Sally Cole

Feminist Flows, Feminist Fault Lines: Women’s Machineries and Women’s Movements in Latin America

This article begins with the assumption that the flow of feminist ideas and practices is multilayered, multidirectional, and always in translation. Locating various sites of feminist work in Brazil and Ecuador, the article examines two pervasive translations of feminism, referred to by the authors as the “UN‐orbit” and “another‐world” translations. Globalization is understood to be an important context for a dynamic feminist politics that both supports and divides feminist efforts in these translations. The article suggests that the dynamic of international feminism requires analysis of the specific location of feminist flows as well as of the similar and divergent contexts, practices, and visions that inform feminist translations.

The Violence Against Women Campaigns in Latin America New Feminist Alliances

This article urges caution in reading the backlash against gender-sensitive policies as a global phenomenon. Drawing inspiration from Latin America, the authors consider how international agreements for nation-states to adopt measures to prevent violence against women have been taken up in proactive ways through the collaboration of international organizations, national governments, and expanding and evolving womens movements. The push for the development of democratic citizenship in Latin America has opened up possibilities for bringing awareness of violence against women to a public that is in the process of engaging with a range of social justice issues and collaborating on multiple fronts. The authors argue that strategic coalitions across difference have been central to the success of the efforts to combat violence against women. They show how new feminist alliances have not only helped denormalize and deprivatize gender violence but revitalized feminist issues as part of a broad front to build progressive societies.

Julie Shayne, Taking risks: feminist activism and research in the Americas

“Mulher Paulista” was cast as white and therefore inherently modern. Weinstein’s description of the feminine qualities that simultaneously underscored the state’s modernity without challenging traditional roles for women raises new questions regarding the function of gender in regional and national identities. Chapters 6–8, which comprise the second section, examine the legacy and memory of the Causa Paulista as it was invoked in the 400-year celebration of the founding of São Paulo in 1954. Here Weinstein traces threads of historical memory to the uprising and demonstrates how Paulista discourses of modernity adapted to both the defeat of São Paulo in 1932 and the concept of Brazilian Racial Democracy that arose after the 1930s. While the narratives of regional identity softened in tone by 1954, São Paulo’s exceptionalism within the Brazilian nation was still firmly attributed to its Europeanness, as reflected in the Eurocentric bent of celebration activities. In sum, this is a richly documented and provocatively argued work that provides scholars with a detailed understanding of the twentieth-century construction of São Paulo (and Brazilian) identity, while adding nuance to the role of the 1932 uprising in regional and national history. Weinstein also brings a solid and fresh contribution to our understanding of the intersection of race and modernity in Paulista and Brazilian identity. In so doing she adds a compelling counterpoint to Durval Muniz de Albuquerque, Jr and Stanley E. Blake’s recent work on the construction of northeastern identity. The author also builds upon Todd Diacon, Joel Wolfe, and Luciana Martins’ investigations of Brazilian modernity, or, more specifically, multiple Brazilian modernities. Though Weinstein’s work speaks to a particular set of circumstances in Brazil, the author’s discussion of regionalism in the introductory chapter will be of interest to scholars of regional and national identity more broadly writ. As a resident of a region that is often disparaged in media representations and popular culture, this reader’s view is that Weinstein’s examination of the intersection between discriminatory policy and regional chauvinism is one of her most important contributions to scholarship, both within the field of Latin American history and beyond.