Excerpt from The Revolution Question by Julie D. Shayne

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While in El Salvador in 1998 I spoke with Lety Mendez,1 a Salvadoran ex-guerrilla and former head of the women's secretariat of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, –or FMLN). Lety explained that women were of strategic significance to the Salvadoran revolutionary movement. She articulately astutely noted that it was the work of women guerrillas that fostered a political openness that was partly responsible for developing support for the Left. It was women, Lety argued, who made it possible for the guerrillas to move more freely in an extremely hostile terrain. During the revolutionary struggle however Lety experienced her own and her compañeras' (comrades') contributions continually undervalued and unacknowledged. Such frustrations eventually fostered Lety's feminist consciousness.

My conversation with Lety complements another lengthy interview I did with Miriam Ortega Araya in Santiago, Chile, in March of 1999. Miriam is a labor organizer. I spoke with her in an office walled with posters from International Women's Day celebrations, the Latin American and Caribbean feminist encuentros [(gatherings], ), statements against domestic violence, and other feminist issues. She graciously offered me her time, explaining in scrupulous detail the ins and outs of the Chilean Left, feminism, and her experiences with both. She was active in the trade union movement during the tenure of Salvador Allende, as well as the Revolutionary Movement of the Left (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario - MIR), a guerrilla organization that maintained, as did Fidel Castro's movement in Cuba, that true revolution could only come about through armed rather than political resistance. She explained her process of exile, clandestine return, subsequent twelve years of incarceration under dictator General Augusto Pinochet, and current commitment to feminism in her South American nation. As Miriam struggled for justice for the workers in Chile she began to notice gender inequities. This imbalance eventually led to the disappearance of the already de-prioritized political demands of women. Upon returning to Chile her commitment to feminism came to fruition, ironically, while in prison. Initially, as a way to pass the time, the women political prisoners organized educational workshops, which they each alternately facilitated based on their own intellectual training (for example, one discussion focused on biology since one of the women was a trained biologist). Eventually, feminists outside of the prison brought in theoretical pieces by, among others, Chilean feminist Julieta Kirkwood.2 These were then circulated among the women who usurped this space that was intended to squelch their leftist spirit and they thus transformed it into a locale of feminist empowerment.3

In the summer of 1999 I then traveled to Cuba, where I had the opportunity to meet with a diverse collection of revolutionary and/or feminist women. One such woman, María Antonia Figueroa, recalled her and her mother's participation alongside Fidel Castro in the struggle against infamous dictator Fulgencio Batista. María, a woman of eighty years, Antonia, former head of the July 26th Movement of 26 July (Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio, or - M-26-7MR-26-7) finance committee, spoke to a colleague and myself through the relentlessly thick Havana humidity. As she comfortably swayed back and forth in her rocking chair, María explained that women were a fundamental sector in the Cuban Revolution. Her humble apartment walls were covered with pictures of her martyred and deceased relatives as well as Fidel Castro, whom she described as a brother of sorts. She discussed the canonical Cuban women revolutionaries,4 but was also meticulous in reminding us that women participated from all walks of life, in a variety of tasks. Some lived and some died in the struggle but all were united in their revolutionary commitment to a society free of Batista's dictatorship. Similar to Lety, María noted that the roles women played were strategic specifically due to their gender. María explained that despite the importance of women to what was seen as “"the people's struggle,”" women revolutionaries were still confronted with formidable obstacles.

<1>A Theoretical backdropOverview

I have been thinking about questions regarding the relationship between revolution and feminism since 1994, when I returned to El Salvador for the fourth time and started speaking with ex-guerrillas/feminists like Lety Mendez. Those discussions led to my first project in which I argued that women's experiences in revolutionary El Salvador were both central to the resistance movement and inseparable from the emergence of feminisms (Shayne 1995). Since then, I have continued to pursue these questions through the cases of Chile and Cuba and address more specifically: what What was it about the roles of women that made them so important to revolutionary movements, and how exactly did these experiences lead to feminism.? For decades, Marxists and feminists have attempted to answer the “"woman question,”": what What can revolutions do for women? Or, what do women need from revolutions? Complicating this a bit, I pose the “"revolution question(s)":” What do women do for revolutions and how does revolution relate to feminism? In this book, I attempt to answer these questions through a comparative analysis of El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba.

Scholars of the Americas have taken various approaches in understanding feminism, gender, and the left Left in Latin America, as well as their complicated relationships to one another. Nearly all such discussions are grounded in Maxine Molyneux’s (1985) concept of practical gendered versus strategic feminist interests (Molyneux 1985). Molyneux argues that a distinction exists between women organizing to meet basic needs which that are the result of a gendered division of labor (i.e., child care) or what she calls practical interests, and those explicitly organizing to counter systems of patriarchy (i.e., safe and legal access to abortion), or, strategic interests. Both types of struggle are common for women in Latin America. Molyneux does not suggest that one type deserves priority over the other, but rather that a theoretical distinction does exist. Molyneux She also suggests that struggles, which that strive to meet practical needs, —for example, a collective soup kitchen, —may eventually lead to those of a more strategic or feminist nature. When women spend time together outside of the home they tend to share stories of their personal experiences with sexism, including domestic violence, only to find that such events are hardly unique. At the same time, these women become comfortable with their more independent lives outside of the home. We will see this in the case of revolutionary Chile, where women participated in government organized mothers' centers. Together these factors may, in Molyneux's estimation, enable strategic (feminist) mobilization.

In this book we will see a different but related phenomenon: women who originally became involved in revolutionary movements in order to meet practical needs, albeit of another sort. In the case of El Salvador, women noted a variety of reasons for getting involved, —most often, a sense of fear for their lives (Luciak 2001, 70). In other words, participation in the revolutionary struggle was seen as a means toward survival, certainly a practical demand. Though such demands were completely ungendered, a collective consciousness among some women was fostered through common experiences with sexism that would later serve as an impetus to struggle for strategic needs. We will also see, specifically through the case of Cuba, that when women's practical needs are met, the likelihood of feminist mobilization is decreased.

Similarly, Temma Kaplan suggests that there is a distinction between what she calls female consciousness and feminist consciousness. Female consciousness, according to Kaplan is the: “"recognition of what a particular class, culture, and historical period expect from women, [which] creates a sense of rights and obligations that provides motive force for actions”" (Kaplan 1982, 545). This female consciousness is the bedrock of feminine mobilization, or that which strives to meet what Molyneux calls the “"practical”" needs of women. On the other hand, feminist movements contest patriarchal relations in any given structure, thus focusing upon strategic demands. For example, the only women's organization that currently exists in Cuba, (the Federation of Cuban Women (Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, or FMC), is explicitly feminine and not feminist. The federation works to assure that women are integrated into Cuban society in its current form, whereas the Salvadoran feminist organization Women for Dignity and Life "Breaking the Silence" (Mujeres por la Dignidad y la Vida "Rompamos el silencio" ) challenges the patriarchal structure of the society that is responsible for inhibiting the full integration of women. Kaplan also argues that women's public protests, even when framed in entirely traditional notions of femininity, convey important political messages about the strength of women. We will see this throughout the book, especially in the many examples of women organizing as mothers.

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