The Making Of Social Movements In Latin America by Arturo Escobar & Sonia E. Alvarez

Author:Arturo Escobar & Sonia E. Alvarez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 1992-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Movement, Community, and Identity

The 1970s witnessed, in various parts of the world, the growing importance of a “third way” for political activity. Abandoning dependence on traditional parties— of the Right as much as of the Left—new social movements emerged, with immediate purposes for the solution of specific problems. Such movements tend to have an expressive character, developing forms of experience and participation that are “lived” as positives in themselves.

Western Europe saw the development of the peace movement, movements for the defense of nature and the preservation of certain communities against the abuses of real estate speculation, and so on. In Latin America, labor organizations appeared, organized independently of (or even in opposition to) traditional unions and political parties. Urban and rural associations were organized with the support of radical Roman Catholic church groups, claiming the right to land for housing or for cultivation. Black and Indian movements were formed, determined to make themselves heard and to act at the political level alongside women’s associations, feminist groups, human rights committees, and the like. This was the context within which the homosexual movement made its appearance.

Tilman Evers called attention to certain aspects common to all such political manifestations, arguing that they always experiment with new relationships in the spheres of life that are normally divided into “public” and “private.” Such movements attempt to humanize public life in the sense of making it function according to norms and values more frequently found in private life. They seek to valorize the “private,” to recognize its importance as a “political” topic to be discussed and thought of on an equal footing with the other, more “general” ones. As Evers himself said, all this constitutes much more of a “state of spirit” and a possible tendency than a real practice. Nevertheless, its effects on organizational practice are quite evident. The new movements attempted to form small groups based on interpersonal relationships and strove to make debates accessible and clear to all the members of the group. New forms of grass-roots democracy were experimented with, such as the imperative mandate, rotational representation, and a plebiscitary decisionmaking process. The new movements rejected any type of grandiose, anonymous, and bureaucratic structures, like the state, for example (Evers 1983: 34). The Brazilian homosexual and feminist groups exhibit several of these characteristics.

Similar values were manifested in the proposals of the newspaper Lampião, as much in the negation of commercial relationships intrinsic to consumerism as in the rejection of the “ready-made schemata” of the traditional Left. Instead, Lampião and the homosexual groups attempted to valorize perception and action at the individual level. Yet, despite Lampião’s repudiation of the commercialization of human relations, it was disposed to defend prostitution, thereby discarding the sacredness of sexual activity—an apparent contradiction. Lampião preferred to investigate how, in fact, commercialized sexual relationships occurred, and it attempted to highlight their pleasurable aspects as well. This would constitute an attempt to favor individuals and not personifications, a characteristic also attributed to those movements by Evers.

The new forms of relationships

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