In this year of 1988, Brazil, the country with the largest black population in the Americas, celebrates the centenary of the law that established the end of slavery in this country. The celebrations extend throughout the national territory, promoted by numerous public and private institutions, which celebrate the “one hundred years of abolition”. However, for the Black Movement, the moment is much more one of reflection than of celebration. Reflection because the text of the law of May 13, 1988 (known as Lei Áurea), simply declared slavery as abolished, revoking all contrary provisions and... nothing more. For us, Black women and Black men, our struggle for freedom began long before this act of legal formality and continues today.
Our commitment, therefore, is in the sense that Brazilian society, when reflecting on the situation of the black segment that is part of it (hence the importance of occupying all possible spaces for this to happen), can turn around and recognize in its internal contradictions the profound racial inequalities that characterize it. In this sense, the other societies that also make up this region, in this continent called Latin America, hardly differ from Brazilian society. And this work, as a reflection of one of the internal contradictions of Latin American feminism, intends to be, with its obvious limitations, a modest contribution to its advancement (after all, I am a feminist).
By highlighting the emphasis placed on the racial dimension (when it comes to the perception and understanding of the situation of women on the continent) I will try to show that, within the movement, black and indigenous women are the living witnesses of this exclusion. On the other hand, based on my experiences as a black woman, I will try to highlight initiatives of approximation, solidarity and respect for differences on the part of white female colleagues effectively committed to the female cause. These women - except for me - I call them sisters.
Feminism and Racism.
It is undeniable that feminism as a theory and practice has been playing a fundamental role in our struggles and achievements, and as, by presenting new questions, it not only stimulated the formation of groups and networks, it also developed the search for a new way of being woman. By centralizing his analyzes around the concept of patriarchal capitalism (or capitalist patriarchy), he highlighted the material and symbolic bases of women's oppression, which constitutes a contribution of crucial importance for the forwarding of our struggles as a movement. By demonstrating, for example, the political character of the private world, it triggered a whole public debate in which the thematization of completely new issues emerged – sexuality, violence, reproductive rights, etc. – which proved to be articulated with the traditional relationships of domination/submission. By proposing the discussion on sexuality, feminism stimulated the conquest of spaces by homosexuals of both sexes, discriminated against due to their sexual orientation (Vargas).
The extremism established by feminism made the search for an alternative model of society irreversible. Thanks to its theoretical production and its action as a movement, the world was no longer the same.
But, despite its fundamental contributions to the discussion of discrimination based on sexual orientation, the same did not happen with other types of discrimination, as serious as that suffered by women: that of a racial nature. Here, if we refer to North American feminism, the relationship was the opposite; it was a consequence of important contributions from the black movement: “The Struggle of the Sixties... Without the Black Brotherhood, there would have been no Sisterhood; without Black Power and Black Pride, there would have been no Gay Power and Gay Pride” (David Edgar). And feminist Leslie Cagan says, "The fact that the Civil Rights movement has broken the foundations of freedom and equality in America has opened up space for us to question the reality of our freedom as women."
But what is usually found, when reading feminist texts and practices, are formal references that denote a kind of forgetfulness of the racial issue. I have an example of a definition of feminism: it consists of “women's resistance to accepting roles, social, economic, political, ideological situations and psychological characteristics that are based on the existence of a hierarchy between men and women, from which women are discriminated against” (Astelarra). It would be enough to replace the terms men and women with whites and blacks (or Indians), respectively, to have an excellent definition of racism.
Precisely because both racism and feminism start from biological differences to establish themselves as ideologies of domination .
The question then arises: how can this “forgetting” by feminism be explained? The answer, in our opinion, lies in what some social scientists characterize as racism by omission and whose roots, we say, are found in a Eurocentric and neo-colonialist worldview of reality.
It is worth resuming here two categories of Lacanian thought that help our reflection. Intimately articulated, the categories of infant and subject-supposed-to-know lead us to the theme of alienation. The first designates the one who is not the subject of his own discourse, insofar as he is spoken by others. The concept of infant is constituted from an analysis of the psychic formation of the child who, when spoken by adults in the third person, is, consequently, excluded, ignored, placed as absent despite his/her presence; he then reproduces this speech and talks about himself in the third person (until the moment he learns to change personal pronouns). In the same way,
we non-white women were “spoken about”, defined and classified by an ideological system of domination that infantilizes us. By imposing a lower place within their hierarchy (supported by our biological conditions of sex and race), it suppresses our humanity precisely because it denies us the right to be subjects not only of our own discourse, but of our own history .
Needless to say, with all these characteristics, we are referring to the patriarchal-racist system. Consequently, self-consistent feminism cannot emphasize the racial dimension. If he had done so, he would be contradictorily accepting and reproducing the infantilization of that system, and this is alienation.
The category of subject-supposed-to-know refers to imaginary identifications with certain figures, to whom knowledge that they do not have is attributed (mother, father, psychoanalyst, teacher, etc.). And here we report the analysis of a Franz Fanon and an Alberto Memmi, who describe the psychology of the colonized against a colonizer. In our opinion, the category of subject-supposed-to-know further enriches the understanding of the unconscious psychic mechanisms that are explained in the superiority that the colonized attributes to the colonizer. In this sense, Eurocentrism and its aforementioned neo-colonialist effect are also alienated forms of a theory and a practice that are perceived as liberating.
For all these reasons, Latin American feminism loses much of its strength when it abstracts from reality that is of great importance: the multiracial and pluricultural nature of societies in that region.
Dealing, for example, with the sexual division of labor without articulating it with its correspondent at the racial level, is to fall back into a kind of abstract universal rationalism, typical of a masculine and white discourse. To speak of the oppression of Latin American women is to speak of a generality that hides, emphasizes, that removes from the scene the harsh reality experienced by millions of women who pay a very high price for not being white. We fully agree with Jenny Bourne, when she states: "I see anti-racism as something that is not outside the Women's Movement but as something intrinsic to the best feminist principles". But this look that does not see the racial dimension, this analysis and this practice that “forget” it, are not characteristics that are only evident in Latin American feminism. As we will see below, the racial issue in the region has been hidden within its hierarchical societies.
The racial question in Latin America.
A minimum of historical reflection is in order here to get an idea of this process in the region. Mainly in the countries of Iberian colonization. In the first place, one cannot forget that the historical formation of Spain and Portugal stemmed from the struggle of many centuries against the Moors, who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711 . Even more, the war between Moors and Christians (still remembered in our popular festivities) did not have the religious dimension as its only driving force. Constantly silenced, the racial dimension played an important ideological role in the struggles of the Reconquista. In reality, the invading Moors were predominantly black. Furthermore, the last two dynasties of his empire - the "Almoravids and the Almohads" - came from West Africa (Chandler). From the above, we mean that the Spaniards and the Portuguese acquired a solid experience with respect to the way in which racial relations were articulated.
Second, Iberian societies were structured in a highly hierarchical manner, with many different and complementary social castes. The strength of the hierarchy was such that it was made explicit even in the nominal forms of address, transformed into law by the King of Portugal and Spain in 1597. Needless to say that, in this type of structure, where everything and everyone has a determined place, there is no space for equality, mainly for different ethnic groups, such as Moors and Jews, subject to violent social and political control (Da Matta).
Historical heirs of the ideologies of social classification (racial and sexual), as well as the legal and administrative techniques of the Iberian metropolises, Latin American societies could not fail to be characterized as hierarchical. Racially stratified, they present a kind of continuum of color that manifests itself in a veritable classification rainbow (in Brazil, for example, there are more than one hundred denominations to designate the color of people). In this context, segregation between mestizos, indigenous peoples and blacks becomes unnecessary, as hierarchies guarantee the superiority of whites as the dominant group.
Thus, the statement that we are all equal before the law takes on a clearly formalistic character in our societies.
Latin American racism is sophisticated enough to keep blacks and indigenous peoples as subordinate segments within the most exploited classes, thanks to its most effective ideological form: the ideology of whitening, so well analyzed by Brazilian scientists . Transmitted by the mass media and traditional ideological systems, it reproduces and perpetuates the belief that the classifications and values of white Western culture are the only true and universal ones.
Once established, the myth of white superiority proves its effectiveness and the effects of violent disintegration, fragmentation of ethnic identity produced by it, the desire to whiten (to "clean the blood" as they say in Brazil), is internalized with the consequent negation of one's own race and culture.
Not a few Latin American countries have since their independence abolished the use of racial indicators in their censuses and other documents. Some of them rehabilitated the indigenous as a mystical symbol of resistance against colonial and neocolonial aggression, while at the same time maintaining the subordination of the indigenous population. With regard to blacks, studies on their condition during the slave regime are abundant. However, historians and sociologists keep silent about their situation since the abolition of slavery until today, establishing a practice that makes this social segment invisible. The argument used by some social scientists consists of the assertion that the absence of the racial variable in their analyzes is due to the fact that blacks were contained within the embraced society in conditions of relative equality with other racial groups (Andrews) . This stance has much more to do with Spanish language studies, at a time when Brazil is almost an exception within this framework; his scientific literature on blacks in today's society is quite significant.
From the above, it is not difficult to conclude that there are major obstacles to the study and development of race relations in Latin America, based on its regional configurations and internal variations, for comparison with other multiracial societies outside the continent.
In fact, this noisy silence about racial contradictions is based, in modern times, on one of the most effective myths of ideological domination: the myth of racial democracy.
Following the supposed equality of all before the law, he asserts the existence of great racial harmony... Whenever they are under the shield of the dominant white group; which reveals its articulation with the ideology of whitening. In our opinion, the person who best synthesized this type of racial domination was a Brazilian humorist who stated: “in Brazil there is no racism because black people recognize their place”. (Millor Fernandes). It is worth noting that even the left absorbed the thesis of “racial democracy”, to the extent that in their analyzes of our social reality they never managed to glimpse anything beyond class contradictions.
Methodologically mechanistic (by Eurocentric), they ended up becoming accomplices of a domination that they intended to fight. In Brazil, this type of perspective began to undergo a reformulation with the return of exiles who had fought the military dictatorship in the early 1980s. This is because many of them (seen as white in Brazil) were the object of racial discrimination abroad. Despite this, only in one country on the continent do we find the great and only exception in relation to concrete action to abolish racial, ethnic and cultural inequalities. It is a geographically small country, but gigantic in its quest to find itself: Nicaragua.
In September 1987, the National Assembly approved and promulgated the Statute of Autonomy for the Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. They have a population of 300,000 inhabitants, divided into six ethnic groups characterized by their linguistic differences: 182,000 Mestizos, 75,000 Miskitos, 26,000 Creoles (Blacks), 9,000 Sumus, 1,750 Garifunas (Blacks) and 850 Ramas. Comprised of six titles and five articles, the Statute of Autonomy implies a new political, economic, social and cultural reordering that responds to coastal communities' demands for participation. More than ensuring the election of local and regional authorities, the Statute ensures community participation in defining projects that benefit the region and recognizes the right to property over communal lands.
On the other hand, it not only guarantees the absolute equality of ethnic groups, but also recognizes their religious and linguistic rights, repudiating all types of discrimination. One of its major effects was the repatriation of 19,000 indigenous people who had abandoned the country. Crowning of a long process in which mistakes and successes accumulated,
the Statute of Autonomy is one of the great achievements of a people who fight “to build a new, multiethnic, pluricultural and multilingual nation based on democracy, pluralism, anti-imperialism and the elimination of social exploitation and oppression in all its forms” .
It is important to insist that within the framework of the profound racial inequalities existing on the continent, sexual inequality is inscribed, and very well articulated. This is double discrimination against non-white women in the region: Amefricans and Amerindians. The double character of their biological condition – racial and sexual – makes them the most oppressed and exploited women in a region of dependent patriarchal-racist capitalism. Precisely because this system transforms differences into inequalities , the discrimination they suffer takes on a triple character, given their class position, Amerindian and Amefrican women form part, for the most part, of the Afro-Latin American proletariat.
For an Afro-Latin American feminism.
It is Virginia Vargas V. who tells us: “the presence of women in the social scene is an unquestionable effect in recent years, seeking new solutions to the problems imposed on them by a social, political and economic order that has historically marginalized them. In this presence, the economic, political, social and cultural crisis(...) has been a triggering element that accelerated processes that were being generated. In effect,
if, on the one hand, the crisis accentuated and evidenced the exhaustion of a development model of dependent capitalism, on the other hand, it made explicit how its effects are received differently in vast social sectors, according to the specific contradictions in which they are immersed, thus encouraging thus the emergence of new fields of conflict and new social actors.
Thus, in the field of social relations, the effect of the crisis was to give us back a much more complex and heterogeneous view of social, economic and political dynamics. In this complexity in which the emergence and recognition of new social movements, among them that of women, are located, which have advanced from their specific contradictions to a profound questioning of “the structural logic of society (Castells) and potentially contain an alternative vision of society".
By characterizing different modalities of participation, she points out three strands, differentiated by an expression, within the movement: popular, party-political and feminist. And it is precisely in the popular that we will find greater participation of Amefricans and Amerindians who, concerned with the problem of family survival, seek to organize themselves collectively; on the other hand, their presence mainly in the informal labor market leads them to new claims. Given their social position, which is articulated with their racial and sexual discrimination, they are the ones who most brutally suffer the effects of the crisis. If we think about the type of economic model adopted and the type of modernization that flows from it - conservative and exclusionary, due to its effects of income concentration and social benefits - it is not difficult to conclude the situation of these women, as in the case of Brazil, at the moment of the crisis (Oliveira, Porcaro and Araujo).
In this perspective, we cannot ignore the important role of Ethnic Movements (ME), as social movements. On the one hand, the indigenous movement (IM), which is growing stronger in South America (Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador) and Central America (Guatemala, Panama and Nicaragua, as we have seen), not only proposes new discussions about traditional social structures, rather than seeking the reconstruction of its Amerindian identity and the rescue of its own history. On the other hand, the Black Movement (MN) - and let's talk about the Brazilian case by making explicit the articulation between the categories of race, class, sex and power, unmasks the structures of domination of a society and a state that see as natural the fact that that four-fifths of the black workforce are kept imprisoned in a kind of socioeconomic belt that “offers and opportunity” to manual and unskilled work. It goes without saying that for the same job performed by whites, earnings are always lower for black workers of any professional category (especially those with higher qualifications). Meanwhile, the profitable appropriation of Afro-Brazilian cultural production is also seen as “natural”.
An important fact of our historical reality fits here: for us, Amefricans in Brazil and other countries in the region - as well as for Amerindians - the awareness of oppression occurs, first of all, by race. Class exploitation and racial discrimination constitute the basic elements of the common struggle of men and women belonging to a subordinate ethnicity. The historical experience of black enslavement, for example, was terribly and painfully lived by men and women, whether they were children, adults or the elderly. And it was within the enslaved community that political-cultural forms of resistance developed that today allow us to continue a centuries-old struggle for liberation. The same reflection is valid for indigenous communities. Therefore, our presence in the ME is quite visible; there we American Africans and Amerindians have an active participation and in many cases we are protagonists.
But it is precisely this participation that leads us to awareness of sexual discrimination. Our movement companions reproduce the sexist practices of the dominant patriarchy and try to exclude us from the movement's decision-making spaces. And it is precisely for this reason that we seek the MM, feminist theory and practice, believing that we will find solidarity as important as racial solidarity: sisterhood. But what we actually find are the practices of exclusion and racist domination that we dealt with in the first section of this work. We are invisible in the three aspects of the MM; even in the one where our presence is greater, we are discolored or deracialized, and placed in the popular category (the few texts that include the racial dimension only confirm the general rule). An illustrative example: two poor families – one black and one white – whose monthly income is 180 dollars (which corresponds to three minimum wages currently in Brazil); inequality is evident in the fact that the activity rate of the black family is higher than that of the white family (Oliveira, Porcaro and Araujo). This explains our scarce presence in the other two areas.
From the above, it is not difficult to understand that our alternative in terms of MM was to organize ourselves as ethnic groups. And, as we fight on two fronts, we are contributing to the advancement of both the ME and the MM (vice versa, of course). In Brazil, already in 1975, on the occasion of the historic meeting of Latinas that would mark the beginning of the MM in Rio de Janeiro, the Americans were present and distributed a manifesto that highlighted sexual economic-racial exploitation and the consequent treaty "degrading, dirty and without respect” of which we are the object. Its content is not very different from the Manifesto of the Black Peruvian Woman on the International Women's Day in 1987, signed by two organizations of the MN of that country: Women's Action Line of the Afro-Peruvian Institute and Group of Women of the Black Movement "Francisco Congo". Denouncing their situation of being discriminated against among those discriminated against, they state: “they molded us into a perfect image in everything that refers to domestic, artistic, servile activities, they considered us “experts in sex”.
This is how the prejudice that black women are only good for these minstrels was fed. It is worth noting that the twelve years of existence of the two documents mean nothing compared to almost five centuries of exploitation that both denounce. In addition, it is observed that the situation of African women in both countries is practically the same, and especially the points of view. A popular Brazilian saying summarizes this situation by stating: “white to marry, mulata to fornicate, black to work”.
That the roles attributed to Amefricans (black and mulatto) be taken into account; their humanity abolished, they are seen as animalized bodies: on the one hand they are the “workhorses” (of which Brazilian mulatto women are a model). In this way, it is verified how the socioeconomic is made allied to the sexual super-exploitation of the Amefrican women.
In the two groups of Amefricanas in Peru, a practice that is also common to us is confirmed: it is from the MN that we organize ourselves, and not from the MM. In the event of the dissolution of a group, the tendency is to continue militancy within the MN, where, despite the regrets, our rebelliousness and critical spirit take place in an atmosphere of greater historical and cultural familiarity. In the MM, these manifestations of ours were often characterized as anti-feminist and “reverse racist” (which presupposes a “right-wing racism”, that is, legitimate); hence our disagreements and resentments. In any case, Amefrican women's groups were organized throughout the country, mainly in the 1980s. We also hold our regional meetings, and this year we will have the First National Meeting of Black Women. Meanwhile, our Amerindian sisters are also organized within the union of indigenous nations, the maximum expression of MI in our country. In this process, it is important to point out that relations within the MM are not just made up of disagreements and resentments with the Latinas. Already in the seventies, a few approached us in an effective exchange of experiences, consequent in their egalitarianism.
Understanding and solidarity expanded in the 1980s, thanks to ideological and behavioral changes within the MM: a new feminism was taking shape on our horizons, raising our hopes for the broadening of its perspectives. The creation of new networks such as the Taller de Mulheres das Américas (which prioritizes the fight against racism and patriarchy from an anti-imperialist perspective) and DAWN/MUDAR are examples of a new way of looking at feminists, luminous and enlightened by being inclusive, open the participation of ethnically and culturally different women. And Nairobi was the landmark of this change, of this deepening, of this meeting of feminism with itself.
Proof of this is the very strong experiences we had the privilege of sharing. The first in November 1987, at the II Meeting of the Taller de Mulheres das Américas in Panama City; there, analyzes and discussions ended up breaking down barriers – in the recognition of racism by feminists – and anti-feminist prejudices on the part of Amerindian and Amefrican women from popular sectors. The second was the following month, in La Paz, at the DAWN/MUDAR regional meeting; The most representative women of Latin American feminism were present, both for their theoretical production and for their effective practice. And a single Amefrican presence argued throughout the meeting about the contradictions already signaled in this work. It was really an extraordinary experience for me, in view of the frank and honest testimonies on the part of the Latinas present there, in the face of the racial issue. I left there revived, confident that a new era was opening up for all of us women in the region. More than ever, my feminism felt empowered. And the title of this work was inspired by that experience. That's why I dedicate it to Neuma, Leo, Carmen, Virginia, Irma (your Christmas card made me cry), Tais, Margarita, Socorro, Magdalena, Stella, Rocio, Gloria and the Amerindians Lucilla and Marta.
Good luck, women!
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Lélia Gonzalez Lélia Gonzalez (Belo Horizonte, February 1, 1935; Rio de Janeiro, July 10, 1994) was a Brazilian intellectual, politician, professor and anthropologist. Her writings, simultaneously permeated by the scenarios of the political dictatorship and the emergence of social movements, are revealing of the multiple insertions and identify her constant concern in articulating the broader struggles of society with the specific demand of blacks and, in particular, of black women. The books produced were “Lugar de Negro”, Editora Marco Zero, 1982 (with Carlos Hasenbalg), “Popular Parties in Brazil”, awarded at the Frankfurt Fair. The other references of Lélia Gonzalez's production are papers, communications, seminars, social-political pamphlets, partisan, engaged, always with a lot of reflection. He ran for public office in 1982 (PT) and 1986 (PDT), having as main references individual freedoms and social transformations. Lélia has always believed in the possibility of building a solidary and fraternal society and that, in order to do so, it is necessary, in addition to engaging in the broader political struggle, for non-dominant groups to produce their own knowledge. It is for this reason that he dedicated himself to the study of human cultures, especially black culture. Graduated in History and Philosophy, she deepened her studies in the areas of Anthropology, Sociology, Literature, Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics theory, Brazilian Culture, in addition to having dedicated herself deeply to African Science, Culture and History. As a high school teacher at the Fernando Rodrigues da Silveira College of Application (UEG, currently UERJ), in the difficult final years of the 1960s. Her writings and lectures, acting against racism and other forms of discrimination, contributed to the academic and citizen of many who lived with her, considering that she worked in Brazilian universities for more than 30 years, until her death. In her final days, she was elected head of the Department of Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. When he died, aged 59, he still had a lot to do, what to write, what to say/communicate/teach. His permanent and unrestricted search for knowledge is identified by the capacity for interpretation that he showed in his criticism of the ideologies and hegemony of domination (with a macho, white and European logic) that has always forced black people to a place of submission, of lower condition and capacity. Lélia Gonzalez was a founder of the Unified Black Movement (MNU); the Research Institute of Black Cultures of Rio de Janeiro (IPCN-RJ)); the Nzinga Collective of Black Women; of Olodum (Savior). She participated in the first composition of the National Council for Women's Rights (CNDM), from 1985 to 1989.
