Chain Identification: The Making of a Mass Feminist Movement in Latin America

• In Event: Sexual Violence

Abstract

This paper examines the Feminist Tide: a decade of protest, media debate, policy change, and cultural transformation in Latin America so sudden that some refer to it not as a “tide” but as a “tsunami.” While not the first feminist uprising in the region, it was the first to achieve such breadth and diversity of participation. Scholars attribute this to its intersectional framework and to the shortcomings of earlier gender-violence policies. Yet we know little about how individuals came to participate in it. I address these questions by focusing on Uruguay, one of its earliest and most active sites. Drawing on 70 life-history interviews with diverse women and gender minorities, I argue that the movement’s ability to de-exceptionalize feminicides, the most extreme forms of sexist violence, by showing its connection to common forms of sexist violence, including battering, rape, and harassment, as well as sexist jokes and discrimination. This triggered identification between movement participants and victims of feminicide, leading them to mobilize to protect themselves and others, and seek justice for those killed. I call this process chain identification and I argue that this framework helps explain how the Feminist Tide achieved what earlier mobilizations could not: massive and diverse participation, and it may also illuminate mobilization processes in other contexts as well.

Author

• Inés Martínez Echagüe, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill