Tag: Sexuality

The Coloniality of Gender

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In the Western world, discussions on the struggles produced by colonialism tend to be myopic. For example, the application of western feminists theories in non-western societies falls shorts of fully demonstrating the complexities of the subjugation of people based on gender within the colonial state. In general, western feminist thought lacks an understanding of how gender became a tool to oppress people. Maria Lugones writes “The Coloniality of Gender” to offer more insight on the confluence of gender and colonialism. She critiques the discussion on the coloniality of power concept by Anibal Quijano with the help of feminist theoretical frameworks by Women of Color feminists. Her essay explores her interest in the intersection of “race, class, gender, and sexuality” within the colonial power structure to highlight the shortsighted discussions of liberation and struggle by men, and in particular, men of color.
The coloniality of power describes the concept of how modernity resulted from the legacies of colonialism through the domination, exploitation, and oppression of people under the Eurocentric capitalism and from racialization in the Americas [1].  Lugones criticized this model for being too narrow because it “veil[s] the ways in which non-’white’ colonized women were subjected and disempowered. She explains that she understands how Quijano sees the subjugation of people through the “axis of the coloniality of power,” and how he sees gender within this restrictive framework. However, his shortcomings demonstrate how women of color are overlooked even in academic discussions. Lugones then lists examples of the coloniality of gender.
Lugones describes the inconsistencies within gender assignation and its relation to understanding biological sex. For example, intersex people are 1 in 4 globally, and depending on which genitalia they were born with, they would be assigned a sex identity. However, even within this assignation, Lugones explains, notions of subordination based on gender are imposed. This ties with what Oyéronké Oyewùmí explains about the implementation of gender in the colonization of the Yoruba people. With colonization, gender subordination and race inferiorization were imposed on the Yoruba thus stripping their social structures. Paula Gunn Allen also explains how many North American indigenous communities were gynocratic and their belief systems revolved around female deities, yet that changed with colonization. Subordination of women came through the “the decimation of populations through starvation, disease, and disruption of all social, spiritual, and economic structures,” Gunn Allen adds that indigenous men were complicit in the restructuring of their social order especially after many were taken to England to learn the “way of the English.” This demonstrates the extent which sex, gender, and sexuality were colonized by the Euro-centric capitalist power. Lugones then describes how the feminist movements of the twentieth century were not designed for the use of women of color. The feminism of white women, bourgeois white women, only focused on their subordination and did not so because they did not see themselves in the “intersection of race, gender and other forceful marks of subjection or domination.” Stereotypes about women and men of color emphasize the importance of seeing this because it manifested how the norm for gender expectations and relations were centered around white men and women, first the bourgeois and later middle class. Likewise, heterosexuality is a construction that arose and marked the appropriate relations between people as they aligned with the colonial/modern gender system.
These examples demonstrate how gender is also a tool for establishing domination over colonized places. Because gender is not always investigated separately, it can be missed in conversations about the struggles of decolonization. In this article, Lugones demonstrated how colonization created a new gender system, and how it affected the social structures that people and made them more susceptible to exploitation from Europeans. Within these examples, Women of Color feminists demonstrated the depth of change necessary to leave societies vulnerable to oppression and how these become overlooked.
These insights are helpful within our Latin American context because we have read on examples of how gender affects Indigenous Peoples. We read on about the Muxe of Oaxaca, and how indigenous women are seen as more indigenous than men, to list some examples. Colonization profoundly transformed people and societies. It is easy however to dismiss the impacts of it when discussions about it are dominated by men, and men of color, who do not perceive gender to be influential topics. Within our class, it was helpful to read about women’s experiences because they launched conversations on the role gender plays in history the indigenous people of Latin America.
 
Lugones, Maria. “The Coloniality of Gender.” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise 2, no. 2 (2008): 1–17. https://globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/projects/wko-gender.
[1] Quijano, Anibal, and Michael Ennis. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (November 1, 2000): 533–80. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906.

Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef's When a Flower is Reborn

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The Latin American testimonial literature genre has been critiqued for subjecting indigenous subjects to generalizations and even, in some testimonies, allowing western academics to overpower indigenous voices when writing about them. When a Flower is Reborn, by contrast, exemplifies a work in the genre that functions as it should. This specific type of collaboration between Mapuche Feminist Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef and Florencia Mallon illuminates a potential path filled with hope for the testimony genre. Florencia Mallon, the editor and translator of Reuque’s life as a Mapuche feminist, structures the book in a way that attempts to resolve the issues that pop up in the testimony genre by incorporating dialogue that engages not only Requeue but also her family. This allows for intimacy to come to fruition and creates a sense that the reader is partaking in the conversation alongside Mallon. Mallon’s goal as an academic is to partly demonstrate that the testimony genre is far from becoming obsolete; instead, she argues that the book is not structured to cement herself as an authoritative voice of reason, though at times it may feel that way, and clarifies this potential issue in her introduction. In her short introduction to the book, she relays that although both Mallon and Reuque have different purposes in the creation of the book. Mallon views her ability to translate as providing Reuque’s marginalized positionality a critical platform to articulate her concerns that do not require a westerner claiming that they provide authenticity to such a voice because the voice coming from a Mapuche is “authentic” in and of itself and does not warrant qualification.
Reuque became one of the founding members of the first Mapuche women’s feminist organization in Chile’s history, and what elevates its significance of this event in When a Flower is Reborn is the insight provided, which is that despite communities recovering from Pinochet’s dictatorship, they were also recovering from the fragmentation of political parties produced by  Chile’s transition to democracy following Pinochet’s dictatorship. Overall, this book intimately follows Reuque’s life as she witnesses massive political changes that afflict not only Chilean peasants but also indigenous communities to serve as a testament that Mapuche organizing is not a novelty but rather a long-standing and continual process.
When a Flower is Reborn begins with an introduction, ends with a conclusion and includes four thick chapters that relay both Chilean history and Reuque’s political contributions to the Mapuche movement. In the first chapter, she writes about the self-proclaimed and metaphorical man-woman identity that was forced upon her. She clarifies that her harsh upbringing was filled with laborious and challenging roles traditionally imposed on boys. This in addition to Mapuche culture’s attitude toward womanhood limited her autonomy and perceived credibility. As a response to these limitations, Reuque interweaves a theme, at least partly explored by Mallon in her introduction, of the centrality of motherhood to cementing her authority and credibility in the flower metaphor representing womanhood. In Mapuche society, motherhood was one of the few opportunities through which Mapuche women at the time of Reuque’s birth were allowed to gain autonomy and any sense of power. Significantly, it is understood within Mapuche culture and especially in Reuque’s poetry that flowers symbolically represent women and that womanhood is connected to nature, which cements its resilience, which can also be applied to the Mapuche struggle as a whole, across the gender spectrum.
In addition, Reuque is critical of her own Mapuche culture and admits that early on in her life she did not identify heavily with her Mapuche identity and it was not until later that it began to resonate deeply with her. Reuque comments on the generational conflicts between traditional Mapuche elders and the Chilean society. Throughout her upbringing, Reuque informs the reader about the gender dynamics that were extremely pervasive, which led to the creation of the first Mapuche Women organization in the later part of her life. Reuque’s dedication to the Mapuche movement is highlighted by her decision to quit school and completely devote herself to reviving Mapuche culture while it clashes and resists against assimilation and genocidal violence inflicted upon her communities. In short, Reuque’s navigation of Mapuche culture during transient and dangerous times of transition in Pinochet’s dictatorship and later evolution into a democracy mirrors the broader plight of indigenous communities in Chile and Latin America more broadly at the time.
Additionally, the conversation on gender dynamics continues but within the context of kinship systems. Reuque’s in-law awakened her political consciousness. Their level of support was inspirational and mainly shaped her perspective on the power that community support can have on a broader scale; it invigorated and energized her to continue fighting conflicting identities, in particular, between Chile, Mapuche, and Christian-democratic identities. As Reuque reflects on and converses about the political party fragmentation that the Indigenous Land Law created, which is more heavily discussed in the third chapter, she applies the lessons learned from kinship support toward coalition-building identity politics to combat the political divisions that threatened the party in the early years of Chile’s democratic period.
In addition to the party fragmentations occurring in the earlier parts of her life, she details the creation of the Mapuche Women Organization as stemming out from systemic gender inequities. Here, Reuque synthesizes the aforementioned gender imbalances that prevented women from working within the system and made it so that they had to coalesce and create their own institution in the hope of deconstructing the patriarchal elements of Mapuche culture. Gender inequality was not limited to the Mapuche community. International conferences, NGOs and male world leaders partook in the structural oppression of women and did not give the women department of the Mapuche women organization their own budget; therefore, Reuque pushed for an independent budget for gender and argued that the department should be called “gender” rather than “women,” because, as proven by her experience, when it is called “women,” the department receives little to no funding.
This conversation reminds me of French and Bliss’ Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence because they argue for the inclusion of a gender category within the discipline of history. This is because, in short, relations between gender and sexuality and their respective binaries permeate historical events and play a much larger role than they are made out to; thus, gender and sexuality must be their own categories of historical thinking, rather than just themes. In the attempt to achieve this, Reuque continues to speak out against the contradictions within masculine approaches to gender in communities and does so through the effective organization of Mapuche women, embodying their resilience when she went on to attend the International Women Beijing conference in 1995. Despite her argument in When a Flower is Reborn evolving into one that champions feminism as a framework to further liberate her fellow Mapuche women, she notes in various chapters that the Mapuche struggle summarized is to be formally recognized in the Chilean Constitution as legitimate. In particular, Reuque hopes that this book will reawaken the fight in indigenous communities to rise up against their opposition even if the opposition is working covertly; thus, she wishes that the community does not need another Pinochet-esque event to reawaken their vigor, their anger, and their culture, however, she also believes that complacency must end for indigenous rights to triumph.
 
Works:
French, William E., and Katherine Elaine Bliss, eds. “Introduction” in Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
Reuque Paillalef, Rosa Isolde. 2002. When a Flower Is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist. Edited by Florencia E. Mallon. Durham: Duke University Press.