Introduction by Jelke Boesten

This special issue focuses on the intersection of gender, race and sexuality in Latin America. Many of the contributions to JLAS on women and gender inevitably include some discussion of race, sexuality and, particularly, class. However, during the last ten years or so attention has been more focused specifically on gender, race and sexuality in contemporary Latin America. While class continues to be an important factor, new research recognises the importance of other factors that shape socio-economic inequality. This chimes with trends around the increasing call for decolonial perspectives on inequality and, especially, feminisms, as well as on increasing visibility of black feminist activism and politics. Currently, these trends are embraced by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), under the direction of President Mara Viveros-Vigoya, in its 2020 conference theme ‘Améfrica Ladina’. This term was coined by the Afro-Brazilian scholar Lélia Gonzalez to indicate the need to recognise and embrace the plural ancestry of Latin America in the social project for justice and equality.

In order to compile a special issue based on articles previously published by JLAS, I went through all JLAS publications since 1969 in order to find the patterns in themes and perspectives regarding women and gender more broadly. Between then and the May 2019 issue (vol. 51), 41 articles were published with a focus on aspects of gender, all of which I will mention below. The first was by the historian Anthony Russell-Wood, in 1977. Arguably an early intersectional perspective on the role of women in colonial Brazil, the article aims to rescue women’s role in history by going beyond the well-established gendered and racial stereotypes. One of Russell-Wood’s interesting findings is the impossibility of solidarity across racial lines and white women’s role in perpetuating social and racial inequality, a finding many times confirmed in later years, for example in the here-included 2019 article by Ana Ramos-Zayas.

This early article on women in history was followed in 1980 by Susan Socolow’s article about women and crime in colonial Argentina. If Socolow indicates that few historians studied crime in Latin America at that moment in time, this issue was surely resolved in the decades to come with ample focus on crime and violence in the fields of history and social sciences. However, the subsequent decades have seen far less focus on women and crime, or gender and crime. Nevertheless, JLAS published several articles on gender and violence, such as my own 2006 article on domestic violence in Peru; Polly Wilding’s 2010 article on gender and violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; Javier Auyero, Agustín Burbano de Lara and María Fernanda Berti’s 2014 article on patterns of interpersonal violence in poor and urban Argentina; and Anthony Fontes and Kevin O’Neill’s recent article on prisons in Guatemala. In their own way, these articles all accomplish what Socolow set out to do in 1980: they help us understand what acceptable and unacceptable gendered behaviour is in any given society by examining patterns of violence.

Over the years, JLAS has published a range of articles on women’s roles in the Cold War (see the first virtual special issue edited by Tanya Harmer); women and changing family and economic structures (Elizabeth Dore in 1997 and Carlos Vilas in 1992, both on Nicaragua, Pablo Pérez Saínz and Rafael Menjívar Larín in 1994 on Central American informality, Anne MacPherson in 2003 on Puerto Rico and Belize, Adriana Novoa in 2007 on Argentina, Anna Cristina Pertierra in 2008 on Cuba, Alejandra Ramm in 2016 on Chile, Jason Davis in 2016 on Guatemala); and women and politics (Georgina Waylen in 2000 on Argentina and Chile, Paul H. Lewis in 2004 on Chile, Margarita Palacios and Javier Martínez in 2006 on Chile, Ann Towns in 2010 on women and the Inter-American Commission, Rachel Brickner in 2010 on Mexico, and a 2015 overview article theorising trends in women and politics in Latin America by Susan Franceschet, Jennifer Piscopo and Gwynn Thomas). In addition, some attention has been focused on women and social policy (Cecilia Tossounian in 2013 on Argentina), although social policy also often runs through articles focusing on a range of the above-mentioned themes. Some attention has also been paid to women’s agency from below in changing economic and social structures (Katy Jenkins in 2011 on Peru, Emma-Jayne Abbots in 2012 on Ecuador). A range of historical articles on specific periods, topics and issues is less easy to categorise, such as David McCreery’s 1986 article on prostitution in early-twentieth-century Guatemala and a series of articles on the protagonism of particular women, such as Pamela Murray’s 2001 article on Manuela Sáenz, Julyan Peard’s 2008 article on Juana Manso, and Amelia Kiddle’s 2010 focus on the life of a cabaret troupe leader in order to unpack gender and nationalism in Cárdenas’ Mexico. Last but not least, Ben Fallaw (2013) writes about sexuality and religion in revolutionary Mexico. As an interdisciplinary journal, the combination of history, politics and sociology in these contributions enriches our understanding of changing gender relations in Latin America, and how these influence society, politics and the economy, and vice versa.

Little has been published by JLAS on feminism and feminist activism, and Cecilia McCallum’s 2007 piece stands out. McCallum looks at black feminists in Bahia and the strategies they employ to seek social justice for Afro-Brazilian women in a society in which black women are largely associated with domestic work. Their ‘politics of presence’ is based on an understanding of racial difference as grounded in structural, historical and experiential factors, rather than race itself. This is an important article on black feminism and, with the current surge in feminist writing and activism throughout Latin America, hopefully scholars will feel motivated to submit their papers to JLAS to enrich this aspect of the journal’s coverage.

There has been some fantastic writing about race, gender and sexuality, and their intersection with class. Matan Shapiro (2016) looks at the paradoxes of intimacy in North-eastern Brazil from an ethnographic perspective. He argues that the concealment of certain intimacies defies moral injunctions, but at the same time renders ‘opacity, uncertainty and paradox’ part and parcel of everyday practices of intimacy, and hence ethical practices themselves. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic detail, Shapiro’s article traces kinship and household patterns, gender relations and reciprocity, as well as hierarchies of class, race and respectability. Ramos-Zayas (2019) looks at domestic work from ‘the other side’: white elites in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, and urban Puerto Rico. Focusing on the affective relationships between well-to-do urban women and the black and mixed-race nannies they contract, Ramos-Zayas shows how ‘informality and expressions of care’ function to legitimate and reproduce racial and class hierarchies, affirming white superiority. She uses the term ‘sovereign parenting’ to indicate how white elites self-fashion a liberal and progressive identity while deploying particular parenting styles with specific racial and class bias, despite their seeming intention not to.

Four articles in the last eight years look at indigenous women’s quest for more autonomy as women, and as indigenous people. The tensions lie in the notion that indigenous communities in Latin America do not necessarily respect women’s rights, but, argue these authors, neither do the states within which they live. What is more, these postcolonial states tend to discriminate according to not only gender but also class and race, creating an intersectional oppression that triply disadvantages indigenous women. Hence, argue these authors, ‘negotiating with patriarchy’ from within indigenous communities might be the best strategy for carving out space for their struggles after all.

As such, Anders Burman (2011) discusses decolonisation debates in Bolivia, and how indigenous women and urban feminists respectively perceive gender, and equality, within these debates. He follows the use of the concept chachawarmi (in Aymara, chacha means ‘man’ and warmi means ‘woman’) – the persistent idea of gender complementarity rather than inequality – in order to suggest that decolonisation and depatriarchalisation will have different meanings and need different strategies depending on one’s position in the gendered and racial hierarchy. Helpfully, Burman sees this broad project of racial and gendered emancipation as a process – hence open to different meanings and implications depending on where one stands – rather than a theory. Using social movement theory, Stéphanie Rousseau and Anahi Morales Hudon (2015) examine the political strategies indigenous women deploy to expand their own rights within the broader indigenous movements in Peru, Bolivia and Mexico. Rousseau and Morales Hudon analyse the power structures of the different indigenous movements, as well as those of the women’s organisations within those movements. They also look at women’s organisations’ relationships with external organisations, who are often able to provide vital resources.

Rachel Sieder and Anna Barrera (2017) also look at this tension by zooming in on legal pluralism and women’s rights in the Andes. They argue that indigenous culture and practices of justice are sufficiently dynamic and open for indigenous women’s movements to forge change by negotiating with patriarchy within indigenous communities and movements. Sieder and Barrera outline these strategies, demonstrating that working towards greater women’s rights as part of the struggle for cultural rights might be a more effective way to overcome the deep intersecting inequalities indigenous women experience, rather than doing this as ‘women’ as part of the wider national polity. Both Rousseau and Morales Hudon and Sieder and Barrera note that the increasing violence and repression that indigenous communities have to deal with – on the part of the state and extractive industries – pose a particular threat to positive developments regarding indigenous autonomy as well as women’s rights. This encroachment of neoliberal governance on indigenous women’s claims for autonomy is examined in an earlier article by Maylei Blackwell (2012). Blackwell looks at indigenous women’s discourse of decoloniality and practice of autonomy while the state instrumentally co-opts discourses of women’s and cultural rights in order to govern rather than liberate. Nevertheless, she argues, indigenous women’s movements develop their own strategies of autonomy. Blackwell’s activist research also elaborates on the tension between indigenous autonomy and women’s autonomy, which all of these authors address.

This special issue on race, gender and sexuality closes with the research by Peter Wade (2013) on genomics in Latin America. This article shows that challenging prejudice and stereotypes is still vital, as Wade identifies how genomic knowledge about race and nationality reflects certain tropes about majority and minority populations, and the sexuality of specific populations. Male sexuality, in particular, is highly racialised, shaping ideas about sexual agency and masculinities. Contemporary interest in genomics has re-centred mestizo populations as mainstream, and black and indigenous people as ‘other’. In addition, particular types of mestizaje (‘mixture’) are emphasised, which in turn reflect familiar prejudices about the sexuality of black, white and indigenous men.

These eight articles, published in the last eight years or so, show the importance of intersectional perspectives with regard to understanding oppression and inequality, as well as activism and social change. Gendered and racialised hierarchies are changing, albeit at a slow pace, but it is worthwhile to take note, investigate, understand and shout out in support of those who work hard for intersectional gender justice. This virtual special issue showcases what JLAS has published in this respect, highlighting some of the directions in scholarship, largely in anthropology and politics, of this exciting and increasingly urgent field.

Articles in this special issue:

Maylei Blackwell, ‘The Practice of Autonomy in the Age of Neoliberalism: Strategies from Indigenous Women's Organising in Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 44: 4 (2012), pp. 703–32.

Anders Burman, ‘Chachawarmi: Silence and Rival Voices on Decolonisation and Gender Politics in Andean Bolivia’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 43: 1 (2011), pp. 65–91.

Cecilia McCallum, ‘Women out of Place? A Micro-historical Perspective on the Black Feminist Movement in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 39: 1 (2007), pp. 55–80.

Ana Ramos-Zayas, ‘“Sovereign Parenting” in Affluent Latin American Neighbourhoods: Race and the Politics of Childcare in Ipanema (Brazil) and El Condado (Puerto Rico)’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 51: 3 (2019), pp. 639–63.

Stéphanie Rousseau and Anahi Morales Hudon, ‘Paths towards Autonomy in Indigenous Women's Movements: Mexico, Peru, Bolivia’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 48: 1 (2016), pp. 33–60. 

Matan Shapiro, ‘Paradoxes of Intimacy: Play and the Ethics of Invisibility in North-east Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 48: 4 (2016), pp. 797–821.

Rachel Sieder and Anna Barrera, ‘Women and Legal Pluralism: Lessons from Indigenous Governance Systems in the Andes’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 49: 3 (2017), pp. 633–58.

Peter Wade, ‘Blackness, Indigeneity, Multiculturalism and Genomics in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 45: 2 (2013), pp. 205–33.