicated below...
...The positive results of this venture led to the establishment in the following year of an ongoing coalition to work on women's issues...
...In 1977, Sandinista women played a central role in forming a broad-based women's association...
...NACLA interview with Marta Lamas (member of MLM) and Itziar Lozano (member of CIDHAL), Mexico City and Cuernavaca, respectively, January 1980...
...AMNLAE is also organizing domestic workers with the immediate goal of alleviating the most exploitative aspects of the work, and a longer term goal of completely eliminating domestic work...
...Women march and bear arms alongside the men of their class, only to be encouraged to return to their homes when the crisis subsides...
...Women in olive drab carrying machine guns are everywhere-making up a quarter of the new Popular Sandinista Army and almost half of the police force...
...As the fighting escalated, the women guarded trenches, made bombs, delivered messages and hid Sandinista fighters in their homes...
...What were the conditions that made the formation of this front possible...
...Known as AMPRONAC (Association of Women Confronting the National Problem), the group initially focused much of its work on the repression which had already taken on a new magnitude...
...Participation also brought a sense of selfrespect to many women...
...In Mexico, a legalization bill was introduced by the Communist Party in late 1979 with the active support of the Women's Front, in which the Communist Party participates...
...Thus, to regard the woman question as a political issue means to place it within the dynamic of class struggle, here and now, to view it as a demand for the democratic rights of a specific sector of the population - an integral component of the demands which must be advocated by any group or party attempting to change the present society and move toward socialism...
...It is necessary not only to change the content of the law itself, but to achieve a real ideological transformation of all members of Nicaraguan society, compafieros and compafieras alike...
...In the past decade, women have shown that force in a variety of mobilizations...
...And as Dora Maria Tellez (one of the FSLN's impressive leaders who won fame as Comandante Dos) said, "Revolutions transform everything, make everything tremble...
...women subway workers in Mexico City and textile workers in Cuernavaca all participated in long labor struggles...
...For example, while willing to discuss wife abuse, many women have accepted it as a part of life...
...Unemployment An urgent problem throughout Nicaragua, lack of employment is particularly severe for women...
...For some women, their activism meant separation from husbands or a difficult home situation...
...Gillespie, Summary of Existing Information...
...Lamas, "Women in Struggle:' p. 5. 19...
...Similarly, two women's groups in Brazil, Nos Mulheres and Sociedade Brasil Mulher, have established links with community-based women's organizations in the slums of Sao Paulo...
...and in the border area of Mexico, many women participated in efforts to organize worker-controlled unions in the mid-1970s, only to see numerous companies pick up shop and move elsewhere in response...
...AMNLAE is also starting training programs to teach women technical skills...
...AMNLAE has also proposed public laundries and dining rooms, with the long-term goal of socializing housework...
...The Front's goal is to build a broad and democratic movement to fight for the liberation of women-- incorporating organizations ranging from consciousness-raising groups to unions, from neighborhood groups to lesbian organizations...
...To this end, AMNLAE sits on the Council of State, the legislative body which serves as a forum for discussion of national priorities...
...6 Machismo is not dead in Nicaragua, however, and women are not immune to its pressures...
...3 3 Political participation, according to Gloria Carri6n, is one of the greatest rallying cries of AMNLAE...
...And a majority of the members of the FSLN committees in the provinces are women, as are almost all the political cadre in those committees.' Women were not just given this new role by the Sandinista leadership, although women's emancipation has been one of the FSLN's programmatic points since the founding of the organization in 1961, according to AMNLAE leader, Gloria Carri6n...
...Women in Nicaragua are far from equal to men, and the battle to end their oppression is a difficult and long one that has barely begun...
...They also confront their deep-seated notions about their roles as women, and challenge those held by their husbands and other men in the community...
...The two women's groups each lead discussions of articles appearing in their respective newspapers on the situation of women workers, divorce, birth control methods and the general political situation of women in Brazil...
...2. See Norma Stoltz Chinchilla, "Mobilizing Women: Revolution in the Revolution," Women in Latin America: An Anthology (Riverside, California: Latin American Perspectives, 1979...
...NACLA interview with Mary Goldsmith (member of the Movement for the Liberation of Women, MLM), Mexico City, January 1980...
...that it takes as its first priority the struggle for the rights and needs of women, refusing to subordinate this struggle to any other interests...
...Here in a revolutionary process such as the one we are now living, it is we, the organized people, the organized women in this case, who will attain our own achievements...
...28SeptlOct 1980 ing self-awareness and confidence among women, as well as convincing union officials that organizing women workers is both possible and essential...
...When this political orientation crystallized- the organization announced its open support for the Sandinistas in March 1978--many of its early members left...
...The CIDHAL program is aimed at raisFrom one of CIDHAL's organizing pamphlets...
...Amalia Garcia, one of the leaders of the Front, describes her objective: "If we want to be protagonists in the transformations being carried out in our country, and we want these to include the woman question in a significant way, the existence of a broad and organized women's movement linked to the workers' movement is necessary - a movement that can exercise the political strength necessary to push forward the changes that are in our interest...
...AMPRONAC provided infrastructural support for this participation by organizing medical clinics in the hard-hit barrios, managing food distribution networks, and organizing Sandinista block committees...
...After some time the group raised enough money to start a small health center in the local church, which the women's committee now runs...
...Women's groups in Bogota, Colombia, are sponsoring a conference of Latin American feminists scheduled for late 1980...
...In this setting, women can also raise their political consciousness both as women and as members of an exploited class...
...When the metalworkers union of Sao Paulo, Brazil, called a conference for women workers last year, only 200 out of 20,000 women in the industry showed up (with several hundred more directly intimidated by management...
...The most difficult changes are yet to come, and the most difficult battles yet to be fought - those that deal with the ideological underpinnings of women's oppression...
...Some women's groups have elected to focus their abortion work on legalization efforts...
...The pat explanation for their lack of involvement is that women workers are docile and anti-union...
...we must continue with a process of education, of ideological struggle...
...They can then examine how the lack of services in their community reflects its role in the broader social and economic structure...
...Coordination is also being sought at a continental level...
...31NACLA Report But, as one of the women in charge of the legal code revision warns, "It won't have any positive effect if women gain legal equality and we ourselves are not concerned that equality exists...
...The MLM, which has developed an educational theater piece on abortion, reported a very negative response when they performed in a middleclass neighborhood...
...Latin American leadership, on the contrary, has been preoccupied from the beginning with organizing the working class, based on the inextricable links between the class oppression of this vast majority of women and their specific oppression as women...
...the job market, dismal at best, is geared to take advantage of and perpetuate the conception of women as supplementary income earners, not as economically independent individuals...
...While 20 years ago in the United States such restraint was also pervasive, it has been much harder to overturn in Latin America...
...AMNLAE, like every other organization in Nicaragua, has mobilized its base to help advance the general priorities of the revolution, and to push for the needs of its constituency within these priorities (such as the literacy crusade, which has a particular significance for women, whose illiteracy rate is significantly higher than that of men...
...We thank Victoria for generously making her interview material available to NACLA...
...Despite such obstacles, there are numerous instances of women's militant participation in trade-union struggles in the past decade...
...See also the testimony of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a woman active in the Bolivian mine workers union, Let Me Speak (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979...
...These interviews will appear in a forthcoming book on women in Nicaragua by Margaret Randall, whom we thank for generously sharing her materials with NACLA...
...The account here of women's participation in the anti-Somoza struggle is based largely on interviews conducted by Margaret Randall in Nicaragua with Lea Guido (former head of AMPRONAC and currently head of the Ministry of Health) and Gloria Carri6n (currently head of the Nicaraguan Women's Association...
...There is also a very weak material and ideological basis for a rebellion by women against their own oppression...
...To provide immediate sources of income, AMNLAE and the Social Welfare Ministry are setting up collectively run projects such as sewing co-ops for women...
...7 The conclusion of this analysis is that the struggle for women's liberation must ultimately be linked to the struggle for a revolutionary transformation of society...
...Interview with Zoila Hernandez cited in "Peru: Las mujeres salen," p. 49...
...In Peru, a Coordinator of Feminist Organizations was formed, comprising five different groups with a common program on women's rights, including abortion and birth control...
...The most striking recent example is Chile, where the Right used the volatile issue of food shortages to bring masses of mostly middle and upper class women into the streets against the Allende government.O More recently, the Salvadorean Right, clearly inspired by the Chilean example, organized a street march by women to protest "disruptions caused by the Left...
...Such groups are one component of an embryonic women's movement in a number of countries in the region...
...7. Sara Sefchovich, "Am6rica Latina: La mujer en lucha," Fem (January-February 1980), p. 11...
...that it will not be subordinated to the political necessities of any political tendency or any social group...
...The necessary first step in addressing this problem is to incorporate women into trade union struggles for their rights as workers, since trade union participation by women in Latin America is notoriously low...
...Daycare facilities, for example, are a pressing need for poor and working-class women but, unlike in the United States, this demand has little relevance for middle-class women who have domestic servants to care for their children...
...groups and individuals researching the reality of women in the region...
...By this we mean the full participation of women in all areas of social, economic and political life, implying a fundamental change in the sex-based division of labor described in the first article, an end to women's subordination in the family, and a change toward an egalitarian culture and ideology...
...This history of primary responsibility in the daily struggle, says Guido, has forged strong and determined personalities among Nicaraguan women...
...Many who joined the strug28SeptlOct 1980 gle early on had followed in the footsteps of brothers...
...In 1976, several women's groups, including some left-oriented organizations such as the MLM as well as the more reformist National Movement of Women, began working together on an abortion campaign in a group called the Women's Coalition...
...2 (March-April 1980...
...The Women's Front will be discussed in greater detail in a later section of this article...
...2 2 By the final offensive against Somoza in mid1979, women made up-an estimated 30% of the Sandinista army and held important leadership positions, commanding everything from small units to full battalions...
...21NACLA Report On the right, women have mobilized in large numbers against what they perceived as threats to their sphere of interest...
...In rural areas, over 30 such projects are active...
...2 Organizing Women - Merging the Issues The starting point for a number of grass roots organizers is to help women mobilize to tackle issues with which they already are vitally concerned-issues such as housing, health and community services...
...Moreover, the dramatic differences in the experiences and options of women in different classes limit the number of issues that are of common concern, and thus undermine attempts to unite women from different classes...
...By 1979, the second Brazilian Women's Congress held in Sao Paulo attracted over 4,000 participants, including nine women's groups, and representatives from community groups, student associations, trade unions and political parties...
...One of their most important advances has been the working unity developed between the left and feminist groups...
...All the structures are disordered so that later they can be put back in order.., but a different, revolutionary order...
...Approaches and Perspectives What Marxists call the "woman question" presents very difficult theoretical and political questions that are still being hotly debated...
...And on International Women's Day the mass women's organization, AMNLAE, mobilized 35,000 women for the largest celebration Latin America has ever seen outside of Cuba...
...A particularly heated discussion breaks out over one woman's report that she was derided by several men for participating in the women's effort to build the community center.' Lagunilla is not unique...
...It is no surprise that a study in Guatemala found that women most likely to participate in union activities are young single women and older married women whose children are grown...
...In the coming year, two priorities for this still embryonic organization are the transformation of the Front (which now exists almost exclusively in Mexico City) into a national organization, and the consolidation of support and participation by the member organizations into a more active reality...
...Moreover, in addition to the already high number of female heads of household due to abandonment, the casualties produced by the war (40,000 dead) have left even more women without help...
...Sign says: "Direct distribution (of food) can avoid the black market...
...The struggle, in their view, should reflect the interrelation of the women's movement and the workers' movement, and the impact that one exercises on the other...
...In Mexico they have been highly visible in land takeovers and squatter struggles in both urban and rural areas...
...Moreover, without women's presence in the social and political movements that hope to shape the future of Latin America, the interests of half the population in whose name the struggles are being waged will not be represented...
...4 In the countryside and in the working-class barrios of the city, women who had not gone off to fight began to take their part in the struggle...
...In Mexico, for example, where the women's movement got a relatively early start in 1971, consciousness-raising groups were one of the early forms of organization.4 It was also among educated and relatively young women of the upper middle class, many of them with experience on the left (the same sector responsible for the more radical currents of feminism in the United States), that women's liberation struck a responsive chord in Latin America...
...25 Even when the men remain with their families, the high rate of both seasonal and permanent unemployment has hinged family survival on the ingenuity and industriousness of women...
...A key factor facilitating women's participation was the decision of the FSLN to actively encourage and recruit women into the struggle...
...Health In cooperation with the Ministry of Health, AMNLAE is setting up mobile health brigades to provide health care, from maternity to basic hygiene, to women throughout the country...
...In the words of a Peruvian group, the Flora Tristan Women's Center: "The woman question, far from being an issue isolated from the rest of society, is in itself a political issue, with economic, social and ideological determinants...
...But now, I tell you, we're awakened...
...Pamphlet published by AMNLAE, 1980...
...By 1978, AMPRONAC's growing base of support had shifted from "concerned" middle and upper class women to the poorer women who were experiencing the repression more directly and were more ready to confront it in a militant fashion...
...After little more than a year of existence, the Women's Front held its first Congress in March 1980...
...They carried out petition drives, hunger strikes and clandestine activities, and led open demonstrations at a time when virtually no other organization dared even to hold a mass meeting...
...It is attempting to incorporate areas of the country where the association was never active, and to fight against the tendency for once-active women to return to their old roles, leaving revolutionary construction to the men...
...Since the day of the land occupation about four years ago, the women of Lagunilla have taken an active role in this squatter settlement...
...First, the government-sponsored birth control and forced sterilization programs have left a legacy of hostility and distrust that now surrounds the issue of women's right to control their maternity...
...In the course of meeting, the group also felt encouraged to discuss other problems they experienced as women-wife beating and the lack of sexual pleasure in their marriages...
...The educational campaign launched in conjunction with the bill thus focuses on three demands which the Women's Front has dubbed "voluntary maternity": access to contraception, sex education, and free abortion only as a last resort...
...others were recruited through the Sandinista-connected student association...
...This resulted in part from the size of the middle class, and the fact that these women were being drawn into an expanding job market at unprecedented rates...
...Today, what can loosely be called the women's movement consists of a diversity of individuals and small groups whose political orientations span the spectrum from bourgeois to Marxist feminist...
...WOMEN CHALLENGE THE MYTH 1. NACLA interview, Lagunilla, Mexico, January 1980...
...Their incorporation into broader struggles as well provides an arena where both women and men can begin to confront sexist behavior patterns and ideas...
...Initially motivated by the desire to defend their families, many of these women also became integrated into the struggle...
...As we have described, status for women is attached overwhelmingly to the home and family...
...Although those working on the bill acknowledge it has virtually no chance of passing the Catholic Church immediately launched a well-funded and virulent counter-attack- a major objective of the campaign is its "consciousness-raising" value and the public discussion it has engendered...
...It is an important example to examine because it addresses several of the central dilemmas of the women's movement in Latin America and elsewhere: how independent women's organizations and political organizations can work together and how the women's movement can develop a mass base among working-class women...
...CIDHAL sees several important functions for such groups...
...Based on interviews conducted in Ciudad JuArez, 1979...
...The campaign is designed to address the situation of poor women who often have no access to contraception, are usually unaware of basic biological facts of reproduction, and run the most serious health risks because desperation forces them to undergo unsafe abortions...
...And finally, changing men's attitudes -asking them to transform relationships that have worked to their advantage -is a difficult challenge in any society, and more so in a culture permeated with machismo like Nicaragua...
...See also the newspapers of the two groups mentioned, Nos Mulheres and Brasil Mulher, and Renata Proserpio and Ana Alice Costa, "Brasil: Se organizan las mal amadas:' Fem (January-February 1980...
...4. See, for example, the testimony of a woman active in the independent Electrical Workers' Union struggle in Mexico in Marta Acevedo, Marta Lamas and Ana Luisa Liguori, "M6xico: Una bolsita de cal po las que van de arena," Femrn (Mexico) (January-February 1980), pp...
...Though the women's movement is young, small and of limited influence, with a future that is yet unclear, it has already had some impact...
...Some were in guerrilla cells in the mountains for many years, fighting in the front lines as well as working as medics or carrying out other tasks of their organization...
...9. Marta Lamas, "The Women's Liberation Movement," El Universal, November 29, 1977, p. 5. 10...
...Members of Women in Chile also pushed Allende from the left...
...Cadre training is being planned, and they have begun to publish a newspaper...
...Even if one argues for the centrality of the struggle against Latin America's system of social exploitation and political repression, the need to also fight against the particular oppression of women cannot be ignored by anyone who advocates social justice...
...for others it meant that their husbands ultimately acquiesced to their new independence and even came to treat them with a new respect...
...In Mexico City, where the MLM operates a telephone switchboard for rape victims, almost every call has been about incidents long past, although in an unprecedented event, a recently raped woman was interviewed on Mexican television...
...An affiliate of CEDOC, a progressive worker and peasant confederation, the UMT is committed to the incorporation of women workers into trade union struggles around a platform that includes demands for daycare centers in factories, the right of women workers to take time off to nurse, equal opportunity for women, and a committee of women workers to oversee fulfillment of these demands...
...They hold positions of responsibility and often leadership in almost every government office and ministry...
...Nor is rape...
...for others it entailed a double clandestinity (hidden from both their husbands and the Somoza forces...
...there is debate about both their priority at this point and the appropriate tactics to adopt...
...The wives of male workers, who often can be a decisive force in a strike, are also incorporated into the program.'" In Ecuador, the Union of Women Workers (UMT) held its first congress in 1980...
...Recognizing that "new ideas have been born in us, but the old ones haven't died yet," Gloria Carri6n puts in profound perspective the magnitude of the struggle yet to come: "(AMNLAE) is called upon to undertake a long and profound task as much in the area of male/ female relations as in the area of social and economic relations in general...
...Apart from the low percentage of women in the work force, many who do work have a double day- the work they are paid to do in the factory and the unpaid work they do at home...
...Interview with Gloria Carri6n, July 1980...
...It is a squatter community that sits on a hilltop a few miles outside of Cuernavaca, accessible only by a rutted dirt road built by the people of this community with picks and shovels and a few rented machines...
...The Front's major campaign so far has been educational and support work for the "voluntary maternity" law mentioned above...
...Revision of the entire legal code is being undertaken through the women's office in the Social Welfare Ministry to remove legal discrimination against women...
...NACLA interview with Sylvia Perez, Managua, March 1980...
...One key element shared by a number of organizations in Latin America is that the starting point must be an analysis of the broader social and political context...
...Women as Workers - Workers as Women In spite of some relatively progressive female labor legislation in Latin America, violations of the rights and needs of women workers are routine, as we saw in the last article...
...COMO also teaches women organizing skills, and many of those who have gone through the course have become organizers in the plants.' 5 Another approach is being taken by the Cuernavaca-based group, CIDHAL, which is working with several left parties and independent trade unions to encourage women's participation...
...Through participating in the reconstruction and restructuring of Nicaraguan society, women are guaranteeing their own future, in that what is created now becomes a guide for the future...
...Margaret Randall, We're All Awake: Testimonies from Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (Vancouver: New Start Press, Fall 1980...
...History is rife with proof that women's participation has all too frequently followed the ebb and flow of social crisis...
...Working-class women in the United States have often voiced mistrust of middle-class feminists, but in Latin America class conflict is much more open and intense...
...Building such a movement is a difficult task...
...9 As an article in the Sandinista magazine, Poder Sandinista, expressed it: "Women's full integration into society constitutes the only guarantee of a true revolution in the workings of everyday life...
...A Cuernavaca-based group, CIDHAL(Communication, Interchange and Human Development in Latin America), has begun organizing several squatter settlements - colonias - in the area...
...They simply do not view it as their arena, an attitude perpetuated by most men...
...In addition, it has moved forward on a series of concrete programs that address women's particular needs...
...And in El Salvador today, as in Nicaragua before, unprecedented numbers of women in arms are facing the military forces in "a war to end the dictatorial regime and institute "a truly just society...
...Prior to the revolution only 20% of women received consistent health care...
...Poder Sandinista (Managua), March 11, 1980...
...This allowed AMPRONAC to define its work more directly as part of the struggle for "the people's interests...
...The program that has united the various organizations of the Front begins with an analysis of women's oppression and their role within capitalist society...
...Here we will focus on those groups which set as their goal not just legal equality for women, but women's true liberation...
...As one Peruvian feminist put it, "It is not the same when Marta Prado experiences her oppression in a Mercedes, whileJuana Quisapa lives in a barrio without water or sewage, without lights, without alternatives...
...Streets in middle-class neighborhoods still are crowded with women carrying laundry back to the patrona and on every corner they vie with one another to sell packages of mango slices or sweet cakes...
...and activists organizing women in poor and working-class communities...
...It's not enough to change the structures...
...In one colonia, not far from Lagunilla, they helped women grapple with one of their most pressing problems- the lack of health care...
...Paul Singer, "O feminino e o feminismo" (mimeo...
...See also, "Debate sobre el aborto en M6xico," Fem (January-February 1980...
...Workers The Association has organized trade unions in the free trade zone of Managua where employees in the labor-intensive industries are almost exclusively women...
...The cross-class women's issues so closely linked with the movement in the United States and Europe- those concerning women's control over their bodies, such as birth control, abortion, rape and wife abuse--meet with a very different social context in Latin America...
...NACLA interview with Marta Lamas...
...Given all these circumstances, it is clear that the struggle for women's real equality is an uphill battle in Latin America...
...But the real25NACLA Report ity is much more complex...
...With commitment equal to those of men, women have participated in Latin America's wars of independence, the Mexican revolution, and trade union, land takeover and other struggles throughout this century, to mention just a few...
...In 1978, at the initiative of the MLM and others, a number of left parties and trade unions were invited to participate in the Coalition's annual forum on abortion...
...Women's participation in the new mass organizations is not limited to AMNLAE (Association of Nicaraguan Women, named for Luisa Amanda Espinoza, in 1970 the first Sandinista woman to fall in combat...
...The same year, the first national feminist meeting was held in Medellin, Colombia, with over a dozen groups participating...
...Thus the movement focused on the issues particular to that reality, making little conscious effort, until recently, to relate to the concerns of poor and working class women...
...Issues that were once taboo, such as abortion and rape, are now occasionally discussed in the media, and governments from Brazil to Colombia to Mexico have been forced to pay lip service and make some legal concessions to the goal of women's equality...
...While no women are in the National Directorate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), women are in charge of two of its five Secretariats (those of mass organizations and external relations) and a woman directs the Front's political work in Managua...
...and it also sits on the committees set up to advise the various government ministries on the impact of policies on particular sectors...
...In the United States, in the early years at least, the mass base was similarly middle class...
...Amalia Dolores Garcda M., "El Frente Nacional por la Liberaci6n y los Derechos de las Mujeres: Balance y Perspectivas" [Draft of Article to appear in Revista Buelna (Universidad Aut6noma de Sinaloa), No...
...3 8 While it is true that social injustice and political repression are more intense and blatant in Latin America than in the United States, the Nicaraguan example shows that the struggle against women's oppression should not be postponed...
...Millions of women undergo illegal and dangerous abortions every year, yet it is still not being frankly and openly confronted...
...Through their participation in that fight women can begin to gain confidence in their ability to shape their own futures...
...Today there are collectives which publish newspapers dealing with women's issues...
...2 0 Nicaragua: Women Making Changes What in Mexico is still a hope has in Nicaragua become an unprecedented revolutionary model that will be watched and examined carefully by women around the world in coming years...
...6. 6. See Lise Vogel, "Questions on the Woman Question"' Monthly Review (June 1979...
...Political Education Forums for political discussion are being organized in the work collectives and in the base level meetings of the association...
...The historic pattern of women's political participation must also be considered in assessing the difficulties in building a women's movement...
...But since the Sandinista victory in July 1979, Nicaragua has been undergoing a complete revolutionary transition...
...There are other examples of grass roots women's groups in Latin America attempting to merge feminist concerns with the broader issues that face poor and working class women...
...Juridical A law was passed forbidding sexual exploitation of women in the media, resulting from a demand put forward by AMNLAE...
...Mexico's leading feminist journal, Fern, illuminated the clear congruence between many of the demands of the women's movement and those of broader struggles for political freedom and economic justice: "It is not enough to struggle for voluntary maternity--i.e., access to contraceptives and abortion- but also against the forced sterilization and birth control plans adopted by many governments due to North American pressure...
...Poor and working class women's near-total lack of options outside the family makes them particularly unresponsive to certain "feminist issues...
...The movement the Front envisions will be autonomous, but, "In saying autonomous we don't mean to say that it will be independent of the needs of the working class...
...8. From an internal document, "Fundamentaci6n del Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristn,:' excerpted in "Peru: Las mujeres salen a la calle," Fem (January-February 1980...
...3 These women are not just earning their right to a voice in that new society...
...Several organizations which objected to the strategy of working with trade unions and parties split, keeping the name Women's Coalition...
...There are positive signs that the basis for this is being laid...
...Based on internal documents from the UMT and "Ecuador: La uni6n de mujeres trabajadoras,' Fem (January-February 1980...
...Still, the Women's Front has a long way to go...
...Women should have the right not to work under such existing conditions...
...5. Fem, No...
...Prostitutes are one targeted sector for these programs...
...Ibid...
...In Ciudad Juarez, an organization called COMO has been working for the past ten years with women from the maquiladora plants...
...Our participation allows us to make films, textbooks, etc., which can transform the conception, the ideology, society has about the role that should be assigned to women.'"3 Another of AMNLAE's important tasks is to see that in the formulation of Nicaragua's new government policies and programs the particular interests of women are represented...
...There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern throughout Latin American history and across the political spectrum...
...Their particular role is to bring the issue to rank-andfile women within the trade unions...
...But the class differences are not the only obstacle...
...According to Lea Guido, FSLN member who headed AMPRONAC during this period (and V V Head of women's infantry company, Esteli...
...In none of these instances was the intention nor the impact to fundamentally challenge women's traditional role or bring them permanently into the political arena...
...Even within the Catholic Church, a group of activist women from different Latin American countries (who first came together at the Puebla Catholic Bishops Conference under the name "Women for Dialogue") have joined forces to combat sexism and promote progressive positions within the Church...
...A genuine women's liberation movement, according to their program, can only be achieved through the self-organization of women at the base level of the participating organizations...
...For an overview of women's participation in popular struggles in Latin America in recent years, see various articles in "Ambrica Latina: La mujer en lucha, I & II," Fem (January-February and March-April 1980...
...As one participant pointed out, the debate and exchange of ideas has allowed the discussion of the woman question to get beyond the false alternative that has hindered the advance of a socialist women's movement: that women must either work exclusively for their specific demands, or participate in the general struggle as a supportive force...
...AMPRONAC offered the women who joined its ranks a crucial source of support in facing the conflict with their husbands often created by their break with traditional roles...
...17-19...
...Interview with Margaret Randall, "FSLN: Women make History," printed in The Guardian, February 20, 1980...
...Ibid...
...1 9 *In Mexico, almost 50% of the base-level militants of the left-wing parties are reported to be women, though this is not reflected in the leadership...
...This sense of class separation is often felt sharply by working-class women...
...The majority have had little to do with the public sphere of politics...
...it participates in a committee designed to coordinate policies that affect women throughout the government...
...The Long View Even in progressive movements, there is no guarantee that such participation will mean the permanent conquest of a role for women in the political sphere, or that it implies any other advance for women's equality...
...Left parties in some countries, many as historically unwilling to embrace the struggle against women's oppression as their bourgeois counterparts, have been pressured to address the issue as a legitimate political question...
...Compounding the problem are union leaders usually insensitive to women's needs, and employers who use sexual involvement to undermine the solidarity of women involved in a strike...
...It is within this organizational context, often a first for these women and in its own right a serious break with their traditional identity, that women can be encouraged to explore their particular situation and problems as women...
...Interview by Victoria Schultz quoted in her article, "Organizar: Women in Nicaragua," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...This is reinforced directly by the Catholic Church and more subtly by other institutions...
...3 2 Reorganized after the victory, the national mass women's group now calling itself AMNLAE counts its current membership at about 25,000...
...On Brazil, see Singer, "O feminino...
...It is not enough to fight for such services as daycare centers, laundromats, etc., but also for such basic community provisions as water, electricity, housing, and medical and sanitation services...
...In Chile, Argentina, Brazil and other countries, women have also been a leading force in organizing on behalf of human rights in the face of severe repression...
...The UMT, which also organizes housewives, peasant women, students and professionals, proposes to integrate women by educating them about the causes of their situation, providing a basis to advance their confidence and unified strength, and working with men to combat their prejudices against women's participation...
...for the PCM, it required the scrapping of their 20-year-old thesis that women should be mobilized on behalf of the working class but not on behalf of their own struggle...
...Anyone visiting Nicaragua in the past year cannot but be struck by the visible examples of women's changing status there...
...We mean to say that this movement is organized and directed by women...
...The issue of the double day takes on another dimension here as well: the demand for wages for housework is inappropriate as long as the broader struggle remains focused on issues of high unemployment, exploitation of the heads of household and starvation wages...
...Women recently played an important role in the militant teachers' union actions in Peru...
...While each of these aspects can be confronted separately, only partial -though not unimportant-gains can be made, since only within the context of a radical transformation of social structures can the woman question be addressed directly...
...In Brazil's industrial centers like Sao Paulo, they have been central in organizing efforts in slum areas and in the mass protest movement against the rising cost of living...
...Contrary to a common conception that sexuality is not a concern to working-class women whose energies are absorbed by the struggle to survive, some organizers say that it is always a subject raised by the women themselves...
...Others have organized specific constituencies to grapple with the most concrete issues of their daily lives- as housewives, peasants and workers, students, feminists and, particularly in recent years, as the most vocal combatants against dictatorial repression...
...Women also play a central role in the Sandinista Defense Committees, the politically crucial national network of neighborhood organizations...
...Their reluctance to sharply confront their husbands and risk losing them cannot be understood outside this general economic dependency...
...Women still bear the responsibilities of childrearing and housework almost alone...
...In contrast, the response in 24SeptIOct 1980 one working-class barrio was so positive that word of mouth resulted in invitations from several other neighborhoods...
...Finally, it is not enough to fight against the consumerism of one group in society, but against the impoverishment of the majority, and the impossibility of their being able to consume anything at all...
...7 Mexico - The Women's Front One of the most potentially significant developments within the women's movement in Latin America has been the formation of a women's front in Mexico, grouping together feminist organizations, progressive trade unions and several left political parties...
...As many as 50% of the households are headed by single women abandoned by the men who fathered their children...
...The core of their work is a year-long training course aimed in part at providing workers with skills which can help them find alternative employment when they are laid off...
...Ibid...
...This has not led the working-class-based women's groups in Latin America to totally abandon the goal of uniting women from different classes around issues of common concern...
...See also interview with Sylvia P6rez of the Nicaraguan Women's Association, quoted in Lynn Silver, "Nicaraguan Women Organize to Defend the Revolution," Intercontinental Press, October 15, 1979...
...As the brutal repression by the Somoza forces intensified, women saw sons and daughters being imprisoned, tortured or killed...
...Interview with Maria Laudes Vargas, Barricada, March 23, 1980...
...3. See Michele Mattelart, "Chile: The Feminine Version of the Coup d'Etat," in June Nash and Helen Icken Safa, eds., Sex and Class in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1976...
...Extreme poverty makes life a daily battle for survival for the majority of women in the region...
...Even in these moments, AMPRONAC denounced the particular ways women suffered under the dictatorship, and put forth demands for an end to all discriminatory laws against women, equal pay for equal work, and an end to the commercialization of women...
...5 * Child Care In conjunction with the Ministry of Social Welfare, a program to establish daycare centers (called Centers for Infant Development) has been set up, with over a dozen opened in the first eight months...
...It is hard to find anyone in Nicaragua today who will not acknowledge that women "earned the right to their new roles in the revolution in the streets and at the barricades...
...In Latin America, it is not just that men cling to their convictions about women's inferiority and resist changes in women's role definition...
...For the PRT, the decision reflected the Fourth International's traditionally strong position on women...
...In the words of Sylvia Perez of AMNLAE: "We consider that our male compatieros have very good intentions and spirit, but we have our own particular demands to fight for...
...Paula Diebold de Cruz and Mayra Pasas de Rappauoli, Informe sobre el papel de la mujer en el desarrollo econ6mico de Nicaragua (Managua: U.S...
...Interview with Itziar Lozano...
...8 Marta Lamas, a journalist and member of the MLM, addresses those threatened by questions both of autonomy and of immediacy advocated by most women's groups: 23NACLA Report "The name 'women's liberation movement' does not imply that it pretends only to liberate women, or that women must oppose themselves to men, but that they must start with their own interests, uniting with all other oppressed sectors which are also seeking a revolutionary change for all.' 9 Women's Issues, Class Base The core of activists in most Latin American women's groups, as in the United States, is composed primarily of middle class women...
...It is not surprising, therefore, that even the most experienced groups in Latin America have not clearly formulated a strategy and tactics for women's liberation, and are still experimenting with organizational forms and alliances...
...Among the most fundamental of these are the origin of women's oppression and, thus, the relationship between it and class oppression...
...First of all, the Sandinista leadership has reaffirmed its commitment to the liberation of women and has begun to talk about "the restructuring of the family and relations within it...
...2 This upheaval opens the possibility of a social and ideological reordering that could profoundly affect the role of women in Nicaraguan society...
...CIDHAL's health group, for example, developed a critique of the health system in Mexico, in terms of both its class and sex bias...
...Frente Nacional por la Liberaci6n y Derechos de las Mujeres, Boletin NO 1: Resoluciones de la Conferencia Nacional Constitutiva (Mbxico: Secretaria de Prensa y Propaganda del STUNAM, 1979...
...The minority of middle and upper class women, on the other hand, have a life of relative privilege and luxury, usually employing poor women as their servants under highly exploitative conditions...
...22SeptlOct 1980 Mexico's major socialist-feminist organization, the Movement for the Liberation of Women (MLM), write a weekly column in one of Mexico City's daily newspapers, and help put out a national feminist magazine which reaches over 10,000 people...
...Women's participation in the bourgeois parties is much lower.'" 27NACLA Report Seeing the liberation of women not as a battle between the sexes, but as part of the general process of social transformation led by the proletariat, the Front places special importance on the struggle of women in trade unions, and thus, on inserting itself within workers' organizations both in the city and the countryside...
...Several of the parties which joined the Women's Front-the Communist Party (PCM) and the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), which belongs to the Fourth International--had undergone a process of internal debate and discussion on the women's question, responding to the influence of Mexican feminist groups and internal pressure from younger women in the parties who had developed a feminist consciousness.* The result was a decision to take up work on women's issues...
...By asking women why they in particular are so concerned with water, sewage and education for the community, women can easily proceed to explore the central and exclusive role they play in housekeeping and child-rearing...
...Those who would break with the stereotype face enormous economic hardships...
...Not only are class interests often primary, they at times become antagonistic...
...They participate in the community's decisionmaking assembly, often predominate in the delegations sent to town to battle for water or electricity, and over a dozen form the core of the women's group that meets regularly...
...The appreciation of some of the Sandinista leadership and of AMNLAE of the centrality of ideological struggle, and the creative ways in which they have thus far approached the need to make profound changes in people's way of thinking, is one of the positive signposts about the future...
...This compilation is based on various articles in Barricada (Managua), 1980 and NACLA interviews in Managua, March 1980...
...Ana Guadalupe Martins, ERP leader, in clandestine press conference in El Salvador...
...Some work within the framework of the existing system to achieve juridical and political reforms- from the right to vote to the right to hold office...
...XIV, no...
...Even this first essential step in freeing women from their traditional role patterns is burdened with major obstacles and thus is likely to continue for some time...
...These women, some of them illiterate and all of them poor, discuss the projects their group is currently working on--most importantly, a fundraising drive for the community center...
...Husbands, sons and male workers often oppose women's participation in unions, and certainly do not assist with childcare and housekeeping to free women for meetings...
...One domestic worker who had raised nine children alone said, after the victory, "Women weren't aware of anything...
...Interview with Gloria Carri6n, July 1980...
...Second, there are powerful social and religious taboos against subjects related to sexuality...
...With the support of the Sandinista Front, AMNLAE is demanding passage of a law on "responsible paternity" to force men to assume legal and financial responsibility for their children...
...Second, and perhaps more important, the women's mass organization is committed to insuring not only women's full participation in all aspects of the revolutionary process, but also that their interests are incorporated as well?' Gloria Carri6n, head of AMNLAE, makes it clear that access to state power has provided vast new possibilities which must be taken advantage of from the beginning: 30SeptlOct 1980 "There are two aspects to our work to destroy the historic isolation of women -to change their socio-economic conditions and, through political power, to change the ideology...
...An effort is being made to employ men as well as women...
...In the crucial final battle of Le6n, four out of seven commanders of that military front were women...
...Agency for International Development, November 1975), p. 8. See also, Vivian Gillespie, Summary of Existing Information on the Roles and Status of Women in Nicaragua (Washington, D.C.: Federation of Organizations for Professional Women, 1977), p. 4, which states that 48% of households in the poor neighborhoods of Managua are headed by women...
...Given the obstacles, grass roots organizing around such issues proceeds with caution...
...Lea Guido 29NACLA Report now Minister of Health), a key factor in the unprecedented participation of women of the popular sectors is their role as the economic pillar of the family in Nicaragua...
...They are risking their lives that all disenfranchised people can exercise that right...
...Women participated in the struggle against Somoza in numbers unprecedented in Latin America and in every task imaginable...
...Interview by Victoria Schultz with Sylvia P&rez, 1979...
...They provide an arena for women to collectively discuss their problems in a supportive environment, and to gain confidence in their ability to take action...
Vol. 14 • September 1980 • No. 5
