Neoliberalisms and the Trajectories of Latin American Feminisms

Sonia E. Alvarez

25/11/2013

Opinión

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Neoliberal, patriarchal, racist and colonial development has permitted, facilitated, and even promoted certain forms/types of feminist discourse and practice. But at the time, it has limited, circumscribed and even repressed or criminalized others. To illustrate this, I will examine the relationship between neoliberal, racist and patriarchal development and Latin America women’s and feminist movements of women and feminists in three distinct moments.

The first coincides with the beginning of neo-liberalism, what some call the phase of market fundamentalism, where the market is regarded as a God that will resolve everything; its quintessential expression was perhaps the Pinochet regime in Chile. The second moment is what some have called multicultural neo-liberalism or neoliberalism "with a human face", in which the intense exploitation of the poorest, with the intensification of hunger, for example, threatens capitalism itself. In this phase, one notes the proliferation of policies specifically aimed at populations considered “at risk,” those living in misery, below the poverty line. Finally, a third moment (the present one), that some, with some reservation, call post-neo-liberalism, or if one prefers, neo-developmentism, which has come hand in hand with the return of popular nationalism (a “popular” now sometimes understood as multi-ethic or multi-cultural), but which also often demonstrates significant continuities with the prior neoliberal model of capitalist accumulation through dispossession.

The invisible army

During the first phase of neo-liberalism, that of market fundamentalism, women, especially poor women from subordinate racial groups, constituted a kind of "invisible army" that supported the survival of families and communities in the face of the dramatic fall of popular wages and public services due to structural adjustment. As we know, adjustment led working class women and indigenous and African-descendant peoples to organize and lead community struggles for survival and against the brutal and militaristic process of capitalist accumulation during this first phase, especially during the so-called "lost decade" of the 1980s.

The militarism of this first phase also induced women to lead struggles for human rights throughout the region. The seeds of the popular feminisms that today are spread across Latin America were already evident in the struggles of women and subordinate racial groups during the 1970s and 1980s. These popular struggles, along with other feminist movements that (re)emerged during this phase, obviously refused any relationship with the militarized state.

At the same time, neo-liberalism in this first stage had nothing but instrumental use for women's movements, relying on women of popular classes to implement the so-called "emergency" social programs that attempted to absorb resistance to the double dictatorship: the political dictatorship and that of the market. The overwhelming majority of feminist militants and those active in popular movements incorporated themselves into the ranks of opposition to authoritarianism and its market-oriented model of growth.

Neo-liberalism "with a human face"

The second phase of neoliberalism coincided in many countries in the Latin American region with so-called "democratic transitions" that brought some center-right sectors of the opposition to the military dictatorships to power, but which, in general, continued to embrace the dictatorship of the market. This moment was characterized by intense debate among feminist activists who had opted to participate in the democratized neoliberal State, in the hope of promoting policies favorable to women and others who remain steadfastly in the opposition, rejecting the political, economic and cultural continuities between post-authoritarian neoliberal governments and the dictatorships that preceded them.

This dispute was particularly impassioned given the "strategic angst" and the veritable "political paradoxes" that arose consequent to what, following Evelina Dagnino (2004), we could characterize as a "perverse convergence" between the real achievements of some elements of the feminist agenda in Latin America and the "New Poverty Agenda" promoted by international financial institutions in this second moment of global neo-liberalism.

The Neoliberal Anti-Poverty Agenda posited that a technocratic orientation "with a gender perspective" would be crucial for increasing the "social capital" of women, especially among the poor and racialized minorities. Women’s social capital in turn came to be seen as essential for integrating women into more efficacious and efficient "market development" (key buzzwords for neo-liberalism phase II). This was a time of proliferation of policies aimed at so-called "vulnerable" or at-risk sectors—such as poor women and subordinate racial groups.

Thus the "focused" emergency social programs became permanent in this second moment. And it is precisely in this context that neo-liberalism began to use a more "human", multicultural and participatory face or, rather, mask. And it called on "organizations of civil society"—including some professionalized feminist organizations—to be "partners in development and democratization". And these, as "gender specialists" (or genderologists) often came to administer projects directed at women who were considered most "vulnerable" by globalized neo-liberalism.

In many countries of the region, we can say that these sectors of feminism were consolidated and became dominant, if not hegemonic, during this second phase of neo-liberalism. And the feminisms and other popular and women’s movement activists who continued to raise scathing criticisms of what in Chile came to be known as "el modelito" lost political visibility and their practices and discourses were ever more circumscribed and delegitimized, as when, for example Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then president of Brazil, called such critiques of neoliberalism "neobobismos". Among the delegitimized and silenced were important contingents of indigenous and Black movements, active for decades in the region, but which had really proliferated and occupied greater social and cultural space during the 1990s. In an attempt to quell this development, neo-liberalism, in this second phase, often declared itself to be "multicultural."

In an effort to appease what was most combative and transgressive in these movements, neo-liberalism in this phase promoted policies to better "integrate" indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants into the "market citizenship" (or mercantilized citizenship, in the language of the World March of Women). That is to say, some of the real achievements, resulting from anti-racist struggles, also "converged perversely" with the mercantilization of multicultural citizenship promoted by neo-liberalism in this second phase.

Because of this, this phase allowed the formation of "civil" or civic demands on the part of some sectors of indigenous movements, for example, especially those who embodied or at least "performed" what Hale and Millamán have called the "indio permitido", "a category of identity that surfaces when neoliberal regimes actively recognize and open space for a collective indigenous presence", while clearly separating "the allowable rights from the proscribed ones, the acceptable moderate ones from those that threaten a radical social transformation" (2006, 284 and 301).

I want to emphasize that I do not propose a rigid separation between what is “permitido” or allowed and what is not. I simply want to point out the two faces of activism that we sometimes find in the same person, two faces that are mixed and entangled in the same activist, in the same organization, in the same movement.

Feminism 2.0

At the present moment, it is clear that we are witnessing a reconfiguration of political fields and social movements, and that this generates new political angsts and new political paradoxes. On the one hand, we are witnessing the geometric expansion of popular, black, indigenous, lesbian, trans, youth, etc. This is a feminism that is increasingly a "mass movement', "feminism 2.0", as the web site of the March in Brazil describes it. And in addition we see the consolidation of popular-democratic projects and governments, of the left and the center-left, and of feminisms that are articulated with these popular projects, often through the "self-organization" of women in the most diverse movements and political spaces.

In the present conjuncture, I would like to underline some questions that might be useful for movement debates. First, it appears that the proliferation of governments on the left or the center-left in the region, since the end of the 1990s, has increased the political space available to sectors of feminism and women's movements that had been made invisible or were even criminalized during the second neoliberal moment. And in some cases, for example in Bolivia, there has been a new opening to women's organizations linked to indigenous movements. Nevertheless, some activists and academic observers insist that these projects and governments may often share the maternalist assumptions that informed the policies "with a gender perspective" of the second neoliberal phase and because of this remain patriarchal even as they absorb some feminist demands that would be consonant with the post-neoliberal and/or neo-developmentist model.

In the present context the following questions must be posed: are there "convergences" between the agenda of some feminist currents, diverse sectors of popular, black or indigenous movements, and the popular-democratic governments of today? Are there some new "perversities" resulting from these convergences? What are the principal "virtues" that we can identify in the present convergences between feminisms, ethnic-racial movements, and (center) left and popular-democratic governments? What strategic anxieties and political paradoxes afflict activism in the present moment? What kind of feminist discourse and feminist practices are allowed or not allowed at the present time? How can we overcome these apparent binary divisions and confront our inevitable paradoxes with greater effectiveness?

I want to conclude by emphasizing the fact that confronting our paradoxes -- instead of the more common practice of camouflaging or denying them -- is vital for feminist and women's movements, as is the case with all social movements, because the contradictions and conflicts they often engender can be very productive, provoking self-reflection and critical reflections that can often revitalize and strengthen movements. I propose, in short, that the paradoxes are in fact what makes movements move.

- Sonia Álvarez a doctor in political science, is Leonard J. Horwitz professor of Latin American Politics, and director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst (USA).

This article was published in Spanish in the October 2013 edition (No. 489) of ALAI’s magazine América Latina en Movimiento, entitled “Feminismo popular para cambiar el mundo”, and has been translated by the author. The magazine in Spanish can be accessed here: http://www.alainet.org/publica/489.phtml

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