Conservative twist and challenges for Peru and Latin America: civilizing crossroads in a context of epochal change (reflections in process)

ABSTRACT

The paper takes stock of the WSF experience and the running out of steam of the pink wave in Latin America. It is written from the perspective of radical feminism in the region to interrogate the interrelations between the multiple systems of power formed by patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism and their impact on people’s lives, arguing that feminist struggles for sexual and reproductive rights, for the right to decide, for a secular state that breaks the religious tutelage over women’s bodies, along with many kinds of other struggles, demand not only recognition but also the defence of diverse ways of life and visions of the world. In these struggles, the paper claims, it is fundamental to expand the epistemological and social space and to recover other cultural matrices and frameworks of meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• Radical feminism
• patriarchy
• capitalism and colonialism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See, the Declaration of the Political Forum on Development in Honduras, July 2016.

2 I have expressed these ideas in a recent article Los Feminismos en el laberinto de las izquierdas gobernantes en América Latina, 2016. Posted in Rescatar la Esperanza. Among Peoples 2016, Barcelona.

3 Intercoll is an international and multicultural space for social movements and citizens that aims to promote a new “international intellectual collective”, recover the intellectual development of movements, and create networks of research and popular education linked to these movements. It arises from nuclei of participants in the processes of the World Social Forum.

4 Let us just remember that the former dictator Alberto Fujimori in Peru inaugurated the Ministry of Women, placed many more women than any previous government in positions of power, and publicly committed himself to fulfilling the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action. But at the same time as “rights” to women were granted, their autonomy was undermined, their clients’ needs were not served, and democracy was stifled.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Virginia Vargas V.

Virginia Vargas V. is a sociologist, specializing in political sociology. Vargas is an active militant feminist and co-founder of the Center for Peruvian Women Flora Tristan in 1978. Since then, Vargas has combined her militant feminist commitment with theoretical reflection on travel and the dynamics of feminisms in Latin America and globally.