Pre-Departure Commentary: Feminist Movements in Peru

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“The Peruvian women’s movement is one of the largest on the continent, possibly having the most diversified expression and organizations. This is so regardless of the fact that Peru’s society remains one of the most traditional and limiting where women’s rights are concerned. The Catholic Church’s influence, compounded with the historically deep-rooted authoritarianism of Peru’s society, has greatly affected women’s status” (Vargas, 7). Peru can be understood as a melting pot of different cultural and ethnic groups of varying socioeconomic statuses, with the majority of the wealth being concentrated in the capital of Lima, a city booming with foreign investment and buoyed by a robust middle class. In a piece written for the New York Times’ “Great Divide” series, Marie Arana writes that there exist two versions of Peru: Lima, and the millions living outside of it. “According to the World Bank, a citizen of Lima earns 21 times more than a resident of the outback, where the rural poverty rate is a staggering 54 percent. To make matters worse, it is a starkly racial problem: the poor are the dark-skinned indigenous, the rich, getting richer, are mostly white” (Arana).

As of 2010, indigenous and African-descendants in Peru earned 40% less than mixed-race people (Collyns). Racial divides between white/mestizo (white mixed with indigenous) Latinos and black/indigenous Latinos exist throughout Latin America to differing degrees. Hugo Nopu, co-author of Discrimination in Latin America: An Economic Perspective, explains that Peru exists somewhere in the middle of this spectrum – not as bad as Brazil but worse than Ecuador. As in the U.S., these racial divides often correspond to respective socioeconomic, geographical, educational and power inequalities. These varying intersections of inequality have formed the framework of women’s movements throughout Latin America:

"To think in terms of Latin American women’s gender identity also means turning our view to the path of the conquest, of colonization; to how peasant women have been forced into submission; to the slavery of Black women; to the historically-rooted isolation of middle-class women; to the effects of these and other crises in women’s lives; to the strong presence of the traditional Catholic church in the life of many women. In sum, to the traces each and all these experiences leave upon the minds and bodies of this heterogeneous category of women." (Vargas, 14)

In Peru, with its history of colonization, slavery, and the influence of the Catholic Church, these same frameworks of inequality are present and must be taken into account when analyzing the emergence, growth and current status of women’s movements existing throughout the country.

Through the work of Virginia Vargas – a leader in the feminist movement in Peru and founder of the Flora Tristan center in Lima – the Peruvian women’s movement can be understood as existing in three different “streams”: the feminist stream, the popular women’s stream, and the stream emerging from more traditional female spaces. Feminist scholar Annalise Moser further categorizes these streams as fitting into two categories: feminist NGOs and grassroots women’s organizations. Each of these streams began largely in the 70s following political uprisings and a military coup that ousted democratically elected president Fernando Belaúnde and replaced him with Juan Velasco Alvarado – the first president of what was known as the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. In 1969, Velasco began a series of reforms, which he declared would reinvent a Peru that was “neither capitalist nor communist” (Juan Velasco Alvarez). He launched an agrarian reform that eliminated large private estates and redistributed the land to cooperatives of plantation workers, rural communities and individual farmers. Reform followed in banking, railroads, public utilities and more as the state assumed control of Peru’s international trade and declared a state monopoly in certain basic industries. Socially, Velasco expanded access to education, healthcare, the national pension program, and brought water and electricity to shantytowns surrounding Lima. His government supported women’s equality and declared Quechua, Peru’s most widely spoken indigenous language, a national language alongside Spanish. However, due to ineffective economic strategy, widespread mismanagement, and a series and natural disasters the economy was eventually plunged into a recession, necessitating austerity measures which ultimately eroded the government’s popular support. Public dissent was met with violence and suppression as the military government became a full-fledged dictatorship. Velasco was eventually ousted in 1975 by General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who unsuccessfully attempted to restore economic stability and support for Peru’s military government. In 1980, the military coalition collapsed and power was transferred to democratically elected president Fernando Belaúnde Terry.

Messages of social, particularly gender-based, equality touted by General Velasco and the eventual turmoil of the military government created a perfect environment for the emergence of feminist and women’s organizations in Peru: all three of the major streams existing in Peru today began to gain traction in the 70s. The feminist stream emerged after college-educated, upper to middle-class women, most of whom Vargas describes as “militant members in left-wing political parties” (22), became fed up with the inequalities that they experienced daily at work, at home, and within politics. These were women who had come to learn “in a very brutal way that party politics was not our space; that if we did not raise our own issues nobody would do it for us. The first mobilization was organized demanding control over our own reproduction and initiating the debate on abortion received a tremendously negative reaction” (Vargas, 22). These women began to formulate a feminist political perspective based upon their shared realities as women. Moser describes the interests of the feminist stream as “strategic,” or concerned with a theoretical ideology that is able to serve as the basis for forming strategic objectives to overcome female subordination. Today, the feminist stream has a strong presence in Peru with different independent feminist organizations existing in cities throughout the country, each linked to specific themes such as reproductive rights, violence and human rights. Many exist in the form of NGOs and, due to their size and relative wealth, typically work alongside Peruvian governmental organizations and international bodies such as the UN, as well as provide support for many popular women’s organizations in Peru.

The impact of the feminist stream is considerable; however, it is the popular stream that is the largest in Peru. For the sake of simplicity I will also characterize Vargas’s third stream – which emerged from traditional female spaces – as existing within the popular stream as the two are very similar. The popular women’s movement was born largely out of community needs in the slums and rural provinces in Peru during the period of the military dictatorship. Velasco’s government facilitated the creation of the Social Mobilization Support System (SINAMOS) in the 70s as a way of promoting communal work within struggling communities. Each square block of houses in the various barriadas, or shantytowns, could elect representatives who would consequently select representatives at sector and district levels. Communal work and cooperation formed the foundation of the SINAMOS and women, as facilitators of aid and support networks between families, were crucial in this equation. The economic crisis of the late-70s under the military dictatorship pushed more women than ever out of the home in search of work; additionally, the “non-existence of a strong welfare state … also made women look for communal solutions to minimal health, water, and child-care needs” (Vargas, 19). One particularly pressing issue was the inefficiency and corruption of the food distribution system under President Francisco Morales. In response to this system, women began to formulate collective strategies and thus comedores populares sprung up throughout Peru, beginning in the shantytown of Comas and quickly spreading under the direction of the church, NGOs, and the state. The comedores were spaces where women could come together, distribute food, and cook for their communities. Later, under the “Fuji-shock” program created by the International Monetary Fund and implemented under the Fujimori administration, millions were plunged into poverty without any social safety net to support them. The responsibility of feeding the population fell almost exclusively onto the shoulders of popular organizations such as the comedores: “women’s time, energy, and labor became the ‘instrument of choice’ for executing emergency social programs … neoliberal development strategies in general and SAPs [structural adjustment programs] in particular affect poor women and their families” (Moser, 219). Thus, the SINAMOS, comedores, and other grassroots organizations such as the Programa de Vaso de Leche provided spaces in which women were able to convene and organize. Initially, these organizations “existed to ensure family survival. The women were acting out of their domestic role as mothers, and therefore in Peruvian society, as the persons responsible for the care of the family” (Moser, 213). Though initially united under this common goal of serving their families and communities, women quickly began to understand their own organizing potential. Moser explains:

"Although continuing to cook meals every morning, these women also began to form alliances and central committees comprising twenty or thirty comedores, with each containing about twenty women. Because of work in these central committees, the activities of the comedores expanded, becoming places of learning about topics as diverse as nutrition, woman’s rights, leadership, and organizational strategy. The comedores thus moved from serving a basic need to teaching and empowering the women, broadening their horizons far beyong the domestic role." (213)

Women began to mobilize and speak out against common experiences such as domestic violence and lack of access to jobs and educations. Feminist NGOs helped facilitate this process by providing grassroots women’s organizations with training, support and funding for education. Thus, beginning with the practical interest of wanting to serve their communities, women transformed these spaces into centers of learning and empowerment.

Though these streams are essentially a part of the same movement and are in many ways connected, deep divides along lines of race, class and education still serve to fragment the movement. Collective identities, such as those forged within women’s movements, indigenous movements, Afro-Latino movements and so on, tend to be constructed “through essentialist frames as a strategy to simplify reality and amplify the legitimacy of grievances” (Rousseau & Hudon, 42). However, in essentializing the experience of gender through the feminist movement or the experience of ethnic identity within the indigenous or Afro-Latino movements, women of color are often left out of the conversation. This in part explains the fragmentation within the movement and the desire of indigenous, black, and other minority women to forge their own spaces independent of the Lima-based feminist movement. Indeed, Moser explains: “the myth of heterogeneity merely masks conflicts of power and privilege embedded in relations between poor women at the grassroots level and middle-class women in the NGOs” (213). Hetereogeneity, or being composed of dissimilar parts, does not imply equality within the movement and much of the conflict between the feminist NGOs and the grassroots women’s organizations in Lima stems from the considerable power imbalances between the two. In her article “Happy Heterogeneity? Feminism, Development, and the Grassroots Women’s Movement in Peru”, Moser expresses that the most frequent critique by women at the grassroots of the NGOs is that the NGOs maintain their power by keeping poor women down. One woman explained:

"The NGOs exist because the popular organizations exist. They get paid because we are poor. So, they don’t really want to fix our problems, help us out, because they would lose their jobs if we didn’t need them. One NGO, for example, did a project creating legal advisor in Comas, but the project stopped half way through, and they only started half of the groups they were going to. They teach us so as to make their own projects successful, but we end up staying where we are." (Moser, 226)

This woman’s testimony illustrates the deep gap in understanding and communication between the two streams of the movement: in the same way that NGO women do not seem to understand the grassroots women’s lived experiences outside of Lima’s borders, the grassroots women do not seem to acknowledge the pressures that come with feminist work that intersects with governmental and international work. She also highlights the deep power imbalances that exist between organizations wealthy enough to offer resources and the recipients of these resources – resources that are often dependent on what the dominant group chooses to give rather than what the recipient group actually needs. Indeed, the feminist stream of the movement has historically failed “to consult the needs and wants of local people, ignoring local knowledge, and being removed from the daily realities of the people they are trying to ‘help’” (Moser, 223). In doing so, they reinforce the imbalanced power dynamics between the two and lessen the extent to which they are able to aid women in grassroots organizations in achieving their goals.

“The gender-related survival needs of poor women should be as much a part of the feminist agenda as the notion of “rights” on a more theoretical level” (Moser, 215). Indeed, we see many of these same points played out on the stage of white vs. intersectional feminism here in the United States. The women’s marches that broke out all throughout the world following the 45th U.S. presidential inauguration are particularly reflective of this dichotomy. The organizing committee of the Women’s March on Washington was initially composed mainly of white women. Later, after public outcry, the organizing committee sought out the voices of women of color (WOC) to help organize the march and create an intersectional and inclusive mission statement. However, this intentional inclusivity only took place after public anger at the meager number of WOC on the organizing committee. Sister marches throughout the nation faced this same problem. In my hometown of St. Louis, which sits merely a few miles from the home of the Black Lives Matter uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, our march was organized almost exclusively by white women. Little was done to include the voices of non-white women. In fact, when WOC and particularly black women began to bring up issues of race on the Facebook page for the march, many white women retaliated with “we have problems too!” and “don’t vilify me because I’m white”-esque comments. Thus, not only were the voices of WOC not included in the planning of the march, but many WOC also felt that their voices were actively silenced when they attempted to speak out. When Kim Gamel, one of the march’s organizers, was questioned regarding the lack of inclusivity she said: “[WOC] weren’t excluded, but we were not actively pursuing their voices” (Simeone).

This statement could very well serve as a summary of the American feminist movement throughout our history. The first wave of the feminist movement in the U.S. occurred during the 19th and early 20th century and was characterized by the women’s suffrage movement – a movement that actively excluded the voices of non-white women. Indeed, the suffrage movement was one that explicitly constructed an argument in favor of the vote for white women on the basis of their superiority over black Americans (Ginzberg). The second wave of feminism, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s, was characterized by women’s struggle to enter the workforce and the political sphere. This phase of the movement was sparked by Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique in which she famously coined the phrase “the problem that has no name” to articulate the dissatisfaction felt by many college-educated, middle/upper-class, married white women who felt unfulfilled by lives relegated to the home. Her novel served as a rallying cry for many white women within the second wave feminist movement to enter the workplace thus the second wave emerged in response to white women’s “suburban captivity” (Fetters). However, this entrance into the workforce was facilitated entirely on the backs of low-income women of color whose roles as domestic workers allowed white women to abandon their traditional domestic roles. These were women who had already been working for decades and whose lives were in no way accounted for in Friedan’s definition of the female experience. Friedan measured the impact of sexism and sexist oppression on the lives of women exclusively from the reference point of college-educated white housewives. Black feminist scholar bell hooks points out that Friedan willfully ignored the one third of women who were already in the work force:

"[Friedan] did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions … she did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife." (Fetters)

The Feminine Mystique completely ignored the plight of poor women and women of color and served as a continuation of the legacy of racism and classism within the feminist movement that began in the first wave. Indeed, race and class did not begin to factor into the mainstream feminist movement until the 90s with the dawn of third wave feminism. The third wave was made possible by the increased economic and political power brought about by the second wave; however, it also heavily critiqued the classism and racism present in the previous two waves of the movement. The third wave focused on social (rather than political or economic) initiatives and constructed a definition of feminism that explicitly connected women’s issues to issues of race, sexuality, class and ability. It was during this wave that black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality.” Everyday Feminism explains: “intersectionality is a framework that must be applied to all social justice work, a frame that recognizes the multiple aspects of identity that enrich our lives and experiences and that compound and complicate oppressions and marginalizations” (Uwujaren & Utt). In other words, one cannot separate the oppression that a black woman faces because she is black from the oppression that she faces because she is a woman; these two layers of marginalization intersect and interact. Intersectional feminism, or feminism that takes into account issues of race, class, sexual orientation, etc. in addition to gender, exists in contrast to what is today known as “white” feminism. White feminism is a one-size-fits-all version of feminism in which everyone is expected to fit the mold created by middle class white women. Once again, the women’s marches that took place following the 2017 presidential inauguration constitute perfect modern examples of white feminism: they were movements created by upper-middle class white women for upper-middle class white women – with little regard for the specific experiences of black, indigenous and trans women. As in the case of the rift between the grassroots organizations and NGOs in Latin America we find here as well that specific experiences of subgroups within movements become generalized so as to “strengthen” the voice of the movement. “Women”, as a collective term, may be able to assemble and march in resistance to infringements on reproductive rights and the wage gap and blatantly sexist statements made by a blatantly sexist president, but will these same women march in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline or the murder of a black women at the hands of police? One sign from the Washington march summed up this sentiment: “I’ll see you nice white ladies at the next Black Lives Matter march, right?”

Indeed, many parallels can be drawn between popular women’s organizations and urban feminist NGOs in Peru and intersectional and white feminists here in the U.S. “‘To argue globally for ‘woman’ in unspecific ways contributes to the oppression of women.’ In a region as diverse as Latin America, with its ‘pluricultural and multiracial’ societies, ‘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’” (Moser, 214). Vargas asserts that “Latin American feminism loses much of its force by making abstract a fact of great importance: the pluricultural and multi-racial character of the region’s societies” (Vargas, 40). Women do not participate in feminist spaces simply on the basis of their subordinated positions as women – each woman brings with her a specific lived experience that exists at the intersection of her varying identities. No one facet of this identity can be considered as the fundamental interest in a woman’s life: differing facets such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, sexual and gender identity all constitute what Vargas terms “differing points of departure” (11) in the struggle for gender equality. Thus, a study of feminism and of women’s movements is, at its core, a study of the various points of departure that exist for women globally and the manner in which we organize around these issues. Each point of departure constitutes a place from which to begin questioning gender subordination and a framework upon which resistance movements can begin.

Works Cited

Arana, Marie. "The Kids Left Behind by the Boom." March 20, 2013. Web. Mar 8, 2017 <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/opinion/arana-the-kids-left-behind-by-the-boom.html>.

Collyns, Dan. "Peru's Minorities Battle Racism." BBC NewsJune 13, 2010. Web. <http://www.bbc.com/news/10205171>.

Ginzberg, Lori D. "For Suffragette Stanton, All Women Were Not Created Equal." NPR.org. July 13, 2011. Web. <http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137681070/for-stanton-all-women-were-not-created-equal>.

"Juan Velasco Alvarado Facts." Encyclopedia of World Biography (2010)Web.

Khabeer‏, Su'ad Abdul. "Voice for the voiceless." www.Twitter.com. Feb 12, 2017. Web. <https://twitter.com/DrSuad/status/830838928403988480>.

Moser, Annalise. "Happy Heterogeneity? Feminism, Development, and the Grassroots Women's Movement in Peru." Feminist Studies 30.1 (2004): 211-37. Web.

Rousseau, Stéphanie, and Anahi Morales Hudon. "Paths Towards Autonomy in Indigenous Women's Movements: Mexico, Peru, Bolivia." Journal of Latin American Studies 48.1 (2016): 33. Platinum: Social Sciences. Web.

Simeone, Jenny. "Women's March on St. Louis faces tough conversations on race and inclusion."www.STLPublicRadio.org. Jan 15, 2017. Web. <http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/womens-march-st-louis-faces-tough-conversations-race-and-inclusion#stream/0>.

Uwujaren, Jarune, and Jamie Utt. "Why Our Feminism Must Be Intersectional (And 3 Ways to Practice It)." Everyday Feminism. Jan 11, 2015. Web. <http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-our-feminism-must-be-intersectional/>.

Vargas, Virginia. "The Women's Movement in Peru Streams, Spaces and Knots." Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe / European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.50 (1991): 7-50. Print.