Lelia Gonzalez¹

In 1988, Brazil, the country with the largest black population in the Americas, commemorates the centennial of the law which ended slavery in the country. The festivities will extend throughout the nation, promoted by innumerable public and private institutions, celebrating "100 years of abolition".

For the Black Movement, however, the moment is much more one of reflection than of celebration. Reflection, because the text of the law of May 13, 1888, known as the Golden Law, simply declared slavery to be over, revoking all prior laws to the contrary and... no more. For black women and men, the struggle for liberation began much earlier than that legal act and continues to this day. Our struggle is to make Brazilian society reflect on the status of blacks within it, and to think about its internal contradictions as well as the profound racial inequalities which are a part of it. This need for reflection also extends to other countries in the region.

This article— an analysis of the internal contradictions of Latin American feminism— represents a modest contribution from a black feminist to the advancement of the feminist movement. By highlighting the racial dimension of the feminist movement, it attempts to show that within the movement, black and Indian women are living testimony to their exclusion from it. The article will also try to show, however, on the basis of the author's experiences as a black woman, the solidarity, closeness and respect for differences demonstrated by white colleagues who are committed to the feminist cause. These exceptional women I call sisters.

When I speak of my own experience, I am talking about a long process of learning which occurred in my search for an identity as a black woman, within a society which oppresses me and discriminates against me because I am black. But a question of an ethical and political nature arises immediately. I cannot speak in the first person singular of something which is painfully common to millions of women who live in the region, those "Amerindians" and "Amerafricans" (Gonzalez) who are oppressed by a "latinness" which legitimizes their "inferiority".

feminism and racism

It is undeniable that feminism, both in theory and in practice, has played a fundamental role in the struggles of women. It has presented new questions, stimulated the formation of groups and networks, and encouraged the search for a new way of being a woman. By centering their analysis on patriarchal capitalism (or capitalist patriarchy), feminists revealed the material and symbolic basis of women's oppression. Their analysis is a contribution of crucial importance for guiding the struggles of a movement. In describing, for example, the political nature of the private world, they unleashed a public debate about sexuality, violence, reproductive rights, etc., which unmasked traditional relationships of domination and submission. By promoting a discussion about sexuality, feminism gave great encouragement to homosexuals of both sexes, discriminated against because of their sexual orientation (Vargas). Feminism made the search for an alternative model of society irreversible. Thanks to its theoretical production and its action as a movement, the world will never be the same.

In spite of the fundamental contribution of the feminist movement to the discussion of discrimination based on sexual orientation, the same has not occurred with respect to another type of discrimination, racial discrimination. Interestingly, we are told that in the North American feminist movement the relationship was inverse that feminism was the consequence of the black movement, and not vice versa. "Without black sisterhood, there would not have been sisterhood; without black power and black pride, there would not have been gay power and gay pride" (David Edgar). And the feminist Leslie Cagan affirms: "The fact that the Civil Rights Movement broke down presuppositions about equality and liberty in America, opened the way for us to question our freedom as women".

But a reading of feminist texts and an analysis of feminist practice reveals a kind of forgetfulness about the racial question. Take as an example the definition of feminism: "resistance of women to accepting social, economic, political, ideological and psychological roles, situations and characteristics which are based on a hierarchy of men over women in which the woman is the subject of discrimination" (Astelarra). If the term black (or Indian) were substituted for women, this definition would describe the struggles of women of color against racism. This is so because both sexism and racism are based on the concept that biological differences justify domination of one group by another.

How can this forgetfulness of feminism be explained? The response, in our judgment, lies in what some social scientists call racism by omission, the roots of which are found in a "eurocentric" and neocolonialist vision of the world.

Two categories of Laconian thinking can help our understanding here—the categories of infant and subject-supposed-to know. The first category, that of the infant, describes someone who is not the subject of her own conversation, because others speak for her. The concept of infant is based on an analysis of the psychological formation of the child, who, when spoken about by adults in the third person, is consequently excluded, ignored, made absent, in spite of her physical presence; she reproduces this discourse, speaking of herself in the third person, until the moment when she learns to use personal pronouns.

In the same way, women and non-whites have been spoken of, defined and classified by an ideological system of domination which makes infants of us. By being placed in an inferior position within a hierarchy, our humanity is erased because we are denied the right to be subjects, not only of our own discourse, but of our own history. This is characteristic of a patriarchal-racist system. Feminists, in speaking of the racial issue, accept and reproduce the infantilisation of the patriarchal-racist system by making blacks the object of discussion.

The category of subject-supposed-to know refers to the imaginary identification we often have with certain figures who are attributed with a knowledge that they do not possess (mother, father, psychoanalyst, professor, etc.) The analyses of Frantz Fannon and Alberto Memmi which describe the psychology of the colonized fit well here. The colonized (i.e., indigenous groups) attribute superiority to the colonizer. In this way, Eurocentrism and its neo-colonial effects contribute to racism.

Latin American feminism loses much of its force by making abstract a fact of great importance: the pluricultural and multi-racial character of the societies of the region. Feminism speaks, for example, of the sexual division of work without articulating the corresponding racial division of work. To speak of the oppression of the Latin American woman is to speak of a generality which hides the hard reality lived by millions of black and indigenous women. Jenny Bourne is absolutely correct when she states: "I see anti-racism as something which is not outside the Women's Movement but something which is intrinsic to the best feminist principles."

the racial question in Latin America

 An analysis which fails to see the racial dimension, or which "forgets" it, is not only characteristic of Latin American feminism. Racism is at the very core of the region's hierarchal societies. It is worthwhile, therefore, to reflect historically about racism in the region, above all in the countries colonized by the Spanish.

First, one cannot forget that the historical formation of Spain and Portugal began with centuries of struggle against the Moors, who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711. The war between the Moors and the Christians (still remembered in our popular festivals) was not only religious in nature. Although not spoken about, the racial dimension played an important ideological role in the struggles of the Reconquest (the struggle to end Moorish rule in Spain). The Moorish invaders were predominantly black. In addition, the last two dynasties of its kingdom—that of the Almoravides and the Almohades (which ruled during the late 11th and 12th century in Spain) were from West Africa (Chandler). The Spanish and Portuguese thus had experience with multi-racial societies.

Second, the Iberian societies were structured in a highly hierarchical way, with many different and complementary social layers. The strength of the hierarchy was such that it was even evident in the forms of address, transformed into law by the King of Portugal and Spain in 1597. Needless to say in such a system, where each and everyone had a set place, there was no room for equality, especially for different ethnic groups like the Moors and the Jews, who were subject to violent social and political control (Da Matta).

As historical heirs of the ideologies of social, racial and sexual classification, as well as of the legal and administrative techniques of the Iberian metropolis, Latin American societies could not help but be characterized as hierarchical. Racially stratified, they are a virtual rainbow of color; in Brazil, for example, there are more than 100 different names for skin colors. Within this context, the segregation of mestizos, Indians and blacks was unnecessary because the hierarchy guaranteed the superiority of the whites as the dominant group.

Thus, the affirmation that all are equal before the law is a formalistic statement in our societies. Latin American racism is sufficiently sophisticated to maintain blacks and Indians as subordinated parts of more exploited classes. This is in spite of the fact that in some Latin American countries the Indian has been rehabilitated as a "mystical symbol" of the resistance against colonial and neocolonial aggression. The ideology of blanqueamiento (whitening), so well analyzed by Brazilian scientists, is transmitted by the mass media which successfully perpetuates the belief that the classifications and values of white Western culture are the only true and universal values.

Once established, the myth of white superiority proves its efficiency by the fragmentation of ethnic identity it produces, i.e., the desire to become white and deny one's own race and culture (to "clean the blood" as they say in Brazil) is internalized.

Not a few Latin American countries, for example, have abolished the use of racial indicators in their censuses and in other documents, thus making differences invisible. Although many studies exist about the condition of blacks during the regime of slavery, historians and sociologists are silent about the situation of blacks from abolition to today, thus making them invisible. The argument utilized by some social scientists for justifying the absence of a racial variable in their analysis is that blacks were absorbed within the population in conditions of relative equality with other racial groups (Andrews).

It is not difficult to conclude from what has been said that there are great obstacles to the study of racial relations in Latin America, both in its regional forms and its internal variations. The truth is that this loud silence about race is based on one of the most efficient myths of ideological domination: that of racial democracy.

The myth of equality for all before the law presupposes the existence of great racial harmony...which is always found under the shield of the white dominant group, the ideology of blanqueamiento. Perhaps the best summation of this type of racial domination was made by a Brazilian humorist who said: "In Brazil racism does not exist because Blacks know their place" (Millor Fernandes). It is worthwhile noting that the Left still believes the thesis of "racial democracy", insofar as their analyses about society never glimpse anything more than class contradictions. Methodological mechanics, they ended by becoming accomplices of a domination they tried to combat. In Brazil, this perspective began to change with the return of exiles who had fought the military dictatorship in the early 1980s, because many of them (thought of as white in Brazil) were the object of racial discrimination abroad.

In spite of this, in only one country of the continent do we find concrete actions to abolish racial, ethnic and cultural inequality. This is a geographically small country, but a giant in the search for itself: Nicaragua. In September, 1987, the National Assembly approved and promulgated the Estatuto de Autonomia de las Regiones de la Costa Atlantica de Nicaragua (the Statute of Autonomy for Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua). In these regions there is a population of 300,000, divided into six ethnic groups by language differences: 182,000 Mestizos, 75,000 Misquitos, 26,000 Creoles (Blacks), 9,000 Sumus, 1,750 Garifunas (Blacks) and 850 Ramas.

Made up of six titles and five articles, the Statute of Autonomy implies a new political, economic, social and cultural reordering which responds to the claims of the coastal communities. More than guaranteeing the election of local and regional authorities, the Statute assures that the community can participate in the creation of projects which benefit the region and recognizes their property right to communal lands. It not only guarantees absolute equality of ethnic groups, but also recognizes their religious and language rights, repudiating all forms of discrimination. One of its great impacts was the repatriation of 19,000 Indians that had left the country. Crowning the long process in which both errors and successes had occurred, the Statute of Autonomy is one of the great victories of a people which fights "to construct a new nation, multi-ethnic, pluricultural and multilingual, based on democracy, pluralism, anti-imperialism and the elimination of social exploitation and oppression in all of its forms."

It is important to point out that, within the context of profound racial inequalities which exist in the continent, sexual inequality is also strong. Non-white women of the region—the "Amerafricans" and the "Amerindians"—suffer a double discrimination. They are the most oppressed and exploited women in a region of patriarchal-racist capitalism. The Amerindians and Amerafricans are also discriminated against on the basis of their class; they are part of the immense afro-latinamerican proletariat.

for an afro-latinamerican feminism

Virginia Vargas V. tells us: "The presence of women on the public scene is an unquestionable fact of the past few years. They are seeking new solutions to confront problems which the social, political and economic order places on them. The economic, political, social and cultural crisis ... has accelerated processes which had already begun. While the crisis has accentuated the failure of the "dependent capitalist" development model, it is still to be discovered how the crisis affects different social sectors. In the area of social relations, one effect of the crisis has been to give us a more complex and heterogeneous vision of the social, economic and political dynamic. Within this complexity there are new social movements, among them the women's movement, which profoundly question the structural logic of society (Castells) and offer, potentially, an alternative vision of society."

Within the women's movement there are three distinct models: grassroots, political and feminist. It is within the grassroots movement that we find the greatest participation of Amerafricans and Amerindians who are organizing themselves around issues of family survival. Their presence in the informal work market also causes them to make new demands. Given their social position and the racial and sexual discrimination they suffer, they experience the effects of the crisis in the most brutal way. If one thinks about the type of economic model which has been adopted and the types of "modernization" which flow from it, which concentrates income and social benefits in the hands of a few, it is not difficult to deduce the situation of these women, as in the Brazilian case, in a time of crisis (Oliveira, Porcaro and Araujo).

The important role of the Ethnic Movements as social movements cannot be overlooked. The Indigenous Movement, which is becoming stronger in South America (Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador) and Central America (Guatemala, Panama and Nicaragua), not only proposes new discussions about traditional social structures but seeks the restoration of the Amerindian identity and the recovery of Amerindian history. The Black Movement, at least in Brazil, clarifies the relationship between the categories of race, class, sex and power, and unmasks the dominant structures of a society and a State which see as "natural" the fact that four fifths of the black work force is imprisoned in a type of socio-economic trap which "offers the opportunity" of manual labor. It is well known that when whites perform the same work as blacks, they are paid more than blacks in any professional category (above all in the highest qualification categories). Meanwhile, the lucrative appropriation of Afro-Brazilian culture which has become the "national" Brazilian culture, also is seen as "natural".

An important point needs to be made here about historical reality: for us, Amerafrican and Amerindian women of Brazil and of other countries of the region, our awareness of oppression occurs first in its racial dimension. Class exploitation and racial discrimination are common experiences of both men and women belonging to a subordinated ethnic group. The historical experience of black slavery, for example, was terrible for men and women, children, adults and the elderly. And it was within the slave community that political-cultural forms of resistance were developed which today permit us to continue a pluri-secular liberation struggle. This same analysis is valid for indigenous communities. Thus, the presence of women in the Ethnic Movement is very visible; we Amerafrican and Amerindian women, are active participants and protagonists of the movement.

But it is exactly this participation which brought us to an awareness of sex discrimination. Our male partners in the movement reproduce patriarchal sexist practices and try to exclude us from the decision-making process. And it is precisely for that reason that we seek to participate in a women's movement, believing that there we can find solidarity with our sisters which is as important as racial solidarity. But what we find, instead, are racist exclusionary practices cited in the first section of this paper. We are "de-colored" and "de-raced", relegated to the grassroots category of the movement. Furthermore, because black families invariably earn less than white families for the same work (Oliveira, Porcaro and Araujo), blacks have a much smaller presence in the other two streams of the feminist movement, the political and the feminist. We simply don't have the time to participate. Thus, we are invisible in the three streams of the women's movement, including that in which our participation is the greatest.

It is not difficult to understand, then, that our alternative to the women's movement was the ethnic movement. And, as we struggle on these two fronts, we contribute to the advance of both movements. In Brazil, as early as 1975, on the occasion of the first historic meeting of Latin American women, which marked the beginning of the women's movement in Rio de Janeiro, Amerafricans were present and distributed a manifesto which called attention to the economic, racial and sexual exploitation and the "degrading, dirty and disrespectful" treatment to which we are subject. Its content is not very different from that of the Manifesto of Black Peruvian Women signed on International Women's Day in 1987 by two organizations of the black movement in that country: Linea de Accion Femenina del Instituto de Investigaciones Afroperuano (Female Action Line of the Institute of Afro-Peruvian Studies) and the Grupo de Mujeres del Movimiento Negro "Francisco Congo" (Women's Group of the "Francisco Congo" Black Movement). Denouncing their situation as the discriminated within the discriminated, they affirmed: "We have been molded into a perfect image of domestic, artistic, and servile functions; we are considered 'experts in sex'. This is how the prejudice that black women are useful only for these purposes has grown."

It is worthwhile noting that the twelve years difference between the Brazilian and Peruvian documents mean nothing in comparison to the almost five centuries of exploitation which both denounce. The situation of Amerafricans and their thinking is practically the same in the two countries. A popular Brazilian saying sums up the situation: "A white woman to marry, a brown one to fornicate, and a black to work". The roles permitted to Amerafricans (black and mulatto) were strictly defined; their humanity was denied; Amerafricans were seen as animalized bodies; they were the sexual "beasts of burden" (for which Brazilian mulattas are a model). Thus, socioeconomic super exploitation of women has become allied with the sexual super exploitation of Amerafrican women.

The two Amerafrican groups of Peru illustrate that black women first began to organize within the black movement, not within the women's movement. When a group is dissolved, the tendency is to stay active in the black movement, where, in spite of women's misgivings, women's rebellion and critical spirit are more welcome from a cultural and historical viewpoint. Within the women's movement, the demands of black women, many times, have been characterized as anti-feminist and even as "racism in reverse" (which presupposes that there is a legitimate racism); and from there resentment and separation resulted. But in spite of this, groups of Amerafrican women have been organizing themselves in the countries of the continent in the 1980s, in any way they can. We have held our own regional meetings and this year will hold the First National Meeting of Black Women in Brazil. Meanwhile our Amerindian sisters are also organizing themselves within the Union of Indigenous Nations, the greatest expression of the indigenous movement in Brazil.

It is important to emphasize that relations within the women's movement do not consist solely of resentment and fights between Latin and black women. Already in the 1970s, a few Latin women approached us, helped us and learned with us, in an effective exchange of experiences. This was a result of their egalitarian spirit. Their understanding and solidarity grew in the 1980s, thanks to changes in ideology and action within the women's movement: a new feminism was being created which increased our hope that their ideas would change. The creation of new networks like the Taller de Mujeres de las Americas (which gives priority to the struggle against racism and patriarchy from an anti-imperialist perspective) and DAWN are examples of new forms of feminist thought, both illuminating and illuminated by being inclusive and open to the participation of women who are ethnically and culturally different. Nairobi was also an example of this change, of feminism coming to know itself.

Within the women's movement we have shared two very strong experiences. The first occurred in November, 1987, at the Second Meeting of the Taller de Mujeres de las Americas in the city of Panaya; there, the analyses and discussions ended by breaking barriers, through the recognition of racism by feminists and of anti-feminist prejudices by Amerindians and Amerafricans. The second experience occurred the following month in La Paz at the Regional Meeting of DAWN/MUDAR where the most representative women from Latin American feminism both in terms of their theoretical production and effective practice came together. I, the single Amerafrican present, made all of the arguments contained in this work. It was, really, an extraordinary experience for me to hear the frank and honest accounts of the Latin women present there, who were confronting the racial question. I left revived, confident that a new era was being opened for all women of the region. More than ever my feminism was strengthened. The title of this work was inspired by that experience. I dedicate this article to Neuma, Leo, Carmen, Virginia, Irma, Tais, Margarita, Socorro, Magdalena, Stella, Rocio, Gloria and the Amerindias, Lucila and Marta. Good luck, women!

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