Genealogies of Transnational Activism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4052555 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Denisse D Velázquez (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 394-413 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Meridians (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1536-6936 • E-ISSN: 1547-8424 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/15366936-7775751 |
| OpenAlex | W2994762537 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In the spring of 1981, public opinion polls revealed that a vast majority of North Americans overwhelmingly opposed the Reagan administration’s military response to revolutionary activity in Central America (LaFeber 1984: 4). This came mere months after Ronald Reagan had run as a presidential candidate on a platform that cautioned against a Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua, which seemingly threatened neighboring El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (LaFeber 1984: 1). In response to the increasing levels of violence by U.S. military–funded death squads, a multitude of antiwar organizations and collectives emerged throughout the United States. Many of these groups organized solidarity trips to the Central American isthmus. One of these included the delegation’s trip Somos Hermanas (We Are Sisters), which formed out of the preexisting Alliance Against Women’s Oppression as a solidarity project.The Alliance Against Women’s Oppression (AAWO) originally formed in August of 1980, as a successor to the Third World Women’s Alliance of the 1970s (Hobson 2012: 9). AAWO was a multiracial coalition of women activists whose mission was rooted in activisms that were women-centered and intersectional, aimed at improving the material realities of women of color and working-class white women (Farmer 2017: 190). The Alliance organized a multiracial delegation of lesbian and straight women that visited Sandinista Nicaragua in 1984 after receiving an invitation from the Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinosa. Somos Hermanas thus emerged as an organization following this first trip. The group recognized itself as national network of women of multiple oppressed identities who focused on the struggles of Central American and Caribbean women in the midst of intensifying U.S. military intervention. At the height of its organizing activity, Somos Hermanas had chapters in New York, Boston, Louisville, Santa Cruz-Watsonville, and San Francisco (Hobson 2012: 9).The first delegation of Somos Hermanas members in 1984 coincided with Reagan’s reelection, which fueled the group’s ideological and personal investment in cultivating this transnational feminist solidarity. A self-identified “veritable rainbow coalition,” the delegation reported that the participants consisted of “eighteen Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Chicana, Peruvian, Asian, Arab, and white women” hailing from New York; Boston; Washington, DC; and the Bay Area (Carastathis 2013: 949). Perhaps one of the most exhilarating moments of this delegation’s trip was its meeting with Dora María Tellez, popularly known as “Comandante Dos,” a central leader of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) throughout the 1980s and one of the most prolific women leaders of the revolution (Hobson 2012: 7). It is important to note that these participants were largely queer/lesbian-identified women who saw sexual liberation as inherent to revolutionary worldmaking. Somos Hermanas was one of many queer radical collectives that subverted the U.S. Left’s internal homophobic tendencies and propensity to conceptualize queerness as incompatible with Third World regions such as Central America.The documents in this issue include a photograph of Somos Hermanas members at the organization’s second delegation to Nicaragua in 1986. The discussion paper “Salvadoran Women: In Search of Peace and Justice” was one of the many publications that emerged from Somos Hermanas in the midst of their solidarity trips to Nicaragua and local community organizing efforts in the United States. Each of the materials elucidates the various ways in which Somos Hermanas sought to both educate their internal membership and spread awareness among their local communities about expanding U.S. interventionism in Central America. All documents are from the Alliance Against Women’s Oppression Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College
Alliance · Lesbian · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law
| Highly cited | No |
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