me equivoqué

The entire point of my Engaged Learning proposal was to determine "What does feminism in Peru look like?"

But the longer I'm here the more I realize that this was a dumb question to ask.

There is no such thing as a "Peruvian feminism" in the same way that there is no such thing as an "American feminism" or an "Indian feminism" and so on. I cannot possibly say that Peruvian women believe this or fight for that. Peru, like any country, has an unbelievably diverse population racially, ethnically, economically, etc. And each major segment of the population (mestizo, andino, afro, etc) has its own incredibly specific history that impacts what each of these populations look like and the problems that they face today. Combine that with the fact that Peru as a whole has gone through extensive periods of terrorism, military dictatorships, power transitions, recessions, and human rights violations in its recent history (and that each of these periods has impacted every segment of the population - albeit some more than others) and what you have is a collection of very intricate movements existing within the country.

Even in trying to categorize the different branches of feminism that exist here - popular women's feminism, upper/middle-class mainstream feminism in wealthy areas of Lima, indigenous feminism (en la provincia y en la selva (the Andean region and in the rainforest)), Afro-Peruvian feminism, y más - you eliminate the diversity and the voice of the subgroups that exist within each branch. In order to create momentum and strength in numbers within movements one of course has to acknowledge that many subgroups will be silenced - for example, in the Women's Marches that took place after tr*mp's inauguration many non-white women (Native American women, Black women, etc.) expressed that they felt silenced by white women whenever they tried to bring up specific struggles experienced by those within their racial/ethnic groups. Many white women responded to these concerns saying that women of color should stop trying to "divide the movement" by bringing up trivial problems such as racial oppression (read: white women didn't want to acknowledge that they are also the problem).

In this example and in many others we see that minority women's voices are lost when movements become generalized. I struggle to assert that an "indigenous feminism" exists in Peru when there are such stark differences between indigenous groups living in the Andean region and those living within the Amazonian region - and within each of these subgroups there of course exists even more distinct pueblos and peoples. I struggle to generalize a "popular women's feminism" when there are so many popular groups existing throughout the country. To generalize Peruvian women, or any women, is to do them a disservice.

I say "me equivoqué" because in proposing to examine the "nature and role" of feminism here in Peru I completely overlooked the fact that "feminism" as a single, monolithic structure simply does not exist.

Stay tuned to see whether I figure out how to describe a movement and the women within it without generalizing everything beyond recognition!