Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminisms

Abstract

2 Encountering Latin American and Caribbean FeminismsIn November 1999, nearly 1,300 women from virtually every country in Latin America and the Caribbean journeyed to the coastal town of Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, to take part in an event that many of the region's activists have come to regard as a key arena for collectively reimagining feminism and its relationship to a wide range of struggles for human dignity and social justice. Since the first such gathering was convened in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981, the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros [Encounters] have served as critical transnational sites in which local activists have refashioned and renegotiated identities, discourses, and practices distinctive of the region's feminisms.The eighth in this series of biannual or triennial meetings, the Juan Dolio event-billed as "the last Encuentro of the millennium"-aimed to "take stock" of the past three decades of feminism in the region. Dominican organizers proclaimed the gathering's objectives to be threefold: (1) to produce a balance sheet of the last thirty years of "el quehacer feminista" (loosely, feminist action) in Latin America and the Caribbean; (2) to create spaces for dialogue that would further feminist analysis of and political positionings vis-à-vis "new" and "old" forms of oppression; and (3) to identify the mínimos comunes [lowest common denominators] that 3 would foster the creation of links and alliances within the Latin American and Caribbean women's movement. 2 As participants in this as well as past Encuentros, and as analysts of Latin American feminisms with diverse and extensive links to activists and scholars throughout the region, 3 we recognized that the Juan Dolio meeting's agenda also offered us a unique opportunity to reflect collectively on the past and present dynamics and future prospects of feminisms in the South of the Americas. 4 Our shared interest in bringing Latin American experiences more centrally to bear on recent debates concerning the "internationalization" or "globalization" of feminisms served as a further inspiration for this collaborative essay. While much of the recent literature on transnational feminist organizing has focused on how "official" international public arenas, such as the UN women's conferences, have fostered transborder links among feminists, 5 scholars largely have overlooked the rich history of "extra-official" processes, such as the Encuentros, by which feminists have come together within world regions to build solidarity, devise innovative forms of political praxis, and elaborate discourses that challenge gender-based and sexual oppression. Moreover, the prevailing focus on UN-related conferences often misses how these alternative transnational linkages affect movement dynamics on the national and local levels. In analyzing the Latin American and Caribbean Encuentros, we wish to draw attention to movement-centered, intraregional feminist processes and their local effects, thereby underscoring the dynamic and mutually constitutive ...

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