Norma Stoltz Chinchilla

Transnational Family Separation: A Framework for Analysis

Existing scholarly literature and public discussions in sending and receiving countries often attempt to assess the costs and benefits of transnational family separation, not from the point of view of the participants but by universalising notions of motherhood and fatherhood without recognising different familial contexts and traditions. Such universalisation often results in separated families being defined as pathological, and transnational parents being blamed for the problems of youth left behind. Immigrant parents, on the other hand, often create a cost–benefit calculus based on fragmentary and inaccurate information and use this calculus to influence their transnational parenting practices to mitigate the costs of their separation from their children. In this article, we argue for the importance of context in understanding the impact of transnational family separation and propose a framework for assessing costs and benefits from the points of view not only of parents but also of others in the transnational chain of care—children, substitute care-givers and members of the communities of departure and reception. The key components of this framework are pre-migration family and child-care traditions and structures; the nature and regularity of contact during the period of separation; the reliability of remittances, the ways in which they are perceived and used by recipients and their communities; the opportunities for and context of reunification; and public policies that shape transnational family separation and reunification.

REVOLUTIONARY POPULAR FEMINISM IN NICARAGUA: Articulating Class, Gender, and National Sovereignty

On March 8, 1987, the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN, the political party in power in Nicaragua) published its statement on the relation of womens struggles to the Nicaraguan revolution. The author argues that this official statement is consistent with the views of modern feminists on some key points relating to the need to eliminate womens double day, promote womens self-organization, and wage an ideological struggle against sexism if womens subordination is to be eliminated. The author believes that the Sandinista Fronts emphasis on ideological struggle and political organization represents an important break with more economistic, orthodox Marxist approaches to analyzing the condition of women and has important implications for Marxist feminism.

MARXISM, FEMINISM, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA

While discussions of dissolving the hyphen between Marxism and feminism were put on the back burner in the United States and England in the 1980s, the author argues that changes in Latin America during the same decade favor a possible convergence of contemporary Marxist and feminist theory and practice. These conditions include the emergence of a second-wave feminist movement in many Latin America countries, the central role of women in contemporary social movements, and an internal critique within Latin American Marxism. Key issues pointing toward a convergence of thinking include a reevaluation and redefinition of democracy, the concept of “a plurality of social subjects” or potential revolutionary actors, the importance of autonomy for popular movements in relation to political parties and the state, and a new understanding of the importance of daily life in the struggle for socialism.

The Sanctuary Movement and Central American Activism in Los Angeles

The Sanctuary movement of the 1980s combined religious faith and social activism to provide refuge for Central Americans fleeing violence and persecution and to raise awareness of the responsibility associated with U.S. policy in the region. Features of the Los Angeles area, such as its large Latino population, provided support and a sense of community; in this sense the city itself was a sanctuary. The presence of many Central Americans who brought their experience and skills in organizing in their home countries to the development of solidarity and refugee organizations in Los Angeles were also an important resource for the Sanctuary movement. The development of the Sanctuary movement was characterized by the interaction of spiritual ethics and religious practice with activism in raising consciousness and providing legitimacy. The strength of the movement lay particularly in the profound experiences and narratives of refugees, shared through personal connections that spanned cultures and countries.

Of Straw Men and Stereotypes: Why Guatemalan Rocks Don't Talk

Long before David Stolls book appeared and the New York Times journalist Larry Rohter (1998) gleefully proclaimed it a definitive expose of Guatemalas only Nobel Prize winner since Miguel Angel Asturias (and the only indigenous female, let alone Guatemalan, to become an international icon), there were articles and interviews purporting to summarize Stolls argument and his motives for advancing it. From exposure to a few of these I formed my first impressions of his project and was willing to give his motives for devoting ten years of his life to it the benefit of the doubt. I seriously questioned the timing of a book that would most certainly tarnish the reputation of one of the few objects of international pride Guatemalans have had in the past few decades and worried that its appearance would make an already difficult process of reconciliation more so. But I was willing to concede that Stolls inquiry, however uncomfortable and disagreeable, might lead to a useful reexamination of the idealizations that inevitably emerge during a war. I was interested in honest discussions of a revolutionary strategy that, in retrospect, had underestimated the power of the enemy and carried such a high cost in human lives, particularly those of indigenous Guatemalans. I knew from experience that complexities, nuances, and contradictions are typically overlooked or go unmentioned in the course of mobilizing support for one or another side in a war or in efforts to stop widespread human rights violations. If, I reasoned, all Stoll intended to do was to show that Rigobertas autobiography might have been partly a composite or an oversimplified account, crafted in a historical context that required a certain amount of clandestinity and dissimulation to survive, that could be useful information for those who studied and used oral histories. Again, if it was an account partially shaped by the international audience with whom she was trying to communicate-the

Working-Class Feminism: Domitila and the Housewives Committee

The history of women, like that of other oppressed groups, has been hidden from us only now to be recovered painstakingly, bit by bit, as the result of the pressure of a social movement. Much of the history of working class, poor, and peasant women is not only buried but lost forever, never having been written down in official documents, diaries, or novels. We will never know very much about the dreams, the struggles, the details of daily life of ordinary women who have gone before us. But the same mistake need not be made about the present. The lives of ordinary women, particularly those that intersect with the popular movements of our time, can be recorded for future generations to come. Domitilas life story, as told to Moema Viezzer, a Brazilian journalist and anthropologist, is a rich and fascinating contribution to the growing collection of books, tapes, and films about the lives of working-class women organizers. But it is much more than that. It is explicitly conceived as a tool for political organizing. Domitila tells her story as the wife of a Bolivian tin miner, a leader of the Housewives Committee, and member of the mining community of Siglo XX so that,

An LAP Memoir

I find it difficult to imagine either my life or Latin American studies in the United States without LAP. As a member of the editorial collective during its formative decade, I found in LAP what I had not found in graduate school or in the discipline of sociology as practiced in United States since World War II: an environment favorable to the integration of scholarly inquiry, critical thinking, political strategizing, and social change activism. Like many of my generation, I had gone to graduate school thinking that I would acquire the tools I needed to understand the world in order to change it. Influenced by the ideas of C. Wright Mills, which I first encountered in Spanish while studying in Mexico, I chose sociology, thinking that it would provide me with a holistic view of social reality. What I found instead was a