Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women's Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina 9780813555416

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Bodies in Crisis

z

Bodies in Crisis z Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina

Barbara Sutton

rutgers university press new brunswick, new jersey, and london

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sutton, Barbara, 1970– Bodies in crisis : culture, violence, and women’s resistance in neoliberal Argentina / Barbara Sutton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8135–4739–8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–4740–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Women in politics—Argentina. 2. Social movements—Argentina. 3. Community development—Argentina. I. Title. HQ1236.5.A7S88 2010 306.4—dc22 2009029793 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Sutton All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

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1

Bodies in Crisis: An Introduction

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Bodily Scars of Neoliberal Globalization

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Beautiful Bodies: Femininity, Appearance, and Embodiment 64

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More Than Reproductive Uteruses: Maternal Bodies and Abortion 96

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Embattled Bodies: Violence against Women

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Bodies in Protest: Poner el Cuerpo

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Conclusion: Embodiment, Glocalities, and Resistance 191

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Notes 209 References 221 Index 247

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Acknowledgments

In envisioning, conducting, and writing this study I have benefited from the support and insight of many people at different stages of the project. I especially thank Sandra Morgen and Linda Fuller for their kind counsel, perceptive comments, and encouragement to produce rigorous and socially engaged scholarship. Joan Acker inspired many feminist students and scholars, and I feel privileged for having had the opportunity to learn from her, both through informal conversations and through her incisive response to my work. Jocelyn Hollander, Linda Kintz, and Mónica Szurmuk provided valuable feedback grounded in their respective areas of expertise during the initial phase of the study. My ongoing intellectual exchange and collaboration with Elizabeth Borland and Kari Norgaard have also positively influenced this book. Their questions, critique, and patient reading of several drafts have nourished my scholarship and pushed me to improve my analysis and writing. I am fortunate for having been able to develop my ideas and scrutinize my scholarly inquiry in the context of a collegial academic community at different points of this work. The support of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon contributed to creating that needed space for feminist academics. I thank the members of the Social Sciences Feminist Network writing group and the Gender in Latin America Research Interest Group for their review of earlier sections of this volume. My gratitude goes particularly to Hava Gordon, Mara Fridell, Analisa Taylor, Stephanie Wood, and Amalia Gladhart. Beth Piatote helped me to bring out the strengths of my work in my overall project description. Later on, I found a supportive home at the University at Albany’s Women’s Studies Department, and I also connected with scholars across campus who fruitfully engaged with my work. Virginia Eubanks and Julie Novkov helped me craft a successful book proposal by sharing with me their expertise. Conversations with and concrete suggestions by Janell Hobson vii

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encouraged me to refine my arguments and make connections to current events. Christine Bose and Edna Acosta-Belén provided mentorship and, through their significant contributions to feminist scholarship on Latin America, they had unknowingly influenced my scholarship well before my coming to the University at Albany. Elise Andaya, Kristen Hessler, and Kendra Smith-Howard offered detailed comments and helpful suggestions on sections of the book. Elizabeth Doggett, my research assistant, did a wonderful job copyediting, tracing sources, gathering information, and dealing with many of the logistics involved in a manuscript preparation. Adi Hovav, social sciences editor at Rutgers University Press, provided support and excellent suggestions from the moment I submitted my book proposal. I sincerely appreciate her faith in my work and wise guidance throughout the book creation process. Three anonymous reviewers also shared valuable ideas, which I incorporated into this volume. In the final stages of this book, copyeditor Monica Phillips diligently reviewed the whole manuscript and suggested needed changes. I am grateful for her careful work. This study would not have been possible without the stories of the women in Argentina who generously shared their time and experiences with me and without the collective knowledge emerging in the context of women’s movements spaces, including street protests, meetings, workshops, and cyberspace. Online discussions facilitated by the Red Informativa de Mujeres de Argentina (RIMA) helped to sharpen my arguments and kept me up to date on key political developments related to the topic of this book. I have also been inspired and challenged by many of the women activists I have met through the women’s movement in Argentina. Their analyses and solidarity have encouraged me to develop a more grounded and politically aware sociological understanding of women’s lives. I thank Mónica Tarducci and Claudia Laudano for reading parts of the book and offering their constructive feedback. I hope that this work honors the lives of the women who participated in this study and those of the many women in Argentina who have endured, resisted, and struggled to transform difficult and unjust social conditions. I gratefully acknowledge the following for permission to incorporate some of my already published materials in this book: An earlier version of chapter 2 was published previously as “Gendered Bodily Scars of Neoliberal Globalization in Argentina,” in The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalities, edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Ann Kingsolver (Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research, 2007) and is reprinted by permission of the publisher. A prior version of chapter 6 was first published in “Poner el Cuerpo: Women’s Embodiment and Political Resistance in Argentina,” in Latin American Politics and Society 49 (Fall 2007) and is included here by permission of Blackwell Publishing. My discussion of ethnoracial issues in Argentina incorporates some text extracts and ideas from my 2008 article “Contesting Racism: Democratic Citizenship, Human Rights, and Antiracist

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Politics in Argentina,” Latin American Perspectives 35 (6), available online at http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/6/106 (reprinted in this volume with permission from Sage Publications). Finally, research presented in this book was funded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund Program, the University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Kenneth S. Ghent Scholarship, and the Stephen L. Wasby Research Grant. I am grateful for having had access to funds that enabled me to conduct and complete my study.

Bodies in Crisis

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chapter 1

z Bodies in Crisis an introduction

In December 2001, the world’s attention turned to Argentina. The Argentine economy collapsed, food riots spread across the country, and the president declared a state of emergency that would limit freedom of movement and assembly. Masses of people openly defied the presidential decision, flooding the streets in protest. This citizen uprising was the culmination of years of economic restructuring in line with neoliberal globalization. Far from the promised prosperity, this economic model worsened the standard of living of most of the population and left millions of people impoverished. These events opened a period of intense social mobilization and community organizing that countered the assumptions underlying both corporate globalization and electoral democracy. Many Argentines had to reinvent themselves to survive adversity and experimented with communal kitchens, bartering clubs, workers-run factories, popular assemblies, and other forms of collective organizing. Women played vital roles in the emergent social change struggles, to the point that women’s movement activists spoke about this phenomenon as the “feminization of resistance” (Borland and Sutton 2007; Korol 2004). In this context of economic crisis and heightened political protest, I returned to Argentina—my country of origin—to conduct research on the politics of women’s bodies. During this tumultuous period, women’s bodies became embattled sites, shaken by the crisis, but also actively engaged in the construction of a new society and new models of womanhood. Activist women’s demands were wide ranging, and they gained momentum during this time of despair and hope. Their grievances included an array of bodily issues, such as child malnourishment and hunger, inadequate access to quality health care, state repression that killed or injured citizens’ bodies, pervasive physical violence against women, restrictions to the free expression of sexuality, and the criminalization of abortion. This book narrates the stories of diverse women in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at a time (2002–2003) that offered a critical vantage point from which to learn about the 1

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social, economic, and political dimensions of women’s bodies. While Argentine women’s sexualized bodies are hypervisible in the media, and in the entertainment industry more generally, rarely do we see the more hidden and complex bodily worlds of ordinary women. By this I mean women’s varied, overlapping, and context-related bodily experiences—including both everyday and extraordinary events—marked by the gamut of human emotions, and absorbing, expressing, and challenging multiple forms of social inequality. What are the continuities and contradictions between women’s bodily worlds and hegemonic conceptions of the female body? How have women in Argentina interpreted and responded to social regulations of their bodies? What can we learn about Argentine society, and about the interplay between global and local forces, when we start with women’s bodily worlds? Women’s narratives about their bodily feelings, problems, and transformations offer insights on critical social issues. “The crisis entered everybody’s home,” said Paula, a factory worker who denounced how the work practices of her employer, a multinational company, damaged workers’ health. “Sometimes I have food, sometimes I don’t,” explained Alexandra, whose poverty pushed her into a dangerous clandestine abortion in a shantytown. Because of the crisis, “my back hurts a lot, I don’t sleep well, I see myself as fat, I can’t diet,” complained middle-class Camila. Beatriz, a hairdresser, read the crisis on the bodies of women on the bus: “Worn-out clothing, bad haircuts, discolored hair . . . shoes that are cheap, broken, torn . . . This is the crisis.” Yamila, who identified as a sex worker, was emphatic: “If there’s no work, I will have to continue standing at a street corner, I will have to continue selling my body.”1 Through the analysis of accounts and embodied practices of activist and nonactivist women, this book shows how powerful ideologies and institutions regulate and control women’s bodies in Argentina as well as how women—as embodied beings—cope, negotiate, and resist these forces. This volume is also about multiple crises. The economic crisis that erupted in 2001 was both a material reality and a symbol of the various ways in which people in Argentina were shaken by forces they did not quite control, but that reached their lives and bodies in deeply personal ways. Other related crises were happening as well: a growing mistrust in the political system and dominant institutions, intensified conflicts in the streets and workplaces, and significant shifts in family and gender relations. Although this was an extraordinary moment in some ways, it was also one among other politically and economically problematic periods in the country’s existence: from currency devaluation and upward redistribution of income during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983), to hyperinflation under the democratic government in the late 1980s, to the deepening of neoliberal economics during the 1990s, including precarious work, workers’ layoffs, and the increasing power of foreign capital (Basualdo 2006). During the new millennium’s crisis, a sense of awe about the public events that were unfolding—for example, people looting supermarkets for food, crowds storming banks in response to the freezing of deposits, the largest government

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debt default in history—coexisted with memories of other grave moments in Argentina’s past. After all, this was not the first crisis Argentines endured, and the erosion of the general standard of living could be traced to earlier periods. For many individuals in the country the notion of crisis has been both a part of contemporary everyday life and a longer-term reality, often extending to more than one generation. Many Argentines have painfully learned that there is no such thing as stable ground. Certainty and security are elusive. As painful as they are, crises also generate possibilities for social change. While periods of flux and uncertainty are difficult to bear, they may also result in stolen moments of subversion and unexpected reconfigurations of prevailing social arrangements. Argentina is not exactly the same after the turning point of December 2001. While there are ways in which Argentine history repeats itself, with periods of relative stability alternating with emergencies, the 2001 economic meltdown and the protest have left their marks. Some transformation initiatives gained strength and captured the imagination of political activists and analysts alike, even inspiring people from other countries as they confronted the forces of globalization. In Argentina, citizens spontaneously organizing in neighborhood assemblies, unemployed workers blockading roads, middle-class people banging pots and pans in protest, and workers taking over factories and failed businesses became compelling features of the political landscape, also building on the country’s activist legacies. During the period of my research, a crisis of meaning accompanied the economic collapse, as it was particularly difficult to make sense of one’s social standing, have confidence in the government, trust financial institutions, and plan for the future. However, this was also a time in which inequality was rendered more visible; when social relations that might have seemed opaque or hard to grasp became more exposed, potentially intelligible, and susceptible to social change efforts. Crises can create openings, cracks through which we can see the structures of society more clearly. The social eruption in Argentina, with its epicenter in Buenos Aires, brought the matrix of power relations that shape women’s lives to the fore. The crisis proved to be catalytic and many women spoke out clearly and loudly about the problems they were experiencing. As known ways of life and expectations crumbled, they challenged prevailing social relations and institutions such as the economy, the family, the state, and the Catholic Church. These processes were intimately tied to the rising wave of more generalized social protest. The unfulfilled promises of electoral democracy, the connections with a past of brutal military dictatorship, the impoverishment of the population, the corruption of politicians and powerful economic groups, and the neoliberal economic model, all came under the critical scrutiny of ordinary people. They voiced discontent in the streets, put their bodies on the line in protest, and actively engaged in embodied practices of care and solidarity in their neighborhoods, communities, and social movements.

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The importance of these events transcends the Argentine case. Observers from around the world became interested in Argentina as a site of intense social experimentation, a place from which to learn not only about the violence of capitalist globalization but also about the innovative responses that the breakdown of the system inspired. As we close the first decade of the twenty-first century with a globalizing economic crisis—this time radiating from the United States— the Argentine experience serves as a cautionary tale. For Argentina’s story is both about global economics and the ways in which resisting voices and bodies emerge when the political ground shifts. Women in this study shared poignant accounts of human suffering connected to economic conditions. They also offered narratives about resistance that strengthened and nourished their bodies, that helped them discover unknown capacities, and that ensured their physical and emotional survival.

The Politics of Women’s Bodies Based on literature spanning the humanities and the social sciences, I started this study guided by a conception of the body as a site of power inscription and contestation. I wanted to examine the linkages between power, ideology, social structure, and women’s bodies and to investigate the body as a space that could also yield insights about the interaction between local and global forces. Feminist scholars have been forerunners in the field of “body studies,” producing rich, interdisciplinary scholarship in this growing area of research. They have shown women’s bodies as sites of both oppression and resistance.2 They note that in order to enforce women’s subordinated position, societies across the world have, at times, defined various kinds of female bodies as deficient, inferior, monstrous, unstable, unpredictable, dangerous, weak, vulnerable, overly sexual, or too powerful and in need of restraint. Feminists challenge the popular notion that “biology is destiny,” which has served to legitimize women’s social subordination based on their bodily differences from men (Birke 2000). Feminist theorists and philosophers have also criticized dichotomous conceptions of the mind/body relationship and the tendency to identify women with the perceived lower term—the body—as one of the moral justifications for women’s inferior status in Western culture (Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Tuana and Morgen 2001). Negative or inaccurate conceptions of diverse women’s bodies—often rooted in racist, heterosexist, misogynist, classist, ableist, ageist, and/or nativist ideologies—have perpetuated many forms of injustice. They encouraged the discrimination against women in jobs and professions (Acker 1990; Witz, Halford, and Savage 1996); justified religious stigmatization of and persecution against women (Ehrenreich and English 1973b; Pfohl 1994; Reis 1995); helped to criminalize women’s behavior, desires, and personality (Frigon 1995; Heidensohn 1985; Roberts 1997); validated questionable medical interventions

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(Garland-Thomson 2002; Ehrenreich and English 1973a; Ruzek, Olesen and Clarke 1997); helped regulate maternal bodies (Kukla 2005; Todeschini 2001); supported physical violence against women and girls (Adams 1990; LeclercMadlala 2002); facilitated the control of women’s sexuality and procreation capacities (Gutiérrez 2008; Hartmann 1995; Martin 1992; Petchesky 1990); promoted problematic standards of beauty and femininity (Bartky 1990; Bordo 1993b; Jeffreys 2005); and represented integral aspects of racist colonial projects (Ballantyne and Burton 2005; Hobson 2005; Smith 2005). Concrete social practices and policies embedded in oppressive ideologies (e.g., unequal distribution of food, exploitative work arrangements, damaging beauty rituals) have contributed to the production of female bodies of diverse types, including starved bodies, ill bodies, confined bodies, and supersexualized bodies. Converging systems of power and inequality shape and organize the ways diverse women experience their bodies; how society conceives of, regulates, or controls women’s bodies; how women’s bodies interact with other bodies; and how they become enmeshed in political processes. At the same time, bodies are more than sites of oppression; they are also sources of pleasurable and positive experiences. The body can be a space for affirming sexuality and sensuality, for connection with other human beings and the natural world. Eating a favorite food, being caressed by a lover, hugging a friend, rowing in a wild river, rubbing scented lotion on the skin, or hiking under the stars are examples of bodily experiences that different people may find satisfying. Women’s bodies are diverse and have multiple capacities, many of which have been socially suppressed or constrained. Yet many women have found possibilities for pleasure in their bodies, with or without the approval of society. In reflecting about women’s breasted experiences, Iris Marion Young (1990a, 199) wrote that when she was able to break free from social rules about the appropriate time, posture, and place for breastfeeding, such activity became “pleasure, not work.” Audre Lorde (1984, 56–57) talked about the power of the erotic, which can provide women with extraordinary joy, including physical: “In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea.” Social forces, while extremely powerful, do not completely determine women’s embodied existence and practices. Women, as embodied subjects, have agency and can use their bodies as tools and vehicles of resistance. Women in different countries facing various forms of oppression at the level of the body have challenged those forces both individually and collectively. This resistance has sometimes involved putting their own bodies on the line, as in cases of women resorting to nakedness to confront powerful military and economic interests (Sutton 2007; Turner and Brownhill 2004); undergoing clandestine

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abortions that defied state prohibitions (Kaplan 1995); participating in hunger strikes and other physical protest to resist injustice (Parkins 2000; Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 2003); enduring and surviving torture (Amnesty International 2001; Bunster-Burotto 1994); learning and practicing self-defense against sexual assault (Hollander 2004; McCaughey 1997); refusing questionable medical procedures and trying alternatives grounded in women’s knowledge (Davis 2007; Morgen 2002); experiencing bodily pleasure despite social proscriptions against it (Camp 2002; Groneman 1994); exhibiting with pride the bodily signs of age in the face of a culture that glorifies youth (MacDonald and Rich 1983); and adopting alternative dress codes as a critique of normative femininity and heterosexuality mandates (Fischer 2001; Stein 1997). This book examines body politics in Argentina as an important topic in its own right, but also as a window to broader social problems. The concept of body politics evokes the relationship between bodies and power—the body as a site of social control and a source of agency. For the purpose of this study, I selected themes from a range of bodily experiences in which power relations are at play, focusing on issues particularly salient to diverse women in Argentina. Although I cover much ground with this approach—embodied economics, femininity norms, abortion restrictions, gender violence, and political resistance—a number of important bodily experiences are not the central subject of my analysis— for example, pregnancy and birth giving or women’s sexual desire and behavior. Here I use the term experience to refer to women’s embodied practices (e.g., working, making love, caring for a child, wearing particular clothing) and the underlying social relations (e.g., relations organized by systems of inequality) that structure the lives of individuals. This concept is grounded in the work of Dorothy Smith (1987), who proposed the idea of problematizing the everyday world and taking women’s experiences as a point of departure for sociological analysis. The concept of consciousness is closely connected with experience. By consciousness I mean the evolving emotions, perceptions, thoughts, values, and ways of understanding oneself and the rest of the world, which shape and are shaped by one’s structural location in society. Feminist sociologist Joan Acker (1996) referred to consciousness not as something static, but as an emergent process that is tied to the material conditions of life, though not necessarily as a causal unidirectional relationship. Individual consciousness is not only linked to experience, but it is also influenced by ideologies or “social forms of consciousness” that may not reflect the lived experiences of a given person (Smith 1987). While each woman’s bodily experiences and consciousness can be described as individual events, they can also be seen as part of a social pattern, in the sense that they are organized and shaped by social arrangements, relations, and practices (Mills 1959; Smith 1987). Such are women’s bodily worlds. Thus this book explores women’s bodily worlds not in an attempt to unravel individual states of being, but to examine their connection to social systems, hegemonic institutions, and circulating ideologies.

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Why Women’s Bodies in Argentina? Much feminist work and theorizing about the body has emerged from and has focused on women in Europe and the United States, but less is known about this topic from the perspective of women in the Global South. In Argentina, the intersecting influences of the patriarchal state, the Catholic Church, machista (male-dominated) culture, and economic havoc have promoted various forms of social control, manipulation, and abuse of women’s bodies. Yet few social scientists have asked how Argentine women themselves experience these social forces, how they affect their bodies, how women respond to or resist these processes, and how bodily regulation perpetuates various inequalities in Argentina. When I first set out on this project, I was intrigued by cultural expectations that suggested a troubling societal approach to women’s bodies. My own experience growing up and living there as a young adult offered early clues that something about women’s subordinated status was related to the social regulation of women’s bodies. The high premium placed on women’s physical appearance was one of the issues that first caught my attention. While the idea that Argentine women are “the most beautiful in the world” gained popularity, the costs for women of trying to live up to such expectations was not a widely shared concern (Hasanbegovic 1998). Argentina was becoming a hub of cosmetic surgery and a place where the cult of thinness, bulimia, and anorexia were growing problems (Carbajal 1999; CNM 1996; Galetto 1996; Meehan and Katzman 2001). Studies in Western contexts have shown that beauty expectations influence women’s eating habits and desires to lose weight (Bordo 1993b; Brumberg 1998; MacSween 1993), but also that structural oppression, including racism, can play an important role in the eating disorders experienced by marginalized women (Thompson 1994). I wondered how women differently located in the Argentine context experienced the dominant beauty standards. The social control of women’s reproductive bodies was another worrisome trend. While sound information about contraception has been traditionally limited, and was even banned by past governments (Echenique and Moraga 1993; Margulis 2003b), voluntary termination of pregnancy continues to be illegal in most cases and hundreds of thousands of women risk their bodies each year in clandestine abortions. Women’s organizations have also pointed out that women in Argentina enjoy few choices about how to give birth (Dando a Luz 2004; Ríos 2003). Mistreatment of women during birthing, the regular use of techniques that are not necessary in all cases (e.g., episiotomies, prebirthing shaving), and excessive reliance on cesarean sections have all been documented (Belizán et al. 1999; Biasotti 2003; Brion 1990). Interpersonal violence against women such as domestic and sexual violence is a serious social problem in Argentina, as in other countries, and is perhaps the most obvious example of domination based on the raw control of women’s

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bodies (Velázquez 2003). This form of violence—often perceived as private— has some parallels with other types of bodily violence in Argentine history that are more overtly political. State terrorism during the last military dictatorship, also known as the Dirty War (1976–1983), dehumanized both men and women through torture and other human rights violations, yet it involved bodies in gender-specific ways. I pondered about what remained from the culture of terror instilled by the dictatorship, and how this might have permeated physical violence against women in contemporary Argentina. Finally, under a political system of electoral democracy during the 1990s, the Argentine state in tandem with powerful economic interests played an instrumental role institutionalizing a more subtle kind of violence, which also had a bearing on the body: economic violence. This type of violence came in the form of full-blown structural adjustment measures promoted by the advocates of neoliberal globalization. These policies undermined the quality of life and survival possibilities of large sectors of the population. As a result of these measures, the work burden of many women in Argentina (especially the poor) significantly increased (Sautu, Eguía, and Ortale 2000). Given the gendered division of labor, I wanted to find out how women were experiencing theses changes in the flesh. As I talked with women about their lives and bodies, the devastating effects of the crisis and the varied responses from the population became central themes, prompting me to think about the body in ways that departed from prevailing approaches in the “body studies” literature. When addressing women’s bodies, it is common to focus the analysis on sexuality, reproduction, or appearance—all productive sites of feminist research on embodiment. However, women have other embodied experiences too, as political resisters or as workers, for example. The socioeconomic context in Argentina was ripe for the study of topics that have received less attention, such as the connection between embodiment, the economy, and political protest. Here I offer an account of the operations of power on the body that starts from Argentine women’s bodily experiences and then ties them to social processes embedded in the Argentine context as well as in more global developments. I explore five fields of power inequality involving women’s bodies: the bodily scars of neoliberal globalization (chapter 2); femininity, beauty, and embodiment (chapter 3); reproductive politics, particularly in relation to abortion (chapter 4); physical violence against women (chapter 5); and the role of women’s bodies in political protest (chapter 6).

Starting from the Body: Theoretical Grounding Sites of power always begin with bodies. They are the starting point of all meaning, and yet they never get to give meaning outside the power systems that already embrace them. My body offers me a “place-consciousness” from which to see experiences beyond myself. —Zillah Eisenstein (2001, 39–40)

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Social theorists of the body suggest that power and inequality not only characterize the organization of social systems and institutions in contemporary societies, but also run deep into the flesh of individuals (Bourdieu 1984; Shilling 2003; Turner 1984). In reflecting on “the mechanics of power,” Michel Foucault pointed out that power has a “capillary form of existence . . . [P]ower seeps into the very grain of individuals, reaches right into their bodies, permeates their gestures, their posture, what they say, [and] how they learn to live and work with other people” (Martin 1988, 6). Power and inequality are, indeed, embodied in multiple ways, but this is not simply a unidirectional process by which bodies become mud to be molded by social systems (McNay 1992). As R. W. Connell (1999, 463) points out, “bodies are parties in social life, sharing in social agency, in generating and shaping courses of social conduct . . . bodies are both agents and objects.” In particular, social relations and ideologies shape the different meanings attributed to men’s and women’s physical attributes and capacities, in that way, contributing to the “gendering” of bodies (Crawley, Foley and Shehan 2008; Lorber and Moore 2007). Gender systems influence the shape of human bodies; the allocation of resources that bodies need to flourish (e.g., food, medicine, healthy environments); how prone women’s or men’s bodies are to coercion, modification, or experimentation; whose reproductive functions scientists tamper with; what kinds of bodies are taken as the standard; whose bodies are more likely to be sexually abused; whose bodies are nurtured or discarded; and so on. Yet the story is more complicated than that, as bodies are not only gendered but also racialized, marked by class relations, and embedded in sexuality hierarchies and global asymmetries. For example, in Argentina class inequality means that poor women’s bodies are more likely to be wounded in clandestine abortions than those of upper- and middle-class women. Also, while heterosexual women’s sexuality is seen as normal, lesbian bodies have been made invisible or perceived as pathological. Racialized notions of beauty have enshrined white European aesthetic models and alternatively held the bodies of women of color as exotic, monstrous, or ugly. Two broad streams of sometimes overlapping feminist scholarship provide valuable theoretical tools for exploring such complex dynamics in the study of women’s bodily worlds: intersectional feminist frameworks—originally developed by women of color in the United States—which emphasize how intersecting systems of inequality shape women’s lives (e.g., Crenshaw 1989; Davis 1981; Glenn 1985; Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983); and transnational feminist frameworks, which underscore how hegemonic globalization processes build on and often perpetuate inequalities not only between nations but also within them (e.g., Alexander 2005; Grewal 2005; Kim-Puri 2005; Mohanty 2003a). These two conceptual frameworks are highly compatible and have been successfully integrated by a number of feminist scholars. One basic premise of the intersectional approach is that systems of inequality—which can include

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global disparities—mutually constitute and reinforce each other. An important insight of the transnational approach is that the lives of women across the globe—including privileged and marginalized nations—are linked through a complex web of power and interdependency. Attending to hierarchies within as well as across nations clarifies our understanding of global processes and shows the multidirectional workings of power, including power dynamics that manifest more directly onto and through the body. The operations of power on the body are central aspects of this book. While sociological in its approach, this study has been nourished by interdisciplinary scholarship that illuminates power dynamics. Works in philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, psychoanalysis, history, and the humanities have been important for understanding the body beyond its biology, looking at cultural representation of human bodies, the relationship between body and psyche, and how bodies vary across historical periods and cultures. Sociology places a particular emphasis on social structures and relations of power. This approach is not free from tensions. In sociological thinking, the pull of social structure can overwhelm attention to the body, which might then be presented as overly determined by social forces or completely dissolved in the thickness of the analysis of social processes (Howson and Inglis 2001; Le Breton 2002). Throughout this book, I had to contend with these tensions, so women’s bodies appear as more or less active and more or less explicit in different parts of this volume. Because everything human beings do necessarily enlists the body, even if in less obvious ways (as when thinking), it is easy to take the body for granted. Furthermore, since the body is enmeshed in social processes that need to be explained, the risk is to center the analysis exclusively on those processes, downplaying the ways in which they affect and are affected by human bodies. A sociological approach that starts from the body—in this case from women’s bodily experiences in Argentina—provides an essential tool to understand broader social, political, and economic developments. One of the benefits of using the body as an analytical entry point is that the body bridges the personal and the political, macro processes and micro interactions, structure and agency. For instance, women’s bodily experiences of abortion in the Argentine context reveal not only women’s personal struggles for bodily self-determination, but also a complex web of gender ideologies about motherhood, sexuality, and family; how class and gender inequality increase the vulnerability of poor women’s bodies to dangerous interventions; the power of the medical and Catholic Church establishment to influence women’s decisions about their bodies; and how laws and ideologies that treat women’s bodies as inert containers are intimately connected to the wounds and risks inscribed in and on the flesh of women’s bodies. Connected to the previous point, the body merges local and extralocal, even global, forces. When we think of macro processes like globalization, we can become lost in abstract discourses about migration, financial flows, information

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networks, and capital mobility across national borders. While these topics illuminate significant global trends, we need to remember that these phenomena are experienced and directed by embodied human beings and are about nonhuman species as well. (Some)body is benefiting, suffering, negotiating, and/or resisting these processes. In this study, the interdependence and interconnection between local and extra-local realms embedded in human bodies are reflected, for example, by women’s narratives about the bodily scars of neoliberal economics. The economic crisis in Argentina, which was intimately tied to neoliberal globalization, played a role in turning the bodies of different women into malnourished, exhausted, stressed, or sick bodies. The crisis was also implicated in the emergence of many militant and resisting female bodies. Feminist scholars have examined the interrelations between the global and the local, and some have suggested that the body is “the geography closest in” (Adrienne Rich quoted in Underhill-Sem 2002, 55), and “the first place that defines political struggle” (Harcourt and Mumtaz 2002, 37; see also Eisenstein 2001). This conception of the body as the most local place, however, is different from understandings of bodies as isolated units (Harcourt and Escobar 2002). In this book I advance a conception of the body that acknowledges the local and specific character of individual women’s bodies while at the same time seeing them as absorbing and interacting with the extralocal realms. As Harcourt and Escobar point out, “We need to understand the body not as bound to the private or to the self—the western idea of the autonomous individual—but as being linked integrally to material expressions of community and public space. In this sense there is no neat divide between the corporeal and the social; there is instead what has been called ‘social flesh’” (Harcourt and Escobar 2002, 10).3 If we consider the ways in which local realms are reconfigured through globalization, then we can think of bodies as “glocal” geographies.4 The analysis of bodily experiences offers a particularly valuable location from which to understand social issues more deeply, partly because it encourages a closer approximation to social suffering (e.g., Darghouth et al. 2006; Tiilikainen 2005). “Social suffering results from what political, economic, and institutional power does to people, and, reciprocally, from how these forms of power themselves influence responses to social problems” (Kleinman, Das, and Lock 1996, xi). Time and again social sciences conceptualize and analyze problems in abstract and detached ways that, for example, allow observers to study poverty without feeling moved by the suffering of others. As Paul Farmer (2003, 31) points out, some popular tools in the social sciences, like “statistics or graphs,” are not optimal to understand “the experience of suffering.” In contrast, when we bring material, fleshly, living bodies to the fore of sociological analysis we can better recognize the pain. When I asked women about their bodily experiences, examples of social oppression scarring their bodies and emotions flooded the interviews. Forms of bodily oppression came in the form of black eyes resulting from marital violence, pangs of hunger due to poverty, infected wounds related

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to untreated disease, or hemorrhages owing to the context of illegal abortion. These kinds of bodily stories were also about anger, frustration, rage, and despair. Social suffering strongly defined these experiences. Kleinman, Das, and Lock (1996, xi) argue that “included under the category of social suffering are conditions that are usually divided among separate fields: health, welfare, and legal, moral, and religious issues. They destabilize established categories.” As in the case of social suffering studies, a focus on the body also has the potential of bringing together multiple and intersecting experiences that are often compartmentalized as discrete areas of study (e.g., abortion, violence, femininity, the economy, social movements). Yet a significant area of knowledge is carved out by looking at the intersections of multiple bodily experiences. Importantly, this interconnected approach resembles more closely the way the women in this study experienced various aspects of their bodies. This can be seen in the accounts of women whose experiences are analyzed in more than one topical chapter. For example, the story of Estela, a woman living in a shantytown, illuminates the bodily scars of poverty, the physical and emotional effects of gender violence, and the difficult embodied work of community activism. The tendency of women to link several bodily issues in their narratives, which was partly facilitated by my research methods (more about this later), was not at all exceptional. When looking at women’s lives, starting sociological analysis from the body is particularly productive, not because women are more embodied than men, but because of the ways in which women’s biology has been socially used to keep women in subordinated positions. Alternative bodily accounts can help to cast doubt on prevailing wisdom. Furthermore, as Eisenstein (2001) suggests, women’s bodies have a material specificity, in all their diversity, which has too often been homogenized or interpreted from the standpoint of men in positions of power and from the perspective of hegemonic institutions. From essentialist notions that conceive women as “driven” or “determined” by their biology to the equation of human with male, the specificity and diversity of women’s bodies has been erased or used against women. In conducting this study, I aimed to unravel more complex forms of bodily talk, consciousness, and experience in ways that recognize both women’s multiplicity and agency.

Research, Writing, and Embodiment: Epistemological Implications My research and writing is not only about women’s embodiment; it was also carried out by me as an embodied subject. Feminist scholars have pointed out that embodiment affects the observer’s vantage point, precluding the kind of objectivity proposed by mainstream science (Haraway 1997; Tuana 2001). As I was conducting my study, I wondered how my own embodiment affected what I was able to see, think, know, and write. Yet, in reflecting on these matters, I realized that

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I did not have/was not the same body that had started this research. (In fact, our bodies are never the same—each minute, they undergo changes, even if imperceptible.) Eisenstein (2001, 40–41) points out that we have many bodies, which influence our accounts of reality: “Writing from the body, my body, my different bodies, I have different stories to tell. They are all of a piece although they are also fragmentary; as though each body experience has its own narration.” Similarly, relatively recent changes in my life were marked by bodily trajectories and transformations that affected my embodied perceptions and the stories I conveyed. For example, at the end of my fieldwork, moving from a big city in Argentina (Buenos Aires) and back to a small town in the United States (Eugene, Oregon) meant changing many bodily habits, including transportation, food, clothing, and even the awareness of my own body. From the insecurity and difficulties of “Underdevelopment,” I moved to a more privileged setting within “Empire”—but at the cost of intensified bodily searches and humiliation in airports as a foreigner, a more tenuous sense of entitlement based on my noncitizen status, and the feeling of being increasingly under surveillance. (Here my Anglo last name and bodily markers such as light skin tone provided me with a seemingly protective shield, sometimes undermined by my noticeable Spanish accent.) Other significant bodily changes included the experience of pregnancy and my almost total immersion in the “mind” work of writing up my findings, which inscribed my body in particular ways. I started my study with an agile body that walked all over Buenos Aires, that right before my research traveled through twelve countries across the Americas in an overland trip, and that blended with other bodies in street protests and community activism in Argentina. At the same time, it was a body that, in the context of Buenos Aires, was more vulnerable to sexual harassment and the whims of femininity discourses than had been the case in Eugene, Oregon. As I wrote in the United States, spending a long time in isolation, I had a hard time remembering my other body. My field notes and pictures reminded me of a body that seemed a bit strange compared to my pregnant body facing labor and delivery as I was in the analysis and writing stage of my project. As I wrote I felt the pinches in my back, the kicks and squirms inside my protruding belly, and the fatigue of the last month of pregnancy. My volume had increased significantly; and my body was no longer one, but two bodies merging within one. These changes in my body, in a relatively short period, alerted me to the instability of identity and the problems of grounding the self in a single version of embodiment. At the same time, my body had not disappeared. It was still material, tangible, full of needs and desires. These changes helped raise questions about the implications of embodied location and embodied changes from an epistemological perspective. What can be seen and understood from one body and not from another? What limitations and openings does the body impose on our sight, understanding, and creation of meaning?

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My material body—merged with the meanings ascribed to it in Argentine society—opened spaces, created awareness, and established limitations for me. My embodied location affected not only my viewpoint but also my interactions with people. My relatively healthy, tall, and light-skinned body contrasted with those of many women in shantytowns, highlighting my privilege and creating a gap between us—a gap I had to work to overcome or at least reduce. My female body provided me with a passport to women’s movement meetings and protests (something more difficult for male or transgender bodies) and gave me some special insights into the pressures of femininity and instances of sexual violence. My maternal body received much praise and positive reinforcement, perhaps even increasing my status within my family, underscoring social expectations about maternal embodiment. At the same time, writing about abortion while pregnant heightened my sense of tension and the ethical and political dilemmas surrounding this difficult topic. In the process of writing much of this work I navigated a conflicted space of embodiment and seeming disembodiment. I spent most of my time sitting in front of the computer dealing with ideas and thoughts in isolation, as opposed to the vibrant bodily encounters in the midst of community activism and the data collection process. I felt pushed into disembodiment, into becoming a floating mind. Forget about eating; forget about walking; forget about going to the bathroom. As I approached the last term of pregnancy, the baby developing inside me would bring me back to embodiment, kicking when I was deep in my thoughts, when the world seemed to be restricted to my brain and the computer. The pain in my hands, wrists, and back—after extended hours sitting down and performing the repetitive motions of typing—also reminded me of my own embodiment. As I got closer to finishing my initial write up and giving birth to a baby, both processes blurred into my mind/body experience. The seemingly disembodied project of writing was flooded with embodied metaphors of birthing, and I felt I was embarking on the physical experience of a double labor. These were more than mental images, since I experienced them at a deeply physical level. Being close to finishing my work, but being exhausted seemed like being in the “transition” stage of labor, when many women report that the overwhelming bodily feelings and pain they experience make it seem that they must give up. When I spoke of “due date” it was no longer clear whether it referred to my writing or the baby’s arrival. In a way, the experience of pregnancy forced me to consciously embody the writing process, a process that is always embodied, though not always recognized as such. This discussion highlights that we always think, act, and know as embodied beings—whether we are conscious of it or not. The accounts about women’s bodily experiences and consciousness in Argentina that I offer here are permeated by my own history of embodiment. The narratives of the women in this study touch, fuse with, and differ from my own. In “writing from [my] body,” as Eisenstein suggests (2001, 40), and from the narratives of other women’s bodies

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in my country, I signal my hope for a society where women’s bodies can thrive and be all they can be on their own terms.

Entering the Field: A Note on Methods On a crisp, sunny winter morning in La Quiaca, in the northernmost border of Argentina, I entered the country by land after a four-month trip across the Americas. It was the year 2002 and my final destination was Buenos Aires, Argentina.5 One journey was ending and another one—my research project— was about to begin. My mind was full of fresh images from my recent experience, one that encouraged me to see Argentina in the broader context of Latin America. I was excited in anticipation: I had arrived in my home country at last, and I was eager to see my family and to stay in Buenos Aires for an extended period. While I was keenly aware of the critical situation that Argentina was undergoing, this reality still hit me hard in the face upon my arrival. The weight of the crisis was unavoidable, reflected in expressions of sadness, resignation, anger, or defiance by relatives, friends, and people in the streets. The media also broadcasted the voices and experiences of ordinary people whose lives were shaken by the crisis. However, organized resistance was also part of the story. As I got closer to Buenos Aires, I listened to radio news about the street protests and plans for escraches (public shaming demonstrations) against the visit of Paul O’Neill—then U.S. secretary of the treasury. He came to represent powerful economic interests that many in Argentina identified as at least partly responsible for the crisis. Once in Buenos Aires, the sight of street protests and pervasive political graffiti, the unprecedented numbers of scavengers digging garbage, heated political conversations among family members, and constant warnings about “insecurity” (meaning increased street crimes and kidnappings) were some of the features that characterized my initial field encounters. The bulk of my fourteen-month fieldwork took place in Argentina’s capital city, Buenos Aires, and its surrounding metropolitan area (Greater Buenos Aires) during 2002–2003. (Hereafter, I will use the term Buenos Aires to refer to both districts unless otherwise noted.) This region is the political, cultural, and economic center of the country. About 90 percent of the population in Argentina lives in urban areas and the Buenos Aires area is the most populated (INDEC 2001). Thus, Buenos Aires is a particularly appropriate site from which to learn about the experiences of Argentine urban women and women originally from rural areas who migrated to the city. Another advantage of focusing on this region is that it is the place with the most women’s organizations and where political and social changes historically affecting the whole nation have occurred. On the other hand, Argentina is a geographically diverse and vast country, populated with many smaller cities, towns, and villages. The lives of women in Buenos Aires particularly differ from those living in less central locations such as rural areas or small towns.

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My study was based on a multimethod design that combined in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observations, and media analysis. My central sources of data were fifty individual interviews with diverse women and four focus groups with women who were charity volunteers, domestic service workers, social assistance recipients, and lesbians in a reflection group. I also performed ethnographic observations of everyday life and social movement activities (particularly those of women’s organizations), and collected and classified print media articles, especially from the conservative newspaper La Nación and the women’s supplement of the left-leaning newspaper Página 12. I also kept a journal of my own bodily experiences and emotions in Argentina. I thought that this kind of reflection would be important to identify experiences that informed my approach and issues that might have been affecting other women as well. In addition to four targeted focus groups, I formed a purposeful sample of individual women. I recruited interviewees through snowballing, fieldwork encounters, asking for volunteers on women’s Internet lists, and directly approaching women with particular characteristics. My goal was to interview a diverse pool of women along categories of occupation, education, income, sexual identity, race-ethnicity, age, religion, and activism.6 About half of them were activists, including feminists, labor organizers, piqueteras (picketers), popular assembly participants, communal kitchen organizers, lesbian rights activists, and members of human rights groups and organizations promoting the rights of Afro-descendents, indigenous peoples, Latin American migrants, women in prostitution, and people with disabilities. Interviews were audiotaped and followed a semistructured format, relying on an interview guide but allowing flexibility for respondents to introduce additional issues and concerns (Rubin and Rubin 1995). I asked interviewees general questions about bodily awareness, feelings, and practices, as well as more specific questions about their bodies in relation to the economic crisis, work, sexuality, reproduction, and the meanings of womanhood. Focus groups drew on similar themes, revealing how gender discourses are collectively constructed. I also developed a technique based on cards printed with body-related words that individual interviewees could choose and talk about.7 Most interviewees seemed at ease talking about themselves and were willing to share very personal experiences. During interviews, I tried to construct a safe space. Some women voiced sorrows or secrets held in for many years, sometimes crying during the process. Some told hard stories about rape, clandestine abortions, domestic violence, prostitution, state-sponsored torture, sexual humiliation, and hunger. During my stay in Buenos Aires, I participated in multiple social movement actions and gatherings, such as protests to stop violence against women, to decriminalize abortion, to halt war and state repression, and to demand solutions to hunger, poverty, and unemployment. I also traveled to the 2002 Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Meeting) in the province

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of Salta, and to the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with a delegation of movement organizations from Argentina. In these events, I paid particular attention to what women were protesting about and how they were doing it. As a part of my activist work with women in Buenos Aires, I was able to observe and reflect upon women’s collective responses to the crisis and to issues concerning women’s bodies, for example, gender violence, health care, contraception, abortion, and hunger. Many of my political activities involved interactions with women in social movements, especially middle-class feminists, and poor and working-class activists, including women in a shantytown. My participation in such women’s networks responded to a deeply felt desire to be involved in social change efforts, strengthened by a climate of social movement effervescence. Research, politics, and comradeship became tightly entwined in my involvement in social movement actions. I was not a distant or neutral observer. Like other activists, I wanted to have an impact on the course of events, be it the wording of a flyer for International Women’s Day or the kinds of actions we would engage (e.g., whether to protest in front of the cathedral or government buildings, the kinds of protest songs, the signs we would carry, and whether it was more important to do a massive event or remain fewer but closer to specific political framings). I straddled between my allegiance to explicitly defined feminist causes and my hope to organize with, learn from, and support poor and working-class women whose political agenda was not always a smooth fit with that of middle-class feminists. I became enmeshed in discussions and political analysis with other activists, and I tried to influence outcomes along with everyone else. I experienced conflict and frustration, bodily fatigue and exhilaration during political protests, and the empowering feelings that derive from collective action. I attended and took notes at multiple conferences, workshops, panel discussions, and informal meetings to discuss and/or devise practical strategies to redress social injustice and gender inequality. In these venues, I was an active participant who listened, asked questions, expressed opinions, helped connect some women with each other, and sometimes shaped discussions. This participation informed my understanding of women’s bodily experiences and helped me to put my interviews in political perspective. As an Argentine, originally from Buenos Aires, I was well positioned to conduct a project about women’s bodily experiences there. Yet my previous years living in the United States meant entering Argentina as a familiar and strange terrain at the same time. While I felt connected to Argentina in profound ways,8 my experience as a foreigner in the United States had changed me, my worldviews, my feelings about being a woman, and my ways of relating to other people. I entered Argentina as an insider/outsider, a person who already knew important aspects of the culture but was able to notice other things that were novel, surprising, or even shocking. I embarked on my research with the familiarity of a

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long-gone daughter, and with the curiosity and eyes-wide-open approach of someone who explores uncharted ground. My study required me to see and feel my own country anew, drawing from old wisdoms, remembering things I had forgotten, and learning to operate in new ways, as required by the rapid changes that the socioeconomic crisis was triggering. My status as an insider/outsider in relation to Argentina had some advantages. In his Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, Paul Rabinow (1977) suggests that those people who are in and out of a community can offer particularly valuable insights. While they have connections with the community and understand many general practices and assumptions, they also have the ability to take their own culture as an object of critical reflection—partly because they are not as invested in “belonging” to the social group as more embedded insiders are. I saw my researcher position in the Argentine context in a way similar to Rabinow’s insider/outsider informant. That is, I knew important things about Argentine culture that a complete outsider would have to learn from scratch, yet my experience living abroad, outside of my culture of origin, allowed me to see things that someone who is too close to her own culture might be less likely or unwilling to see. The outsider aspect of my position was, first of all, marked by my being a researcher, by my past living abroad, and by having the option of pursuing a professional career in the United States in the future. While I shared many of the credentials and experiences of a “true” Argentine, at the same time I had opportunities in the United States that were unavailable to most people in my country. This situation, this double-status, was emotionally charged and created dilemmas for me. During this project, I identified with many of the interviewed women’s stories, participated in the women’s movement, and was extremely worried about the economic crisis and specific political developments in Argentina. I was concerned about those issues not merely from a sociological perspective, but also in deeply personal ways, as someone strongly affected by what happens to the country. However, the idea that I am “in this mess” with my fellow Argentines was tempered by a real possibility of leaving the country. Barrie Thorne (1979) referred to the experience of fieldwork as a “controlled adventure” (78) that allows researchers to experience the field like complete insiders, but that “in some ultimate way [provides researchers with] a cop out, a built-in escape, a point of outside leverage that full participants lack” (81). In a sense, going back to Argentina to conduct research felt like a controlled adventure—although not quite as controlled because of my uncertainties about whether I would indeed want or be able to exercise the option of staying in the United States. These personal dilemmas gave me special insights into current and significant social events taking place in Argentina—issues related to cultural identity, economics, and politics that were part of the context in which the lives of the women in my study unfolded. In the first months of my project, for example,

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I started hearing public debates about many Argentines’ decisions or desires to emigrate to other countries: experiential accounts of people who felt pushed into exile because of economic reasons or increasing social violence; narratives of persons who chose to stay and fight for individual and social change; news about the miserable lives or success stories of Argentines living abroad; information about long lines of Argentines in the Italian and Spanish consulates trying to obtain European citizenship. Even movies were addressing similar themes, including one film that I watched at the time called Lugares Comunes (Common Places). Newspapers also presented articles related to these experiences, sometimes establishing parallels with past expulsions of Argentines from the country, such as the history of exiles during the last military dictatorship. In many cases, these discussions were morally charged and stirred feelings of guilt, loyalty, hopelessness, and optimism. I was not exempt from this influence, and it shaped the course of my research and my interactions with the women in my study.

Setting the Context A Condensed History of Political and Economic Changes Before initiating the analysis of women’s bodily experiences in Argentina, basic historical information about the country is in order, as the stories of women in this book have not taken place in a vacuum, but in a culturally, politically, and economically textured milieu with roots in earlier times. Argentina has a history of colonization by Spain that lasted almost three centuries and that left enduring marks in the fabric of the country. Among other influential factors, the colonial period introduced the current dominant language (Spanish), the valorization of white European phenotypic features, the preponderance of the Catholic Church, and a number of legal structures and cultural practices that shaped the contours of modern Argentina. In 1816 an emerging local government declared its independence from Spain and ousted the Spanish troops in following years. The nineteenth century was a time of nation building, influenced by the wars of independence, subsequent civil wars, demarcation of frontiers, and organization of Argentina’s foundational institutions as a representative federal republic.9 The project of nationhood implemented in the second part of the nineteenth century was geared toward making Argentina more like Europe and less like the rest of Latin America: Argentina was to become white, modern, economically powerful, and “civilized” (Jelin 1996; Quijada, Bernand and Schneider 2000; Szurmuk 2000). This modernization plan, promoted by the Argentine liberal elite, involved the decimation of indigenous populations (especially during the so-called Conquest of the Desert, around 1880s) and the expansion of the national territory into lands originally inhabited by indigenous groups. The country also opened its borders to massive immigration from Europe. The immigrant influx diluted the presence of non-European ethnoracial groups already in Argentina,

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such as indigenous people and people of African ancestry, including descendents of slaves (Liboreiro 2001; Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider 2000). Although Argentine ideologues aimed to attract Anglo populations, in fact most of the migrants that came were from the south of Europe, particularly from Italy. Over 60 percent of the people living in the city of Buenos Aires were from other countries at the turn of the twentieth century (Romero 2002). The enclosure of lands, the expansion of beef and agricultural production by big landowners, and the development of strong economic ties with Great Britain launched Argentina as a player in the global economy. The public education system was also an important feature of the modernization program, meant to “civilize” the nation and overcome the “barbarism” associated with the countryside “savage.”10 Primary public education became free and secular, assuring the state influence on the formation of the future generations (Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider 2000; Romero 2002; Stølen 1996; Szurmuk 2000). The alternation of democratic governments, military dictatorships, and economic crises characterized the history of twentieth-century Argentina. At the beginning of the century, Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world. Its export-oriented agricultural and farming production benefited from a favorable international economy (however, this was tempered by the advent of World War I and less advantageous trading terms). During the first decades of the century European immigration continued and urbanization increased. A 1912 political reform instituted “universal” (but did not include women) adult suffrage and secret, mandatory voting. After this change, the Radical Civic Union (UCR, Unión Cívica Radical), one of the main two parties in the twentieth century, came to power in 1916. The country was also industrializing (for example, textile industries, food processing, and metal and chemical production were developed), and organized workers demanded social and labor reforms to improve their life conditions. General strikes and social turmoil erupted during 1919–1921, leading to governmental repression and ultimately some concessions, such as “full recognition of the trade unions, retirement plans for commercial employees and railroad workers’ unions, regulation of woman and child labor, and establishment of the first of May—turned into a conciliatory Labor Day—as a national holiday” (Romero 2002, 37). The Great Depression had a negative impact on the Argentine economy: unemployment rose, income fell, and many immigrants left the country. During World War II Argentina maintained neutrality (until almost the very end of the war) and experienced an industrial upsurge (Romero 2002). Tensions between labor and capital continued, sometimes ending in state repression of workers, during both constitutional governments and military regimes during the 1930s and early 1940s (Grimberg 2000; Lobato and Suriano 2003). Around the mid-twentieth century, the labor movement gained unparalleled political allies in two of the most prominent political figures of Argentine

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history: populist leader Juan Domingo Perón (president 1946–1952, 1952–1955, and 1973–1974) and First Lady Eva Duarte de Perón, mostly known by the endearing nickname “Evita.” This couple was immensely popular among the working classes and the poor, which benefited from some of the Peronist administration’s social reforms (including health, education, housing, vacations, and social security improvements), workers’ protection laws, and the strengthening of labor unions (though under Perón’s control). This was the dawn of Peronism: a party and movement still influential today.11 Evita was central to the development of Peronism, and her name continues to be invoked in contemporary Argentine politics—both revered and hated by different sectors of the population. Of working-class origins, Evita gained power through her union with Perón as well as through her own leadership capabilities. She organized the women’s branch of the Peronist Party, fulfilled social assistance tasks, and embraced her role as workers’ and poor people’s defender until her premature death in 1952 from cancer. Even though Evita was a powerful woman, she wielded a sacrificial discourse that pointed to her husband as the driving force of her actions. She encouraged women’s political participation (in support of Perón) while also emphasizing traditional gender roles as mothers and wives (see Barrancos 2008; Fraser and Navarro 1981). Women obtained the right to vote during Perón’s presidency in 1947, and Perón was able to capitalize on women’s suffrage—a long-term demand of the feminist movement—for his own political purposes. Perón’s government developed welfare state structures in Argentina and implemented a politics of inclusion of the working classes, making the fruits of culture and consumption more accessible to them and building on an ingrained urban culture of “individual-family social mobility” (Jelin 1996, 27).12 Perón nationalized key enterprises (e.g., railroads, telephone, gas, electricity) and during his first term promoted an import substitution model of industrialization and economic independence from foreign countries. He later adopted measures to promote foreign investment, but without abandoning his stated commitment to the working classes and the poor (Romero 2002). Although Perón established alliances with important sectors of Argentine politics (e.g., the Catholic Church, the labor unions, the military), he could not sustain some of these links over time. His policies and his personalist (even authoritarian) style triggered resentment among some sectors of the population. The Peróns were vehemently opposed by the country’s elites, particularly by the landed aristocracy and those who were troubled by their authoritarian measures (e.g., firing of university professors, control of the media, arrest of opposition parties’ leaders and intellectual figures, expropriation of two newspapers, and the Peronist propaganda permeating all institutions controlled by the state). Sectors of the Buenos Aires oligarchy also regarded with contempt the perceived “invasion” of the working classes to areas previously not accessible to them and

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of the people from the country’s “interior”—pejoratively called cabecitas negras (little black heads)—who had migrated to the city (Romero 2002). Perón was overthrown by a military coup in 1955, went into exile in Spain later on, and could not return to Argentina until 1973. In the meantime, Argentina experienced a period of military regimes alternating with elected governments— but Peronism had been proscribed. From 1966 until 1973, the country was governed by de facto military governments, but the repressive measures of these regimes could not completely shut down popular opposition. By the end of the 1960s social movement activities increased dramatically, including those of workers, students, and groups committed to social justice inspired by liberation theology, various streams of Marxism, and the revolutionary climate permeating many places around the world. Many people in Argentina demanded the return of Perón, who was finally allowed to come back to the country in the midst of popular support and became president in 1973. Perón’s last presidency was short-lived, as he died in 1974. His latest wife and vice president, Estela Martínez de Perón (not nearly as popular as Evita) assumed the presidency from 1974 to 1976. Economic problems, including inflation, spiraled into chaos: Political turmoil partly manifested itself through the violent actions of leftist guerrilla groups—for example, Montoneros and ERP (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo [People’s Revolutionary Army])—and right wing paramilitary forces— the Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance)—in the midst of conservative groups’ fears of communist expansion. In 1976, the stage was set for a new military coup. A military junta formed by commanders of the three armed forces initiated the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization) through the suspension of the constitutional order and the institution of a political regime based on state violence and terror. The military dictatorship’s representatives claimed to be defenders of Argentina’s national interests and values, equated to conservative Christian morality and anticommunism (Duhalde 1999; Laudano 1998). They also promoted neoliberal economics, facilitating the business of finance capital and wealth concentration among big-business groups, withdrawing protection for local production, cutting social expenditures, and disciplining labor (e.g., banning strikes, suspending collective negotiations) (Lobato and Suriano 2003). In order to guarantee the efficacy of their plan, the military set up a brutal political system, internationally infamous for the thousands of people it “disappeared.” Disappearance referred to methods of state terrorism designed to leave no trace of the existence of the people targeted. This methodology consisted of illegal detentions (kidnappings) followed by torture, executions, burials of the “disappeared” bodies in unidentified sites or collective graves, or disposing of bodies in the ocean or the river. Appropriation of the disappeared’s property, and even of the babies born in captivity, was also part of the military’s systematic plan of terror (Arditti 1999). The estimated number of people disappeared by

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the military dictatorship ranges from 9,000 (CONADEP 1984) to 30,000 (this is the number invoked by human rights organizations like Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo). The dictatorship’s actions should also be understood in transnational perspective, as they fitted a larger hemispheric trend influenced by U.S. geopolitics and its Doctrine of National Security in a cold war era. Furthermore, the Argentine dictatorship collaborated with other military regimes in the region in the perpetration of atrocities (e.g., Plan Condor),13 had members trained in counterinsurgency in the U.S.-sponsored School of the Americas, and incorporated and exported repression tactics from and to other governments (Armony 2005). The targets of the military’s “Dirty War” were allegedly armed subversives who threatened national security and cultural values. Yet in practice, “subversive” seemed to describe anyone who espoused leftist or social justice ideas, no matter whether they were involved or not in armed militant groups. Among the people who disappeared, besides members of guerrilla groups, were activists, artists, journalists, high school and university students, teachers and professors, labor organizers, nuns, and relatives of activists—diverse people viewed as associated with the left. And leftist ideologies were to be avoided at all costs. Brigade General Albano Harguindeguy clearly expressed this position in a speech broadcasted on radio and television in 1976: “Fathers, Mothers, and Children, the ominous ideas of leftist Marxism are a threat to our families, our flag, our motherland, and our freedom” (Laudano 1998, 25). Among the first and most persistent opponents of the regime were the family members, and particularly the mothers, of the disappeared. A group of these women came to be known as Mothers of Plaza de Mayo because they staged their protests in that square, in front of the government palace, in order to demand the return of their children alive (Fisher 1993). Later, a group of Mothers formed the organization of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo with the purpose of identifying and recovering children appropriated by the military (Arditti 1999). These women’s tenacious activism and their demands before international organizations called the world’s attention to the military’s systematic violations of human rights and challenged the dictatorship when few people dared to do so. These organizations also helped craft a collective language and understanding of human rights, memory, identity, and justice that are still crucial in contemporary Argentina and that have served as a source of inspiration and strategy for social movements that came afterward. By the end of 1983, after losing a war against England over the southern Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands),14 and in the midst of severe economic problems (growing unemployment, hyperinflation, and a mounting external debt) the military regime came to an end. Elections were called, and Raúl Alfonsín, from the UCR (Radical Party), was elected as constitutional president of the republic. In 1985, partly as a response to human rights organizations’ demands, a criminal

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trial was held against the heads of the military juntas. In an important step toward bringing truth about the dictatorship’s actions, a civil tribunal heard hundreds of testimonies, assessed documents, and judged the high commanders of the military for their crimes. Not surprisingly, the resulting convictions of military leaders displeased members of the armed forces and civilian groups supporting them. They also worried about the prospect of further trials against members of the military and police forces accused of human rights violations— and they exerted pressures on the constitutional government to avoid them. In the following years, both during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (Radical Civic Union) and his successor Carlos Saúl Menem (Peronism), congressional laws and executive decrees (supposedly aiming to promote social reconciliation) guaranteed the impunity of most of the crimes committed during the dictatorships and the freedom of their perpetrators.15 This started to be reversed under the administration of Peronist president Néstor Kirchner (elected in 2003) through the repeal of the impunity laws. The 1980s and the 1990s witnessed the succession of four constitutionally elected governments,16 hyperinflation during the 1980s (particularly acute in 1989), the implementation of full-scale neoliberal measures during the 1990s (Birgin 2000b), and the overall increase of poverty and inequality since the mid1990s (De Riz, Acosta, and Clucellas 2002; Hicks et al. 2003). In 1991, the administration of Peronist president Carlos Saúl Menem and his minister of economy, Domingo Cavallo, implemented the Convertibility Plan pegging the peso to the dollar as a means of controlling inflation. Under Menem-Cavallo leadership, the Argentine government embraced structural adjustment measures advocated by neoliberalist gurus and became one of the star students of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The market was opened to foreign investment, state services were reduced, workers’ rights were diminished, and important national companies were privatized (railroads, the national airline, water, electricity, and telephone companies, some TV stations, postal services, and part of the national petroleum company). After Menem’s two-term administration, Fernando de la Rúa (Alliance for Work, Justice, and Education)17 was elected in hopes that he would combat corruption and improve the country’s declining social conditions. Yet de la Rúa’s government did not bring about such changes and instead continued the economic model of the previous decade, even calling Domingo Cavallo to return as head of the Ministry of Economy. In December 2001, the economy finally disintegrated and fed a serious political crisis that was already well under way. Unemployment soared to 21.5 percent in May 2002 (INDEC n.d.) and poverty levels reached unprecedented heights, going from 37 percent in 2001 to 58 percent by the end of 2002 (Hicks et al. 2003, 4). According to a World Bank report, “few countries in the world have seen such a rapid rise in poverty” (ibid.). General discontent was partly expressed by masses of poor people demanding food at supermarkets or looting them. Although opposition political operators allegedly encouraged many of these people, the

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social context of poverty and desperation was very real and thus offered a ripe opportunity for such actions. The middle classes were also affected by economic policies: their standard of living was declining and their bank deposits and savings were trapped by the freezing of bank accounts—popularly known as the corralito (little corral), a policy that the government had enacted to prevent a run on banks. In the midst of massive street protests, the constitutional president Fernando de la Rúa resigned and four other interim presidents succeeded him in the following weeks. Widespread social crisis, economic instability, and political protest characterized 2002, as broad sectors of Argentine society demanded deep social and institutional transformations. This was also a period in which civil society experimented with diverse forms of community organization (communal kitchens, communal health care provision), local participatory democratic forms (popular/neighborhood assemblies), and alternative economic arrangements (production based on social needs such as communal bakeries and vegetable gardens, factories run collectively, bartering clubs). My research took place during this utterly difficult and traumatic—but in some ways exciting— period of Argentine history, and my scholarship was necessarily shaped by my personal insertion in this milieu.

Argentina the European: Race, Ethnicity, and Nation The stories of women in this study were also shaped by particular configurations of “race,” ethnicity, and nation in a country with a strong White-European identification. This narrative is based on Argentina’s history of European immigration, particularly of people of Spanish and Italian ancestry. Yet the popular idea that “Argentines descend from the boats” reflects only a partial truth. The virtual erasure of non-European descendents from the dominant discourse is consistent with a nationhood project that aimed to homogenize the population under a whitened concept of Argentine citizenship (Rotker 2002; Villalpando et al. 2005; Viñas 2002). The historical advancement of the notion of a crisol de razas (racial melting pot; see Devoto and Otero 2003) has really meant mixture between European ethnicities/nationalities and excluded the populations that had been subjected to conquest and slavery (e.g., indigenous and Afro-descendents). The implicit expectation was that those who did not conform to the white European ideal would eventually disappear, blend in with the dominant population, or be incorporated at the expense of giving up their language, lifeways, and culture (Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider 2000). The history of Afro-descendents or their contributions to Argentine culture—for example, to tango music (see Andrews 1980; Liboreiro 2001; Lima 2003)—are not widely known, and Argentina as a nation has generally failed to strongly condemn the decimation of indigenous peoples or acknowledge the presence of the survivors (Briones 2004; Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider 2000). The erasure or downplaying of ethnoracial minorities’ existence, histories, and contributions are some indicators

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of an entrenched but discursively hidden racism (Farred 2004; Guano 2003; Joseph 2000). The dominant culture in Argentina promotes a deracialized “common sense” that obscures the racial hierarchies that permeate everyday life, the history of the nation, and its institutions.18 While this common sense, in practice, evokes racialized images (e.g., valuing whites over “others”), it appears to be deracialized in that it eschews the concept of race, racial identity, racial tension, or any other consciously racial discourse for understanding Argentine society. The prevailing emphasis is on an Argentine national identity, but since this identity is coded as white, and Europeanness is repeatedly asserted, we can conclude that race matters to many Argentines, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Furthermore, as Enrique Garguin (2007) argues in an interesting analysis of middle-class identity formation, racialization was integral to class differentiation processes associated with the emergence of Peronist masses in the mid-twentieth century. Thus class was and continues to be racially coded, with the figure of the “cabecita negra” as the ultimate representative of the poor and working class populations. While many institutions have disseminated the discourse of whiteness and Europeaness, information about the ethnoracial composition of the population in Argentina is often unreliable (Chamosa 2008; Sutton 2008). This is not only because of the inherent problems in ethnoracial classification, which always reflect social constructs, but also because major institutions gathering data on the population, such as the National Census, traditionally do not use raceethnicity as a category of information. The census partially accounts for the presence of particular ethnoracial groups via data on immigration.19 However, this system does not reveal the ethnoracial variation among people born in Argentina. An important change was introduced in 2001 when the National Census incorporated a question about how many people identify themselves as descending from or belonging to an indigenous group (INDEC 2001).20 Members of Afro-descending communities are not counted as such and have also been demanding government institutions to acknowledge their existence (Defensoría del Pueblo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires and Fundación Africa Vive 2001). For a country where in theory “race is not an issue”21—as many Argentines want to believe partly based on a presumption of homogeneity—it may be difficult to explain why dark skin and indigenous phenotypes are coded as class inferiority, why white European descendents have been more often associated with positions of power, why many pejorative epithets have also been racist remarks, why idealized models of beauty have been white, and why Argentines have been more welcoming to white Europeans than to darker skinned Latin American neighbors or people from Asian countries who have often been targets of xenophobia.22 Franca, an indigenous woman I interviewed, narrated concrete examples of the kind of discrimination faced by people who do not fit the

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dominant ethnoracial discourse as well as how she developed a political consciousness that allowed her to resist such practices: Sometimes the police look at you and they ask you from which country you come, and they ask to see your documents. I am currently very strong, and when I walk around with my compañeros [fellow group members], I tell [the police], “And who are you to ask me? I don’t ask about your identity. I’m Kolla [an indigenous group]. Who are you?” And the police officer tells me, “Well, yes, I’m morocho [dark-skinned]. And I say, “If you look carefully you may also [find that] you are indigenous. And now I ask you, where are the Kollas from?” He tells me, “I think from the Argentine Northwest.” And I tell him, “Then that’s it. It is not necessary for you to ask for my documents. You already know who I am, but I do not know who you are. I’m clearer about my identity than you are.” My compañeros are very scared, but then the guy has to apologize. I act that way because I know my rights now.

The case of Franca, who is actually Argentine, shows that her body was perceived as foreign in the police’s imagination even though she was born in the country and descended from the people who first inhabited what is now Argentine land. Similarly, the construction of Afro-descendents as being outside the national body came into sharp relief in a case reported by the media in 2002 (Kiningsberg 2002): an Afro-Argentine woman—fifth-generation Argentine—who was about to travel abroad was detained by the airport authorities under the suspicion that she held a false passport: the officers apparently would not believe she could be both Argentine and black. Later, authorities tried to explain this event away, arguing that it was not a case of racial discrimination. These kinds of events gain public attention every now and then but are not widely seen as having broader social implications. During the December 2001 supermarket lootings in the midst of the economic crisis, the weeping face of a man of Asian descent—the owner of one of the looted supermarkets—appeared widely in the news symbolizing the social strife the country was undergoing. The underlying text suggested the victimization of a member of a relatively successful group (immigrants from Asia who own businesses) by large groups of poor people, presumably native Argentines, who were perceived as legitimately (i.e., because of hunger) or illegitimately (i.e., paid or encouraged by political operators) looting businesses. The issue of racial conflict lingered as an undercurrent. Yet Argentine culture does not provide sufficient conceptual tools to make sense of social problems in terms of racist dynamics in the country (particularly since such dynamics are different from those of other contexts—for example, the United States—where race relations have been more clearly identified as a source of social and political tension). Racial dynamics are difficult to tease out or identify as such in Argentina, since they remain hidden under other sorts of conflicts and social differences.

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Women in Political, Economic, and Social Perspective To properly situate the lives of women in contemporary Argentina, this section describes a series of legal changes; economic transformations; and key cultural agents and institutions that have shaped forms of consciousness and social practices in Argentina. In the following chapters, I deepen the analysis of many of the developments outlined here and draw on this backdrop in order to examine women’s embodied experiences. Legislative Changes. The legal framework establishing women’s rights as members of Argentine society has changed significantly since the turn of the twentieth century. From a second-class citizen status enshrined in the law, which deprived women of basic civil and political rights such as suffrage, women have gradually expanded their entitlements. During the twentieth century, women gained the right to vote, greater legal authority within families, increased political representation, more legal protections against gender violence, and the expansion of sexual and reproductive rights. While many of these gains are often taken for granted now, they were at least in part the results of hard-won battles by the women’s movement. Table 1.1 presents a chronology of legislative changes particularly important to women since the mid-twentieth century. While women’s groups have regarded aspects of these legislative changes as milestones in the direction of women’s empowerment, they also recognize that ingrained cultural beliefs and habits are not erased by a legislative act, and the institutions that are supposed to enforce the laws often fail to do so. Thus, much more work remains to be done in order to ensure that many of these laws are translated into actual improvements in women’s lives. Yet the formal recognition of rights is still important to the extent that it provides grounds to demand their actual exercise. Neoliberal Economics. The implementation of a neoliberal economic model in Argentina, particularly pronounced during the 1990s, had gendered effects. The restructuring of the economy caused severe strain on vast sectors of the population, but particularly on women. As Birgin (2000a, 14) summarized it, The crisis and the increase in the external debt, the successive structural adjustment plans prompted by the IMF and World Bank, the impact of privatization and work flexibility laws, [and] the modalities imposed by technological re-conversion and neoliberal strategies have generated unprecedented critical social conditions, which affect increasing proportions of the population, especially lower-class women, but also the impoverished middle sectors.

The rise of unemployment, subemployment, and under-the-table (precarious) work meant that many families could no longer count on a male breadwinner (as the traditional family model purports) and that women had to

table 1.1 chronology of selected legislation relevant to women in argentina, 1947–2009 1947

Women earn the right to vote (Law 13010).

1985

Law 23179 approves CEDAW (UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women).

1985

Modification of the patria potestad: parental authority over children is now shared by both parents (Law 23264).

1986

Decree 2274/1986 overturns previous legislation that restricted the provision of contraceptives.

1987

Divorce with possibility of remarrying is allowed (Law 23515).

1991

The “quota law” (Law 24012) established that a minimum of 30 percent of political party candidates to electoral positions must be women.

1993

Decree 2385/93 prohibits sexual harassment in the public administration.

1994

The constitutional reform incorporates CEDAW as a national law with constitutional rank.

1994

Protection against family violence (Law 24417).

1995

Creation of the INADI (National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism) by Law 24515.

1996

Law 24632 ratifies the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence against Women (Convention of Belem do Pará).

1997

Law 24828 incorporates homemakers to the retirement system.

1998

Plan of Equal Opportunities between Men and Women in the World of Work (Decree 254/1998)

1999

Law 25239, Title XVIII: Special Regime of Social Security for Domestic Service Workers.

1999

A penal code reform (Law 25087) expands the definition of rape and penalizes crimes against “sexual integrity” instead of sexual “virtuosity” (honestidad).

2002

Law 25673 creates the National Program of Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation.

2002

Law 25674 aims to guarantee that 30 percent of elected positions in labor unions are filled by women when they meet or exceed that proportion among workers.

2005

Decree 1086/2005 approves a National Plan against Discrimination.

2006

Law 26150 establishes a National Plan of Integral Sexual Education.

2006

Law 26171 approves the Optional Protocol to CEDAW (ratification of instrument deposited in March 2007).

2009

Law 26485, which aims to provide integral protection to prevent, sanction and eradicate violence against women in the realms in which they develop their interpersonal relations.

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supplement or replace men’s income with additional formal or informal work (Golbert 2000; Wainerman 2005). Things became particularly difficult for single women heads of households who had to shoulder the whole responsibility for the family well-being. During 2002, about 20 percent of the households with children were headed by women (SIEMPRO 2003). Women looking for employment had to do so in the context of a depressed labor market that paid low wages, offered precarious jobs, and that discriminated against women in multiple ways (Ackerman 2000). This situation impinged on women’s incomes and ability to adequately sustain their families. Scholars and activists often talked about the “feminization of poverty” particularly to point out the disadvantages of female heads of household in a precarious labor market (Basco and Laxalde 2003). According to a governmental report (SIEMPRO 2003), over half of the female population was living below the poverty line by October 2002 (57 percent of women lived in homes considered poor). Among poor women, those who were head of households faced additional obstacles to find jobs and care for their children (Geldstein 1997; SIEMPRO 2003). Another feature of the neoliberal model was the reduction of the public sector. As Wainerman (2003b, 60) points out, “the process of State withdrawal as a provider of collective goods and services . . . , diminishing the contributions to infrastructure and salaries in the areas of health and education, lead to the transference of such costs to domestic units, thus increasing the costs of family reproduction.” Furthermore, many essential services were privatized and transformed into commodities only accessible to those with enough resources to pay. These changes affected women in particular. This is the case because women play the role of nurturers and caregivers in many parts of the world, including Latin America. In Argentina, even though men are gradually increasing their participation in domestic chores, women are socially expected to be the ones who disproportionately take care of children and elders, tend the sick, and feed their families—and they must do this even under adverse economic and social conditions. The Catholic Church. Argentina’s cultural values and social arrangements are partly influenced by the power of the Catholic Church. The church has been a significant player in Argentine politics, though some argue that its impact has been weaker than in other Latin American countries (Romero 2002) or qualify that influence as being stronger in relation to the state than to society (Borland 2002). By constitutional mandate, the Argentine federal government supports the Apostolic Roman Catholic religion. The church receives a variety of state subsidies and until not long ago, the president of the country was required to be Catholic. The latter requirement was abolished during the 1994 constitutional reform. The church’s religious hegemony is partly reflected by the fact that the majority of the population is nominally Catholic (even though with different degrees

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of commitment to practicing the religion) (U.S. Department of State 2008). In addition, the church as an institution has historically been involved in politics— from prominent church figures’ support of the last military dictatorship, to the church’s more recent socially oriented move to criticize neoliberal economic policies and their effects on the poor (Durnan 2000; Gutiérrez 2002), to its efforts to prevent the passage and implementation of the national law on sexual and reproductive health post 2001. Unlike other countries where the church played a more progressive role during the 1970s, Argentina’s Catholic Church hierarchy was one of the most conservative in Latin America, condoning repressive military governments that systematically violated human rights and advocating the traditional family model and women’s subordination to men (Fisher 1993). The church’s perspective on gender issues has a direct bearing on women’s bodies and rights, their sexual autonomy, and their reproductive freedom. The church has promoted the images of the selfless woman, the sacrificing mother, and the dedicated wife trying to influence women’s self-concept and behavior. These representations are supported by the figure of the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, who embodies the church’s femininity ideal. As Kavita Panjabi (1997, 157) observes, the particular manifestation of the “patriarchal mother/whore schema” in Latin America is through Marianismo—“the widespread cult of the Virgin Mother as the simultaneous ideal of womanhood, motherhood, and chastity.”23 Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church hierarchy has decried the feminist movement and its challenge to sexist oppression. In Argentina, the Catholic Church’s views of what is natural and moral have translated into vehement opposition to cultural and social changes brought about by the influence of women’s groups, particularly those that would give greater rights to women and that would prevent persistent discrimination against people who embrace nonheteronomative sexualities. The “Psy Culture.” Another social institution and practice that has provided Argentines with an important interpretative system to understand themselves and the social world is psychoanalysis (Plotkin 2001).24 In his work documenting the history of psychoanalysis in Argentina, Mariano Ben Plotkin argues that its reach was not only limited to the middle or upper classes who could pay for psychoanalytic sessions, but that it permeated society in such a way that we can talk of a pervasive “psy culture.” Psychoanalysis was popularized in Argentina, particularly in Buenos Aires, through several paths: the diffusion of psychoanalysts’ advice and ideas in the mass media, the proliferation of group therapy and other psychoanalytically oriented services in public hospitals (more accessible to low-income people), the increasing numbers of psychologists (most of them women), and the diversification of psy-related therapies (Balán 1991; Plotkin 2001). During the 1960s, psychoanalysis permeated the discourse of leftist intellectuals who saw in psychoanalysis fertile ground for individual and social change

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during a time when “all is politics” (Plotkin 2001, 192). In the 1960s and early 1970s, many kinds of psychoanalytic services and therapies proliferated beyond the traditional and private “couch” methodology, including group therapy, psychodrama, and bodywork, such as dance and corporeal expression. This diversification helped to recast psychoanalysis as a tool for self-understanding, for coping with social and personal problems, and not merely as a treatment for mentally ill people (Balán 1991; Plotkin 2001). During the dictatorship, the military appropriated psychoanalytic discourse for their own ends (e.g., to define guerrilla women as psychopaths or to promote discipline and traditional morality) and tried to make sure that psychoanalysis was not used for “subversive purposes.” At that time, psychoanalysis became an outlet for people to deal with problems in an individual and private manner (Plotkin 2001). With the return of democracy, a new openness in the psy realm took place: “It was clear that a neutral psychoanalysis that took no account of the social and political context was no longer possible,” and more psychoanalysts worked in positions with social responsibilities such as public health services (Plotkin 2001). With the 2001 crisis, this sense of social responsibility became more acute, especially as psy practitioners realized that the categories that the discipline provides might become “empty word” in the face of the dire social problems affecting the lives of their patients (Belforte, Giménez and Preusse 2003, 24). According to Belforte, Giménez and Preusse (2003, 24) traditional diagnostics like “depression” or “melancholia” are devoid of content if the critical social and economic contexts that shape patients’ lives are overlooked. They argued that, in fact, such neglect may end up blaming and medicalizing individuals for socially influenced “pathologies.” But, as these psy professionals questioned, “Is it possible to medicate impoverishment or to find a genetic reason for it?” Argentina today is distinctive for having a very high proportion of psy professionals, especially concentrated in and around the city of Buenos Aires. “It is estimated that there are more than 50,000 of these professionals in Argentina, over a population of 37 million” (Di Marco et al. 2003, 101). The influence of the psy culture filtered into the narratives of many of the women in my study who resorted to the language of psychoanalysis to make sense of or explain their experiences or who felt that psychotherapy played a significant role in their lives. For example, a working-class woman pointed out that “the economic crisis serves as a catharsis”; a university professor explained that she had had an “unconscious” desire to be a mother; a gym teacher complained about how she was “somatizando” (developing psychosomatic symptoms) due to the crisis; and a hairdresser embraced the ideas of one of her clients, a psychologist, who said that keeping one’s feelings bottled up leads to bodily pains. Women I met in a shantytown—who were part of a poor people’s movement— expressed that they needed a psychologist to visit their meeting space to “support the women a bit” with their problems. While women with middle-class backgrounds were more likely to have gone through individual psy therapies, less

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privileged women had also been in contact with psy professionals and exposed to psy concepts either through social assistance programs, public health services, their children’s schools, social movement members, or domestic violence services. A number of women made explicit reference to aspects of themselves that they had discovered in psy contexts. In some cases, exposure to such analysis may have enhanced women’s abilities to dig deep into their emotions and histories, and to talk with relative ease about difficult topics related to their bodies in the context of this study’s interviews. The Women’s Movement. Women in Argentina have not been passive observers of political, economic, and social developments affecting their bodies, lives, families, and communities. Even when they had limited space to maneuver, and even if their actions were not always framed as political, various groups of women collectively mobilized for social change. Women’s movements in Argentina cannot be separated from the country’s turbulent history, not only because women helped shape it, but also because they were continually influenced by it. The volatile democracies and military dictatorships in the twentieth century sometimes created opportunities for women’s activism and sometimes closed the doors to their demands and concerns. Similar to other countries, women’s movements in Argentina lack coherent unity and embrace different goals and interests. Women from diverse political and social backgrounds have formed a range of organizations and groups: upper-class women running philanthropic institutions in the nineteenth century; suffragist, socialist, and anarchist women agitating at the turn of the twentieth century; Eva Perón’s galvanizing of working-class women’s political participation in the mid twentieth century; the feminist groups that sprouted in the early 1970s, went underground during the dictatorship, and reemerged with democracy; the movements of mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared by the military dictatorship; and today’s diverse groups. The multiplicity of women’s organizations that emerged with the return of democracy reflects concerns as varied as reproductive politics, lesbian rights, violence against women, wages for housework, consumer rights, poverty, women’s political representation, governmental corruption, police repression, and many more.25 Although the diverse nature of these organizations enriches the overall women’s movement, different ideological and social backgrounds have also produced clashes and frictions among activists. The women’s movement in Argentina has been a significant source of alternative interpretations of social reality, and particularly of gender relations.26 Part of this input is evidently reflected in legislative changes, but it seems to have also filtered into Argentine culture and influenced public opinion in more subtle ways. During particular times of the year the women’s movement increases its visibility and the strength of its demands by holding events according to an implicit activist calendar marked by special commemoration dates.27 These

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political dates help to shape the ebb and flow of marches, protest events, conferences, petitions, and other organizing activities. Since 1986, one of the most prominent and exciting women’s movement venues has been the annual Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres. These meetings started as a mostly feminist space but have expanded their reach throughout the years to include women from diverse social and political organizations, ages, sexual identities, life experiences, and socioeconomic and ethnoracial backgrounds. The site of this event changes each year from one province to another, facilitating the participation of women who live in different areas of the country. The numbers of women who attend the meetings have increased remarkably, from approximately 1,000 women in 1986 to over 15,000 women in recent years. These events attempt to provide—with different degrees of success—horizontal, autonomous, and democratic structures for women to get to know each other, exchange experiences, discuss political views, and generate social change ideas and actions (Alonso and Díaz 2002). Finally, women have actively participated in many of the social movements and organizations that have flourished with the 2002–2003 socioeconomic crisis in Argentina. Women contributed their labor, views, and passion to asambleas (assemblies),28 organizations of piqueteras/os,29 factories collectively run by workers,30 bartering clubs,31 comedores (communal kitchens),32 cooperatives, communal vegetable gardens, and other socioeconomic enterprises (Basco and Laxalde 2003). Women’s presence in the streets, in the midst of protest and/or police repression, also became more visible and contributed to raising questions about women’s conditions and social status.33 Women in many of these movements acted in response to the country’s most excruciating problems and, at the same time, many of them challenged their social subordination.

chapter 2

z Bodily Scars of Neoliberal Globalization According to the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the country is living the worst crisis of its history. Once again, the Fund [IMF] requires structural reforms. Record income inequality among Argentine people. The ILO [International Labor Organization] is concerned about the increase of child labor in the country. Since devaluation,[the prices of] non-perishable products have increased 99.8 %. Half of the people in Córdoba [an Argentine province] eat less meat because of the crisis. Since last year Argentines sleep worse. The average life expectancy decreases in the poorest areas of Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Selected news headlines from La Nación, collected during 2002–2003

Much has been written about the globalization of capitalist economies and the neoliberal ideologies that promote this expansion, but few of these analyses have looked explicitly at the bodily dimensions of the economy.1 Yet as some of the news headlines above suggest, human bodies and the economy are intimately connected. Human bodies fuel economic globalization—literally giving it muscle in factories and other global production sites—and are targets of its consumer products. Whether our bodies are overworked, malnourished, scarred by untreated diseases, altered by cosmetic surgery, or dressed in expensive clothing is often contingent on economic conditions. In a word, structures of inequality, including economic disparities, are embodied. And it is as embodied beings that we transform, resist, and challenge economic forces. This chapter examines women’s embodied experiences of neoliberal policies and economic crisis in Argentina as a site that illustrates the bodily implications of global economic restructuring. 35

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Economic globalization processes produce and reinscribe a global hierarchy of bodies, providing adornment, luxury, and costly care for some, while drawing on the hard physical labor and depleting the resources of many other bodies. The ways in which different bodies are incorporated in, excluded from, and marked by these processes vary according to social locations based on class, race, gender, age, nationality, and sexual orientation. I explore how socioeconomic developments wrought by neoliberal globalization leave scars on women’s bodies and consciousness in Argentina, paying attention to how gender and class locations structure such experiences. These scars were imprinted not only on women’s material bodies, but were also experienced emotionally. They conveyed neoliberal globalization’s assaults on human dignity, as many women grappled with declining standards of living, made health and nutrition compromises, dealt with the disruption of taken-for-granted body rituals, and coped with the shame and humiliation associated with the rags of poverty. These experiences embodied “social suffering”; that is, a kind of suffering that includes but also transcends individual pain. For social suffering is intimately related to broader forces, including war, genocide, famine, poverty, and the unequal effects of environmental catastrophes (Farmer 2003; Kleinman, Das and Lock 1996). The narratives in this chapter show women’s embodied social suffering in relation to economic patterns that strongly influenced their lives. During the 1990s, Argentina implemented a radical restructuring of the economy in line with the neoliberal orthodoxy of international lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.2 Although the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983) was a precursor in the application of neoliberal economics—backed by a brutal regime of political repression, torture, and “disappearance”—it was during the administrations of elected president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989–1999) that the model was fully implemented. His successor, Fernando de la Rúa (1999–2001), continued and deepened various aspects of Menem’s economic agenda. At the center of Menem’s program was the Convertibility Plan that pegged the peso to the dollar, which was finally abandoned after the economic collapse of 2001. Neoliberal reforms during the preceding decade included the privatization of most state-owned companies, privatization of social security, and the reduction of employers’ contributions; cuts in public expenditures; transfer of various state responsibilities in the health and education sector to the provinces and municipalities; greater openness of the economy to foreign investment and imports; deregulation of the financial sector (facilitating capital flight); and the weakening of workers’ rights through labor “flexibilization” laws. This period was also characterized by a marked deindustrialization, the undermining of local production, and the loss of many small and medium businesses that could no longer compete successfully under the new economic rules.3 As it is common with structural adjustment programs, Argentina’s reforms prioritized the profits of big businesses (including multinational corporations)

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and the payment of an ever-growing debt over policies to satisfy the needs of most of the population, including the poor, the working class, and a falling middle class (Argumedo and Quintar 2003; Giarracca and Teubal 2001). While the neoliberal package was supposed to launch Argentina as a successful player in the global capitalist economy, poverty, unemployment, and inequality grew at home. In December 2001, the model could no longer be sustained and the country entered into a deep social, political, and economic crisis (Cafassi 2002; Galafassi 2003; Pírez 2002; Vezzetti 2002). Unemployment rates climbed to 21.5 percent in 2002 (INDEC n.d.). Per capita income dropped about 20 percent from 1995 to 2002, and during the same period the number of people living under the poverty line increased from 29.4 percent to 53.3 percent (De Riz, Acosta, and Clucellas 2002, 36). The percentage of people who could not access basic nutrition grew from 7.9 percent in 1995 to 25.2 percent in 2002 (De Riz, Acosta, and Clucellas 2002, 49).4 Currency devaluation, price inflation, declining wages, and the high levels of unemployment during the crisis meant that more and more people had to struggle to make ends meet. Even the middle class, who saw their real wages fall and their bank deposits frozen, became impoverished. These numbers only hint at the dire conditions to which most people in Argentina were relegated.

Embodying the Economy Theorizing Bodies and the Economy Human bodies require food, water, sleep, adequate work conditions, access to recreation, health care, material resources, and time and space to fulfill needs and desires. While these necessities are mediated by culture, they are also about the material constitution of our bodies, and about the economic relations that distribute societal goods. On one hand, many economic analyses have neglected the bodily aspects of economic relations of production, consumption, and distribution. On the other hand, much scholarship concerned with the body has focused mostly on cultural inscription and the disciplining effects of discourse. Some scholars point out that the literature that characterizes the “turn to culture” often avoids the material basis of our lives (Benería 2003) and our material bodies (Muri 2003). One of my goals in this book is to bridge approaches to the body that emphasize culture and those that are more attentive to political economy. While studies grounded in materialist traditions have implicitly addressed the body-economy relationship, they often do not look at the body as an object of study and theorizing in its own right (Le Breton 2002; Williams and Bendelow 1998). Yet the importance of the body is embedded, for example, in accounts of the capitalist organization of production and its negative effects on workers’ health and humanity (Callard 1998; Harvey 1998). Marx’s concept of alienation—explaining how workers become alienated from the process and

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product of labor, from other human beings, and from their species-being— suggests that violence against workers’ bodies is integral both to the functioning of capitalist societies and to the dehumanization of workers under a capitalist organization of labor (Marx [1844] 1996). As Felicity Callard (1998, 394) points out, Marx understood the fragmentation of workers’ bodies as a key dimension of the capitalist organization of work: “It is precisely through the figure of the fragmented body . . . that Marx was able to narrate with such horror and vigour the arrival of the capital-labour relation. For it is only when the manufacturing worker had his body torn and reconfigured so that it became ‘an appendage’ . . . of the workshop, that the division of labour, through the branding of the body in this way, could be seen as a characteristically capitalist one.” Marxist critiques of the capitalist system provide useful insights and tools for analyzing the relationships between human bodies and the economy; how people experience economic systems in the flesh; and how exploitative economic relations can also contribute to turning bodies into sites of resistance and struggle. Yet in order to fully understand the ways bodies are implicated in global economic processes it is necessary to grapple with how different systems of inequality interact. This chapter is particularly concerned with class and gender, with the ways in which the economic crisis in Argentina shaped the embodied experiences of women of different social classes and backgrounds. Advocates of capitalist globalization and neoliberal development strategies, such as those implemented in Argentina, are usually concerned with market indicators, communication and technological innovations, business infrastructure, and profits. People’s well-being, cultural identities, environmental sustainability, and worker’s rights usually fall out of the picture.5 Alternatively, analyses of globalization may also include statistics on poverty and human development indicators such as health, life expectancy, education, and infant mortality (e.g., the United Nations annual Human Development Report). While such statistics are important and can provide powerful statements about reality, perspectives based mainly or exclusively on aggregate data remove us from the lives of real, embodied human beings. A shortcoming of these kinds of distant analyses is that they often miss or gloss over how people experience capitalist globalization in and on their bodies, and how embodied subjects in marginalized communities, both in the Global North and South, have challenged and resisted such powerful social forces. The neoliberal globalization model is built on a disembodied approach to the social world, one more concerned about balances, profits, and alleged rational choices than with real human beings with bodily needs, desires, and emotions. Globalization is not just about technological development, information flows, and financial exchanges. The globalization of the capitalist economy depends on human bodies (and other-than-human ones) in order to function. This is the case since human (embodied) labor and natural resources are extracted for global production, and since neoliberal cuts in social expenditures and the

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degradation of labor attack bodily integrity to subsidize the so-called free market. The bodily experiences of the people hit by economic globalization are not accounted for in the model. The Argentine case shows that neoliberal global restructuring facilitates the exploitation and deterioration of human bodies. Impingement on bodily integrity and human capabilities happens, for example, through worsening work conditions, the decay of health care systems, and increasing poverty and marginalization. Those coping with or resisting this brand of globalization are embodied human beings—not numbers, pie charts, or abstract statistics. Disembodied economic analyses particularly tend to hide the extent to which neoliberal globalization has drained women’s bodily resources. Women and their labor have been traditionally invisible in mainstream economic analyses (Waring 1999), which usually overlook the ways in which structural adjustment programs transfer the costs of economic austerity and crises to women (Benería and Feldman 1992; Elson 1992; Marchand and Sisson Runyan 2000; Moser 1993; Stephen 1997). Embodying neoliberalism is critical to understand economic forces as lived experiences that involve core aspects of individuals’ existence. Human bodies apparently disappear under the neoliberal logic, just as the last military dictatorship in Argentina disappeared the real, material bodies of many people who opposed precisely the preview of that kind of socioeconomic organization. Bodily disappearance, both from economic analysis and from the real world, is never innocent, for the discursive and material disappearance of bodies hides both bodily suffering and resistance. A very different kind of analysis and society may emerge when bodies are taken into account, when they are integral parts of our ways of theorizing, doing politics, making culture, and organizing economies. The unprecedented scope of poverty emerging under neoliberalism was something unthinkable in a country that historically prided itself for its plentiful natural resources, a large middle class, high levels of education, and relatively high health standards. Despite previous crises, such indicators had placed Argentina as relatively advanced in terms of human development (De Riz, Acosta and Clucellas 2002; Uribe and Schwab 2002). Furthermore, Svampa (2005, 47) argues that even though Argentina historically exhibited various kinds of hierarchies, the country was distinctive in the Latin American context for being characterized by “an egalitarian logic in the social matrix,” based on the idea of upward mobility and social integration, and supported by a state with important social functions. While economic turmoil in preceding decades had eroded the economic well-being of many groups, the neoliberal model radically transformed the rules of the economy, changed the role of the state, and truncated the standards of living of most of the population. Many of the women I met in Argentina during the neoliberal crisis knew about the deterioration of social conditions, not just through the media, or even

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through expert reports, but through their personal and embodied encounters with this reality. The women in this study talked about the economic crisis, poverty, and inequality in explaining their personal lives and bodily experiences, or as they reflected on a social context that affected them in one way or another. Even those who did not experience poverty in their own bodies were at least forced to see it, recognize it, and interpret it. Impoverishment could no longer be ignored. And this “seeing”—seeing with the body and emotions—gave some of the women in the study the impulse to participate in social change.6

A Glimpse of the Economic Crisis in Argentina When the sun was going down in the streets of Buenos Aires at the time of my fieldwork, large groups of men, women, and children living in poverty began searching for paper, cardboard, and other recyclable materials such as copper, bronze, or aluminum. These people, commonly known as cartoneros/as (cardboard gatherers), would then sell this material to companies (for example, paper manufacturers) that would use these supplies. Cartoneros/as sometimes would knock on people’s doors or simply dig into garbage bags where recyclable products were mixed with food leftovers, diapers, dirt, or other items that more privileged people disposed of. In 2002, it was estimated that between 70,000 and 100,000 people were scavenging in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (De Riz, Acosta, and Clucellas 2002) and earning approximately the equivalent of US$50 to $63 per month (Ferreyra 2002).7 Fanny, a cartonera who migrated from a rural area to Buenos Aires because of her youngest daughter’s health problems, explained why she turned to cardboard gathering: “We are making a living based on this. My husband couldn’t find a job, and neither could I. This is feeding us. I have four children.” Fanny, as many others in Argentina, had to resort to alternative means of survival when other avenues were closed. Fanny described cardboard gathering as physically exhausting, risky, and unpleasant. She pointed out that the bodies of cardboard gatherers were susceptible to “much infection, many viruses” due to the handling of disposed materials and to other health hazards: “In the last few days I caught the flu. It rained the whole week, but I still came [to gather materials]. If I don’t come my children do not eat.” A subtler source of risk that cardboard gatherers confronted was the social construction of poor people’s bodies as suspect. Fanny recalled that a police officer once stopped her under the suspicion that she was involved in a robbery. He left her alone when she showed him the cardboard gatherer ID card that the city government issued for her. As Adair (2002, 454) argues, poverty “brands [poor people’s bodies] with infamy,” making them potentially suspect, sometimes feared, or targets of harassment. Although people with better economic situations may equate the bodies of the poor to those of criminal or dangerous individuals, in fact, the bodies of people like Fanny are inscribed with extreme vulnerability.

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Many cardboard gatherers would commute from the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires to gather materials. Some of them, like Fanny, had to pay to commute in a special truck. Other cardboard gatherers would take the train. Because of the substantial increase of people dedicated to cardboard gathering due to economic problems, it became difficult for them to fit in the standard train cars with their collection carts (De Riz, Acosta, and Clucellas 2002; Reynals 2002). Cardboard gatherers started traveling in special trains, which are more rundown, older-looking versions of ordinary passenger trains but which still required a fee (although smaller) for transportation. At the train station, regular passengers mixed with dozens of cardboard gatherers, each group waiting for separate trains. As I watched cardboard gatherers cramming inside their train, I could not help recalling my own privilege. Their train was patrolled by a police officer, had no seats, and instead of glass, netted wire covered the window holes. A daily ride in the regular passenger train, even one of the best lines available in Buenos Aires, also offered a glimpse of the dire social situation of the country. Poverty and inequality were visible, unavoidable, and fleshly. In this train, a procession of people struggling to make a living in multiple, sometimes quite original, ways reminded economically advantaged passengers of the collapse of formal employment, rise of impoverishment, high levels of unemployment, and deterioration of social safety nets. Men, women, and children begged for money or offered calendars or religious stamps in exchange for donations. Others were selling an array of products ranging from talc that “you can’t do without,” gadgets small enough “for the lady’s purse, and the gentlemen’s wallet,” city guides, TV remote controls, geography and anatomy pamphlets, candy bars, batteries, pens and pencils, miniature notebooks, and products imported from other countries and sold on the train at bargain prices. Kids with worn-out clothing offered to sing to better-off passengers, or to shake their hands or give them a kiss in exchange for money. A mature man carrying a suitcase cracked jokes reminiscent of Pepe Biondi, a comedian I watched in my childhood. Passengers could not stop shy smiles escaping from their otherwise serious faces and rewarded the bogus Biondi with small change. He left us with the message that “only love will save the world.” A middle-age woman with disorderly hair, ragged clothes, and seemingly deranged eyes vehemently asked for money for her sick child. She did not elicit sympathetic responses from passengers—most looked the other way or concentrated on their newspapers, looking slightly scared. A man with two legs amputated moved his body on a wood platform with wheels, which he propelled with his hands while he requested donations. A blind man asked for help while finding his way in the train corridor with a long stick. A blind woman sang song fragments a cappella, also expecting a few coins. Pop music players and an Andean music group provided some relief to passengers who welcomed the entertainment with handclaps. The procession of people who completely fell off the edges of the neoliberal economic program coexisted with the plainly dressed working-class passengers

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(perhaps clinging to increasingly insecure jobs), the young male executive with the elegant suit and dark sunglasses, teenagers in their private school uniforms, the well-groomed woman with fashionable clothing and a stylish hairdo, or the foreign tourists in adventure outfits looking at the map of the area. The extremely rich would usually not travel in this train. Those who gained the most from neoliberal globalization often live in gated communities or guarded mansions, have expensive cars, and do not need to take the train. Still, people with relative economic privilege shared the train space with those who had to scramble to make a basic living. Poverty and inequality were right there, on many faces and in the faces of others. At the time of my study, many people were either experiencing poverty themselves or were confronted with poverty daily in public spaces such as train stations, street corners, parks, subways, and restaurants far from the poor, heavily populated barrios. Perhaps only the very rich could isolate themselves in their tinted-windowed cars, gated communities, and privatized lives. Yet the crisis did not leave them completely untouched: rising crime and a wave of kidnappings haunted their valuable property and threatened their bodily security. For the chronically poor—those whose families had been in this kind of situation for generations—poverty was not new, but it was no less damaging. Although millions of people lived in precarious housing, in conditions of extreme poverty and violence, long before the 2001 economic collapse, the neoliberal model did little to improve their situation and in fact created more difficulties. When the crisis erupted, these persons had few resources with which to weather it. During the 1990s, it seemed easier to try to isolate the reality of poverty as long as the poor remained relatively self-contained in barrios that lacked even minimum services and resources. Some of the women I interviewed lived in this relatively hidden world (hidden, at least, from the better off), which was nonetheless becoming more familiar to growing numbers of people. During my fieldwork, I met regularly with women in one of the communal kitchens in a shantytown in metropolitan Buenos Aires. My encounters with these women opened up a world very different from the life of privilege that I knew. The barrio where the kitchen women lived was crowded with basic living structures and houses crammed against each other. From some angles the barrio looked like an endless labyrinth. Homes stood precariously, made with a mix of whatever materials people could find, including pieces of wood, sheet metal, and bricks. Many houses looked half done, in the process of construction. Many did not have doors or windows, but pieces of cloth in their places. To reach the homes of some of the kitchen women, one had to walk along narrow passages in between rows of houses and crisscrossed by a stream of polluted, dark water. With the heat of the summer, the smells of garbage piles and contaminated water became stronger, more penetrating. The houses were generally small, and some of them sheltered many people. Neighbors were close and quite exposed to each other. Precarious shelter added to the list of problems in the shantytown,

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including drugs, crime, lack of services such as garbage collection, and inadequate access to food and health care. Even though many poor people in Buenos Aires have been living in that type of shantytown—also known as villa miseria (village of misery) or villa de emergencia (emergency village)—for decades, the neoliberal years and the subsequent crisis witnessed a growing number of people in such living arrangements. Many of the people in the shantytowns and other low income areas were unemployed workers who tried to improve their conditions and the quality of life in their neighborhoods through collective organizing. Many became the backbone of the piquetero/a movement, which adopted the piquete (roadblock) as a protest strategy and engaged in solidarity and productive community projects (Di Marco et al. 2003; Dinerstein 2001, 2003). At the time of my study, piqueteros/as could regularly be seen challenging the centers of power in the heart of Buenos Aires or blocking the bridges linking the city to the surrounding metropolitan area. These men and women were no longer hidden or silent. They became increasingly visible as they put their bodies on the line during marches and roadblocks. Impoverishment, hunger, and unemployment became more difficult to ignore—obviously present, widespread, and embodied. In a country that has a history of denying the disappearances, torture, and horror inflicted by the last military dictatorship, the reality of pervasive poverty in the making could perhaps for a while still be covered up by politicians and economic elites or overlooked by members of the middle class holding onto the illusions of economic prosperity. However, with the crisis that erupted in the new millennium, this kind of denial was no longer possible. The new disappeared, the “economic disappeared” as they have been called in social movement circles, showed their existence with their physical presence when they claimed, through individual demands and collective protests, their rights to partake in citizenship and the goods that democracy was supposed to deliver.

Economic Scars: Gender, Class, and Women’s Bodies In talking about their lives and bodies, women in this study addressed the direct and indirect effects of neoliberal policies and economic crisis. Their narratives exposed a matrix of bodily experiences that took specific shapes according to gender expectations and class location. Women with disparate economic conditions had to transform aspects of their lifestyles with repercussion on their bodies, but poor women had fewer resources in the first place. The bodily grievances that women expressed encompassed not only distress about their reduced access to critical resources to sustain the material body (e.g., good quality food and health care), but also concerns about physical appearance and beauty. Class was a major axis differentiating how women’s bodies were affected by economic decline. For some middle-class women, adjustment entailed switching to less expensive beauty treatments, buying cheaper food, or downgrading their

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health coverage; however, for women living in shantytowns, adjustment could mean something as basic as the difference between eating and not eating. The narratives of women who grew up in poverty, or whose poverty was deepened with the neoliberal restructuring, prefigured the situation of millions of people, particularly women, as poverty in Argentina became more widespread. Among the bodily problems that poor and working-class women mentioned were difficulty taking care of contraceptive needs, poor diets, inadequate medical attention in public hospitals, physical overwork, little time to rest, and exhaustion from the combination of unpaid work and income generating activities in a social milieu in which women are still expected to do most of the care and household work. The words of Candela, a thirty-two-year-old unemployed woman living in poverty, highlight body-economy connections structured by gender and class. Candela was raising her two children and was supported by her husband, who held a low-wage job. She had a hard time finding a job that would allow her to take adequate care of her children. However, she was involved in many different kinds of unpaid community activities to improve the quality of life in her neighborhood. She presented a somber picture of how the crisis reached different aspects of her life and body: My life was affected because [the prices of] everything increased so much, things increased so much, one income cannot afford what it could afford before. Because my husband continues earning what he earned before, which was barely enough, and now we are lacking [sufficient money]. We don’t have enough. And well, the body is [affected] because, for example, in the past, when things were cheap, I could think about my teeth, for example, in getting my teeth done. Not now. I don’t know, going to the hairdresser [smiling tone] . . . for example, going to the gym. No, we can’t afford those luxuries because money is not enough. It is not enough. With everything that it is happening now, it is not enough for anything. I think that if one wants to take a vacation or something in order to relax, to be well, it is not possible. We cannot do it. Well, then regarding food, too. In the past, it was possible to eat better, more nutritious [food] for the children, milk every day. Now it is very expensive—[for example,] milk and cereals, which they love. It is very hard to make the shopping list and have enough money for all those things.

Candela’s reflection shows how economic conditions undermined the possibility of satisfying a mix of basic bodily needs and the desire for gendered “luxuries.” She prioritized some items over others—for example, her children’s food needs over her going to the gym or to the hairdresser, or going to the dentist. Yet in expressing her grievances, she referenced social perceptions about the kinds of activities women in Argentina are expected to engage in to look beautiful and feminine. The importance of motherhood, another key social expectation for

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women, also emerges from Candela’s narrative. Like other mothers, Candela suggested a sense of connection between her body and her children’s. In talking about herself, she slipped to her children’s needs and desires (e.g., “milk and cereals that they love”), also curtailed under the crisis. At the same time, Candela embodied the contradictions presented by motherhood and beauty expectations, particularly for women living in poverty. Candela showed me a large, noticeable, vertical scar crossing her belly, the product of a cesarean section— some of the women I met in the slums had similar scars. Before the crisis, Candela had been gathering information and hoping to get a free cosmetic surgery in the public hospital, but given the declining economic conditions, she was not able to afford the basic supplies the hospital required for such procedures. Frida, a middle-class woman, very mindful of her nutrition and health, reflected on the unequal effects of the crisis on women’s bodies depending on their social location. She mentioned a range of issues including nutrition, beauty, recreation, work, and health, and noticed that women with low economic means fared worse in all of these instances. She observed that the crisis affected poor women’s health through deteriorated attention during childbirth or through a more tenuous access to food. In the same breath, Frida also described how the crisis undermined socially encouraged bodily practices, such as going to the hairdresser frequently or acquiring fashionable clothes. The women who could hold on to certain privileges exhibited them in their bodies as symbols of class: I think that eating well is a luxury that few can afford. Yes, to eat well is a luxury. And I realize this because the things that I consume, in general are more expensive. Whole-wheat pasta is more expensive than regular pasta, and whole-wheat flour is more expensive. . . . Well, for the women who like to go to the hairdresser, get their nails done every week, the crisis also threatens that. And it marks more and more the differences between those who can buy clothing in Kosiuko [a fashionable brand] and those who will have to go to Once [a lower-class shopping district] to look for an imitation brand. Then, yes of course this [crisis] is related to the body, sure, and to the possibility of going to the gym or not going to the gym. And working for more hours, and overloading the body with stress. Yes, sure. And giving birth in worse conditions.

The class differences that Frida enumerates manifest themselves in the external contours of the body (e.g., clothing, hair, nails) and also reach deep into the body’s flesh (e.g., food intake, birthing, tiredness). Frida’s words also bring out the influence of hegemonic cultural expectations prescribing women’s vigilance over their bodily appearance. Being able to exhibit a body attractive by hegemonic standards is perceived as important in a society that places a very high

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premium on women’s physical appearance. Furthermore, as it is shown in chapter 3, the expectation that women continue adorning and “improving” their bodies, even during the crisis, is one way in which the most devastating effects of the crisis were to some extent distorted. As long as women look good, it makes it seem that things are not that bad after all. Women seemed to carry a responsibility of making everyone feel better about the crisis through their bodily appearance. Thus Frida’s reflection on the bodily effects of the crisis mixes various threads, some of which may seem more important than others, but that need to be understood in the context of the significance of women’s bodily appearance in Argentine culture. In talking with women about the bodily effects of the crisis, references to seemingly disparate kinds of needs and desires were mixed together, both in the narratives of middle-class and of working-class or poor women. While much scholarly work on the body is concentrated on a particular part or aspect of the body (e.g., eating problems, sexuality, contraception, reproduction), the stories these women tell, regardless of class, show diverse and intertwined embodied experiences associated with the crisis. Sometimes the line between things that are considered basic (e.g., food, health care, resting time) and those that may be perceived as superfluous (e.g., beauty treatments) is not clear-cut in women’s narratives. These stories show the interaction between material conditions and cultural prescriptions in the formulation of women’s embodied experiences.

Work Studies of countries that have gone through structural adjustment programs generally demonstrate that women disproportionately tend to bear the burden of these policies (Benería 1996; Benería and Feldman 1992; Bose and Acosta-Belén 1995; IILS 1994; Moser 1993). In Argentina, a similar situation was evidenced (Chejter 2002; RIGC 2003; Sautu, Eguía, and Ortale 2000). The economic troubles that low wages and unemployment brought to families, combined with the national government withdrawal from responsibilities in health, education, and other services, was often translated into heavier work loads for women (Birgin 2000b; Sautu, Eguía, and Ortale 2000; Wainerman 2003a). A World Bank survey of civil society organizations (Hicks et al. 2003, 15) found that during the crisis poor people “resorted to increased participation of women and children in subsistence activities, like cardboard collection and other strategies . . . [and increased] home-made production for self-consumption (preserved fruit, bread, pasta, and their own-produced vegetables), and community purchases in wholesale stores.” Some of these coping strategies, especially those involving home production and consumption changes require women’s embodied labor, since they have traditionally been the ones in charge of taking care of children’s and other adults’ needs, feeding the family, and organizing household activities.

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For many women, the increased demand for their unpaid labor contributed to embodied feelings of stress and tiredness. While there is some evidence that men have been contributing to domestic work more than in the past, women are still expected to do the lion’s share (Wainerman 2005). With the crisis, mundane tasks, such as shopping, became more labor intensive and time consuming as women were forced to search for sales, to buy food every day rather than making fewer and larger purchases, and to shop in several different places to find the lowest prices. Class location influenced changes in work patterns for women. Camila, a woman who ran a small beauty and exercise center and identified herself as middle class, complained about feeling physically and emotionally exhausted as a result of having to combine more intense paid and unpaid work. She had to perform multiple tasks such as housework, cleaning the gym, handing out business flyers in the neighborhood, teaching gym classes, doing receptionist work, and even working as a secretary for her husband: It is like I am depressed because of everything that it is happening, you see, that you have no choice but to do everything. If you don’t do it, who is going to do it for you?—if you don’t have someone [to do it], or can’t pay [someone] to do it. So then, it is a little like in the long term the economic crisis affects the body. In one way or another you are affected, right?

Camila felt tired, depressed, and lacking vigor. She imagined the idea of a paid employee doing cleaning chores for her, but she could not afford it. She did not seem to expect her husband to share housework. In her view, domestic work— something that “bothers” and “anguishes” her and generates feelings of “hate”— was an activity that she or a (a probably female) paid domestic worker were to do. The combination of the crisis and the gendered division of labor at home meant more work for her and added to her bodily exhaustion. Although stressful or physically exhausting as it might be for middle-class women to do without domestic service, such “help” is a privilege, and it is often organized in ways that are exploitative of other women—even when many women find in this occupation the only avenue for survival. Less fortunate women have never been able to afford domestic service in their homes, not even before the crisis. Rather, poor and working-class women have been those paid domestic workers themselves, and as shown later, the context of the crisis also exacerbated a host of bodily problems for women in this occupation. In addition to their household and mothering work, many women had to enter a more precarious formal labor market, do informal work, or devise alternative strategies to replace or supplement the wages of husbands, partners, or other family members whose incomes became insufficient or who were unemployed. Under neoliberal globalization, those “lucky” enough to have a job had to cope with greater work insecurity and harsher conditions. Paula, a factory worker, described how the multinational corporation she worked for implemented speed-ups, union busting, and harassment against labor organizers and

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workers. She spoke of the job-related health problems that she and other fellow female workers developed, including varicose veins, tendonitis, backaches, and problems in the spine and legs: It was alienating. I would stop to look around and . . . after an hour you would look around and everybody was working like that, and I [thought,] “We are machines.” And that’s how I started to think, “I am not a machine, the machine is the one in white, I am a person [laughs]: I am dressed in blue. Identify me.” Because we all had blue uniforms and the machines are white . . . so sometimes, when they wanted to force me to work [I would say], “I am not a machine, I am not a machine” [laughs]. It horrifies me to reach that point . . . I think that I was almost going on that path, because I worked too much, but it was also the result of the [economic] need I experienced, to work like that. . . . But, if you will, I drew a limit and did not continue.

Paula resorted to bodily markers such as workers’ clothing as a way to differentiate herself from and reclaim her humanity vis-à-vis lifeless machines. Using her senses, her tiredness, and her embodied consciousness as a compass, Paula rejected the path imposed by neoliberal globalization. She resisted, both individually and collectively, working conditions that constructed workers’ bodies as disposable. She challenged a gender division of labor that turned women into “slaves of their workstation” while allowing men relative freedom of movement. Rising levels of unemployment and underemployment also pushed many people into the streets to try to survive through informal income generating activities. For example, according to data reported by an association of sex workers, prostitution in the city of Buenos Aires grew more than 40 percent since the mid-1990s (from an estimated 14,000 in 1995 to 20,000 in 2004), an increase partly blamed on the adverse economic situation (Lladós 2004). Alternative modes of survival such as begging, cardboard gathering, or prostitution, while not illegal, involve considerable stigmatization and bodily risk, including disease, police harassment, and exposure to physical violence. The stories of some of my interviewees reveal the high bodily costs of these informal activities and the ways in which they are gendered. Fanny, a cartonera, noted that the hazards of cardboard gathering are not the same for men and women. The bodies of poor women are coded as targets of harassment in sexualized ways. Fanny talked about some doormen who asked women collectors for sex in exchange for the paper or cardboard they collected within the building. Fanny was emphatic that it is not good for women to be working in the streets at night, but she had few options: I can’t find work, because really, if I could find it . . . because this is not . . . in truth this is not for women. For men, yes, but not for women. And I think it is not [for women] because the truth is that there are so many things in the

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streets. Sometimes you can’t go out alone. I already told you that the doormen harass you a lot.

Even though being in the streets gathering cardboard is not a sign of Fanny’s liberation, but of her lack of other choices, the idea that streets are not for women reverberate with sexist mandates. Her experiences of sexual harassment reinforced cultural norms prescribing that women should stay at home at night, or that women in the streets are “asking for it.” Fanny used her attachment to a man—by telling doormen that she was with her husband—as a shield against sexual harassment. This was an effective move, but one that could also strengthen sexist prescriptions. In Fanny’s case, sexual harassment was a concomitant effect of both crisis-induced poverty and of gendered assumptions about her supposedly out-of-place female body. Fanny’s body was also exhausted. Her cardboard-gathering routine would start around 5 P.M. and would not stop until early morning of the following day. This work required not only collecting materials, but also sorting them so that they are suitable for sale. Fanny’s daily work did not stop there: “I do the household chores, do the laundry, ironing—and my daughter helps me.” She excused her husband’s avoidance of housework, stating that he was too tired. Fanny had no time to take care of her own body, get medical treatment, or pay attention to her contraceptive necessities. She had an intrauterine device in her body, which needed to be removed, but the hassles of a deteriorated public health system and her time constraints made it difficult for her to take care of this. Fanny placed her family’s needs before her own. The precarious nature of cardboard gathering intersected with gender norms that construct the female body as a “bodyfor-others,” jeopardizing Fanny’s own bodily integrity.8 In a different way, middle-class women also found themselves pushing their bodies by juggling multiple income-generating activities in order to make ends meet or to maintain previous standards of living. The real value of middle-class wages sharply declined after devaluation; some people’s savings were trapped by the corralito; professionals had a hard time finding jobs to fit their talents and training; and even people in managerial positions were laid off during privatization and restructuring. Viviana, a university professor, high school teacher, and the coordinator of an academic program, could not make a living “just” with her university job, so she also taught several courses at other schools. On top of her paid work, she was also a dedicated activist in a range of human rights, workers,’ and women’s organizations. Viviana spoke about how adverse social conditions could contribute to deteriorating bodily functions. She said her body was well suited to her profession: her “privileged throat” and “potent voice” was remarkably audible and did not easily tire. She described her legs as strong, facilitating her standing up for many hours in front of the many classes she taught. Yet, despite these advantages, she still suffered job-related body problems during her career, such as a thickening

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of her vocal cords caused by chronic inflammation. Viviana saw her body as an essential tool for work, so she was bitter about the lack of institutional support for teachers’ bodily problems: The two professional illnesses connected to teaching work are illnesses related to the vocal cords . . . and varicose vein problems, circulatory leg problems . . . And there’s nothing; nobody does anything at the institutional level. . . . Like, there is a great, very great insensitivity with respect to the healthy body. Imagine, with my teacher’s health plan, it was funny because I once asked for a general check-up. And they said, “No! We do not authorize a check-up until you’re over forty years old.”

Viviana identified not only work-related bodily problems but also possible institutional solutions, including a voice coaching program, supplementary exercise plans, and better health coverage. The problems she described were not confined to the crisis period, but the kinds of remedies she envisioned were particularly unlikely to be implemented when both the educational and health care systems were in crisis, and in a neoliberal context in which work exploitation, and the consequent depletion of bodily resources, came to be expected of more and more people. Yet Viviana articulated a counterhegemonic vision of how things could be different in an economic system that did not consider workers’ bodies as disposable. Indeed, the work of educators in Argentina has been so undervalued that poverty-line incomes or teaching without pay have not been uncommon. At the time of this study, the secretary of CTERA, one of the most important teachers’ unions, reported that “20 percent of teachers [were] below the indigence line” (Veiras 2002, 20). Public school teachers in different parts of the country sometimes had their paychecks delayed for many months and had problems satisfying their families’ basic needs. Except at the university level, teaching has been mostly a women’s profession, partly because women constituted cheaper labor since the origins of the public school system and partly because of assumptions about women’s alleged natural inclinations to occupations conceived as an extension of motherhood (Bolcatto 2000; Di Liscia and Maristany 1997; Fischman 2000; Sarlo 1998). In the public sphere, teachers’ maternal bodies are expected to withstand the negative effects of the economic system without protest. Gender is embedded in the organization of work and the economy. The bodily problems women in this study experienced were inextricably connected to gender expectations as well as to the nature of the work they performed. The economic crisis exacerbated some of the preexisting pressures that women faced and created new sources of tension, compounding the effects on the body. Social class location also shaped the ways in which different women experienced the crisis and what kinds of social safety net, if any, they could fall back on.

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Food Insecurity In the midst of the crisis, newspapers published pieces about both the intensification of hunger (illustrated by pictures of children with unimaginably thin bodies) and the cuts and changes in people’s diets due to worsening economic conditions. By the end of 2002, the prices of nonperishable food products had increased about 100 percent, while those of fresh and frozen food products climbed about 70 percent in Buenos Aires and its metropolitan area (Sainz 2002). Many families were consuming less milk and meat and switching to cheaper products (Hicks et al. 2003, 15). Because of the gendered division of labor in Argentina, it is logical that women would be especially aware of how adverse economic conditions impinge on their ability to provide a nutritious diet. They are usually in charge of planning, preparing, or directing the preparation of meals. Yet, in a society in which women are generally expected to be self-sacrificing, and to bear the brunt of care work, it was not surprising to hear of some economically marginalized women sidelining their own food needs. Several women in this study reflected on how their diets changed as their economic resources declined. Among the shifts they mentioned were the following coping strategies: choosing cheaper brands; eating more carbohydrates (e.g., pasta, rice, potatoes) and less protein (e.g., fish, meat); consuming fewer vegetables; and eliminating food rituals with great cultural and family importance, such as the traditional asado (beef barbecue). Beef from Argentina has worldwide reputation, and Argentines are generally very fond of it. Furthermore, the traditional asado is more than a source of food. It is also a cultural ritual that bonds friends and family. Weekend asados have traditionally been opportunities for relatives and friends to gather around the table, talk, and hang out for many hours.9 With the crisis, this important source of bodily and cultural nourishment was curtailed. Rising prices of food and other household items, plus the stagnation of wages, the decline of their real value, and the scarcity of well-paying jobs, meant that women had to resort to different tricks to make the most of the food available. Sara, a taxi driver very concerned about her children, started to buy food products “that go further” and prepared them in more economic ways, “like buying a chicken, and instead of using the whole chicken, [using] half and cutting it in small little pieces, so that you eat noodles with chicken, instead of each of us [eating] an entire leg or [another big] part of chicken.” Women living in poverty struggled against food insecurity by resorting to multiple strategies such as looking for leftover foods in garbage bags, begging at supermarkets and private homes, or organizing communal kitchens. The crisis pushed them to the edge, and obtaining minimum amounts of food became ever more difficult. For many mothers, getting enough food for their children was a top priority, with women sometimes silencing their own bodily needs.

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Alexandra, a young single mother living in a shantytown, showed that lack of food was one dimension of her bodily experiences: What happens is that I sometimes have [food], and sometimes I don’t. I’m not that worried about it now because my child eats at the comedor. But in the past, before he went to the comedor, I did get worried . . . like about him becoming malnourished or . . . That worried me. What happens when you don’t have food for yourself? I drink mate [a caffeinated tealike beverage].

As drinking mate was not a long-term solution to hunger or the sense of tiredness she experienced, Alexandra finally decided to overcome her feelings of shame, “lower [her] head,” and ask her brother and his wife for help to buy some basic food products. Under the critical economic circumstances in Argentina, Alexandra depended on the goodwill of her relatives (who did not have much money either) and the viability of a nearby communal kitchen to obtain the nutrients that her body and her son’s body needed. Alexandra joined the swelling ranks of people who could not find a job to help satisfy basic bodily necessities. One of the ways by which women tackled hunger collectively was through communal kitchens. Women organized to obtain food, prepare communal meals, and feed the neighborhoods’ children. Still, this solution was not without problems, as the following events in a shantytown communal kitchen demonstrate: One summer day, I went to the kitchen and met with six women who where preparing and serving the merienda (an afternoon cup of milk or mate with bread) to a bunch of children. Meanwhile they were talking, complaining, and laughing about a range of neighborhood issues. Silvia, a woman with many tattoos on her ample body, including a big one on her arm that read MADRE (mother), was upset that her neighbors had been spreading bad rumors about her. They said that she was a bad mother because she left her children alone for half an hour. However, what bothered this woman the most was that the neighbors also stated that her children were malnourished. She vehemently asserted that that was not true and was visibly offended by the comment, apparently because a child’s malnourishment was taken to reflect on the mother’s moral character. The women in the comedor argued that if children did not get the food they needed, it was the mother’s fault. The implication was that such a woman was lazy, that she did not bother to “go out to get the food.” They explained that there were plenty of communal kitchens where children could eat. However, as another women from the same comedor explained to me, not all kitchens had a steady flow of food coming in and in order to obtain it, women often needed to do a lot of begging from, bargaining for, protesting, and demanding from state institutions, individuals, and private businesses. This story reveals mixed elements in these women’s perspectives. While the collectivization of feeding defied traditional family arrangements, and while a

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number of these women were politically active in denouncing economic suffering, they also seemed to have internalized aspects of hegemonic ideologies about poor people (“they are lazy”) and about gender and motherhood (feeding children as mothers’ responsibility, not fathers’, for example). If Silvia’s children were indeed malnourished, it could have been not because she did not try to give them enough food, but because the quality of the food was not nourishing due to the constraints of poverty. Although the comedores were essential to taking care of poor children’s basic bodily needs, one problem was the quality of available food. According to what the women in this comedor reported, it was easier to obtain donations of food like bread or noodles than food rich in proteins and other nutrients. They pointed out that even cow bones and lard, which they used in stews, were too expensive for their budgets. Furthermore, as Alexandra’s words suggested, as vital as communal kitchens centered on children were, they could not solve women’s own nourishment needs. Hegemonic discourses that see women’s bodies mainly as sources of sustenance for others tend to mention women’s needs in passing or to completely downplay them. Discourses about breastfeeding that portray this practice as a convenient band-aid for structural economic problems are a case in point. A Spanish doctor who inaugurated a national medical symposium in Argentina emphasized that breastfeeding “is the great protection that families have against the crisis, because even if there’s no money to buy clothing or food, any mother can offer her child the best milk” (Czubaj 2003, 11). The doctor acknowledged that a breastfeeding mother may be hungrier because of the higher energy expenditure, but no possible solutions to this problem were reported (for example, state programs that would give particular support for these women). While breastfeeding has certainly many benefits both for mother and child, and women should be able to do it if they so choose, rhetoric about breastfeeding as a protection against economic crises seems to let politicians and financial institutions off the hook. Poor women’s breast milk, or women’s other embodied efforts to satisfy family needs, for that matter, were not the solution to the economic crisis. Going without enough food or downgrading food quality were important dimensions of how people in Argentina cut nourishment to their bodies, sometimes with serious health consequences. In a society plagued by gender inequities—similar to others with respect to the assumption that women are not supposed to experience appetites (Bordo 1993a)—the economic crisis reinforced cultural expectations that women can or should go without adequate nutrition but still be focused on sustaining their families’ nourishment.

Health Another vital area affected by the neoliberal economic model was the health sector. Despite historical deficiencies in its health care system, Argentina had been “well known for its advanced degree of epidemiological transition, its high

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level of expenditure, its extensive service supply and the high technological level of health service providers” (Uribe and Schwab 2002, 5). Critics of neoliberal reforms promoted by the government and the World Bank during the 1990s argue that, instead of building on the health system’s strengths, such measures further exacerbated their flaws and eroded the population’s ability to obtain adequate health care (Escudero 2003; Lloyd-Sherlock 2005). The three main sectors that mediate access to health services in Argentina have been the following: (1) the private health insurance system, (2) the obra social (social insurance) system, and (3) the public health system. Private health insurance is purchased by individuals; the obras sociales are linked to formal employment and are financed through workers’ and employers’ contributions, and the public health system is financed by the state and offers free health care to the uninsured. The health sector reforms were in tune with the general neoliberal policies in the wider economy, with buzzwords such as efficiency, deregulation, descentralization, self-management, and free choice as guiding principles (often at the expense of other values such as equity and access). With respect to the already underfunded public sector, reformers aimed to decentralize hospitals and change the way they were funded: they were to become “self-managed” (and more self-financed) entities, implementing fee structures and charging services to medical insurance plans while offering free services to the poor in the form of means-tested benefits (for example, after obtaining a stigmatizing carnet de pobre [poor person’s identification]) (Cetrángolo 1994; Lloyd-Sherlock 2005; Pautassi 2000). Reforms to the obras sociales system in the 1990s included reductions to employers’ contributions, in detriment of the system’s available funds. At the same time, private insurance, which is driven by a market logic, became unaffordable to growing numbers of people, even to many in the middle class. The cherished idea of universal health care access was clearly jeopardized and the economic crisis that erupted in 2001 only made matters worse: “By early 2002, the system faced virtual collapse: all parts of the sector were close to bankruptcy, there was widespread disruption to supplies of basic materials for providers, and many services in the public and private sectors were cut back or indefinitely suspended” (Lloyd-Sherlock 2005, 1900). Furthermore, widespread unemployment and impoverishment undermined health coverage. According to census data, in 1991, 37 percent of the population in Argentina did not have health coverage (i.e., private health insurance or obra social). By 2001 that number rose to 48 percent (Ministerio de Salud 2004). The 2001 economic collapse aggravated the situation, for example, limiting the access of poor people even to free services because they could not afford to pay transportation to public hospitals or purchase medicines to follow through with their treatments. A 2002 World Bank survey covering most of the national territory found that “families have, in one way or another, cut down on health services as a result of the economic crisis. . . . Almost 23% of the households report that at least one member

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experienced lack of access to health services. Three fourths of those report the reason was ‘lack of money’ to pay for medicines (44%), transportation costs (26%), and fees (5%)” (Fiszbein, Giovagnoli, and Adúriz 2002, 16–17). Quite expectedly, the crisis of the health care system and the impoverishment of the population translated into adverse health outcomes. For example, a World Bank report states that the incidence of some illnesses like AIDS, Chagas’ disease, and leshmaniasis increased, while mother and infant health care in povertyridden urban locations declined (Hicks et al. 2003). Poverty is fertile soil for disease, as substandard living conditions constitute obstacles to the prevention and treatment of various health problems. While these developments negatively affected both men and women with low incomes, the situation was particularly dire for women, because they are more likely than men to be in charge of raising their children, to be discriminated against in the labor market, and to earn lower wages. The crisis affected not only the poor and the working class, but also even middle-class people’s ability to obtain adequate health care. Job lay-offs were often accompanied by loss of health coverage for individuals and their families (e.g., obras sociales for those in the formal job sector), and the decline of the real value of wages made it difficult to pay for private coverage. This situation had serious bodily consequences, especially when preventive attention or medical treatment was needed. For example, Luz who held a middle-class office employment, saw the quality of her health care decline sharply. She was traditionally mindful of her health, and years before the interview she gave birth to her child in a five-star private clinic. Due to the economic crisis she was not able to afford health coverage. Her job did not have health benefits and her wages were insufficient to buy private insurance. At the time of the interview, she needed to undergo her annual gynecological exam and had a toothache, so she was considering paying one month of health coverage to get the medical attention she needed. Yet while this strategy could serve her in the short term, going without health insurance was risky were she to have an accident or develop a serious medical condition. Lali, a middle-class psychologist, hospital volunteer, and activist for women’s rights, had to downgrade her health coverage, switching from a private health insurance to a municipal obra social with fewer facility options. This change had a negative impact on her body: Now I have a neck sprain, and I know that if I ask for an appointment, perhaps by the time it’s my turn, [the pain] will already be gone. I should do physical therapy now. . . . Sometimes I go to the hospital where my husband works, which is four blocks from here, and he knows a lot of people. So suddenly you go and get a solution for x problem, but you are sort of getting [diagnosis/ attention] as a favor. You are there, having to ask for favors, and it is not like something that you are entitled to.

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Lali faced longer waiting times, fewer services and specialists, or no treatment at all. Ironically, while Lali was getting lower quality medical attention, the public health care system benefited from her unpaid labor given that she regularly worked as a volunteer assisting women patients. In the age of neoliberalism, health care did not feel like an entitlement, a right she had, but something she had to beg for. Still, thanks to her middle-class status, Lali was able to rely on a network of people who could assist her if needed (e.g., a doctor in the family, a friend who works in a health center, or relatives with enough money to lend in case of a medical emergency). Besides structural economic constraints, interacting cultural factors also shaped women’s ability to obtain health care. One component of the social construction of womanhood in Argentina is self-sacrifice. Women are socially expected to take care of other people’s needs before their own, including health problems. Yet, Prece, Di Liscia, and Piñero (1997) suggest that while members of the middle class have been socialized (and have more material resources) to take preventive care of their health, those in less privileged positions experience their bodies as marked by urgent needs. For women with few economic resources, the body is then perceived as an instrument to satisfy immediate family necessities or to care for their children. Previous studies of working-class women in Argentina indicate that they tend to seek medical treatment only when they are so sick they cannot deny the problem any longer (Domínguez, Pinotti, and Soldevila 2000). Economic location and the mandate to care for others can result in working-class women’s bodily needs to be “blocked” or “muted” (Prece, Di Liscia, and Piñero 1997, 12). This tendency combined with the structural problems of the health care system and with families’ growing dependence on women’s income-generating work (often resulting in women’s double and triple shifts) then influence poor health outcomes for women. Due to economic constraints and consistent with gender norms that expect women to focus their care outwardly (Di Liscia and Di Liscia 1997), some women in this study neglected signs of illness in their bodies. Luna and Alondra, both domestic workers, revealed the pressures to ignore their bodies that mothers of limited economic means may experience: Luna: Last week I was unwell, but I did not go [to the doctor] because I know I cannot get sick. Because if I get sick I don’t have anyone to look after the girls; because if I get sick my girls do not eat. I don’t have anyone to take them to school, and if I get sick I have to get up the next day—no ifs or buts—because I have to get up. So I do not go to the hospital. Even if I’m dying I will not go, because if I go and they admit me, who is going to take care of my girls? Alondra: And I tell you, I should not get sick, I should not get sick. I have to go to the hospital to do a hormonal analysis no matter what, and I know that if I go, you see, it takes the whole morning, and I lose those hours of

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work, and I have to work, because that money serves to buy things. So I can’t get sick, and I have to do that medical testing no matter what, rain or shine, every three months. I’m stretching it, stretching it, stretching it . . . you see, and I don’t go.

It may seem paradoxical that though these women wanted to be well, especially for their children, and to provide economic sustenance to their families, they delayed getting needed medical care. Luna or Alondra’s inattention to their own bodily needs did not stem from personal irresponsibility or thoughtlessness. It was intimately tied to the economic and social conditions poor and working-class mothers in Argentina were experiencing. For these women, getting medical treatment or preventive medical care stood in the way of making a living or caring for the family in the short term. As the focus group with domestic workers suggested, getting medical attention may be a feat for those who have no choice but to rely on the overcrowded and defunded public hospitals: Uli: It is horrible, like you have to go [to the hospital] at five in the morning and you have to be there the whole day . . . and if you have to work . . . because not all jobs give you the day off: either they fire you or they do not pay you that day. It is not like you go [to the hospital] and they see you . . . You have to be there the whole morning. Alondra: For me, in order to go to the place where I have to do the hormonal analysis, I need to go at four in the morning, and they give ten numbers, and start seeing [patients] at nine in the morning, and I’m not going to be the first one. Uli: And how many hours are you there? Alondra: They give ten numbers, so I don’t know. Uli: Perhaps they will see you, or it is possible that you went for nothing. Alondra: That’s why, you see, I got up at four in the morning, and went, and I was sitting there and I had the number six, and then they said there was a strike . . . and I got out of there at 11 in the morning.

Long waits at the hospital to ensure medical service is something particularly difficult for sick people, but it was hardly exceptional. The social conflicts within the hospital (e.g., personnel strikes) were offshoots of the economic crisis, but nevertheless affected patients. Finally, jobs with few social protections were obstacles to obtaining adequate health care. In the context of neoliberalism, the time, energy, and work of women like the ones in the focus groups seemed to be worth nothing—a free and taken-for-granted expenditure of resources. In addition, women in this study talked about other serious problems in public health facilities that are not exclusive of the crisis period, but that are not helped when patient demand is higher, employees are underpaid, supplies are scarce, and hospitals are riddled by social conflict. While there are many good

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doctors, nurses, and other health practitioners who act in respectful and caring ways, I heard repeated accounts of providers being disrespectful to patients, including toward women giving birth. Uli told how nurses in an important public hospital in Buenos Aires “say all sorts of filthy things when you are screaming in pain [during childbirth]: ‘If you liked it [having sex], put up with it [the pain].’” Other interviewees also mentioned a shortage of medicines and basic medical supplies that impinged on health recovery. Job insecurity, desperate financial need, loss of previous health coverage, health practitioners’ mistreatment, and the deficiencies of a health care system under crisis, combined with gendered expectations about women’s self-sacrifice and unconditional availability to family members, all worked to discourage these women from caring for their own bodies. Studies done before the collapse of the economy in 2001 had already started to reveal how the economic insecurity that was unfolding in the 1990s had undermined women’s physical and mental health. For instance, Esther Moncarz (1997) reported the many illnesses of women workers exposed to increasingly precarious working conditions and stress, including gastrointestinal disorders, varicose veins, back and joint pain, and dermatitis. Talking about the psychosomatic illnesses that had proliferated among women in relation to social conditions, Moncarz (1997, 55) asked a particularly important question in times of crisis: “Could it be that many women who are socialized to ‘be the body’ would use this as a means of expressing despair? Wouldn’t this be the space in which it would be especially possible to make visible the emotions, the suffering which is usually invisible?”

Embodied Emotions Unlike the often distant and disembodied appraisals of economic experts, the women in this study talked about the crisis in Argentina in deeply embodied and emotional ways. The crisis was perceived as an all-encompassing, even violent, force affecting body, emotions, relationships, and intimate aspects of their lives. Besides enumerating the many ways in which the crisis had diminished their material standard of living, women also expressed painful embodied emotions related to their precarious social conditions. Rosalía, a woman who was running a communal kitchen and a number of other solidarity projects, talked about the crisis as something that becomes “part of each of us. . . . It is more than a material economic crisis, since it leads you to depression, tiredness, and not wanting to know about anything else.” These emotions were experienced at a bodily level. During a workshop on sexuality I attended at the 2002 National Women’s Meeting, some of the participants talked about how the crisis invaded their sexual lives; for example, how unemployment and economic problems were reflected in a loss of sexual desire. Although feelings such as tiredness, depression, sleeplessness, and diminished sexual motivation may be seen as individual troubles—perhaps more pertinent

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to the field of mental health—the emotions these women expressed were closely linked to the socioeconomic crisis, which cannot be solved merely through individualized therapies or efforts. The material quality of life of Camila, who was part of the impoverished middle class, declined with the economic collapse. She linked the crisis to troubling embodied emotions, including lack of energy and negative perceptions of her body: “I’m developing psychosomatic problems because of everything that is happening—the economic crisis. My back hurts a lot; I don’t sleep well; I see myself as fat; I can’t diet; I don’t feel like sacrificing myself with the diet.” Resorting to the discourse of psychoanalysis, which is very influential in Argentina (Plotkin 2001), Camila articulated how the anxiety and discomfort produced by the crisis resulted in symptoms that connect body and emotions. The crisis affected her body (her back hurt; she could not sleep) and her perception of her body (“I see myself as fat”). The crisis created a malaise that permeated her whole life. Although Camila’s pain was very real, her relative class privilege was evident in the fact that part of her distress was because “she can’t diet” and not, for example, because she was unable to get enough food. While Camila talked about having to adjust the quality of the food she bought, she was still able to get the nutrition she needed. In contrast, Lucía, who was living in a shantytown, faced problems like not having enough food for herself and her five children. Oftentimes she filled her stomach by drinking mate for hours. One of her strategies to obtain food was digging into garbage cans in search of leftover bread, bones, or lard for stew. She was also a piquetera and a communal kitchen coordinator. Finding work was a challenge in the midst of a depressed economy and as the main care provider for her children. In Lucía’s case, emotional distress was related to this kind of scarcity. She used the word “pain” to describe her feelings about unemployment, poverty, and economic crisis, and she relied on body language and bodily references to convey her suffering: “People treat you badly. You go and look for work and they tell you ‘no.’ And it hurts. Not having a plate of food to give to [your children] . . . I feel bad in that sense. It hurts; it is as if something was breaking inside [she touches her chest with her hands]. I say, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ Because it hurts, you know?” Both Camila and Lucía reported embodied pains related to the crisis, but their different class locations shaped their distress. With the crisis, and the negative feelings it produced, Camila found it more difficult to sustain the willpower to maintain the kind of slender feminine body that is at once a marker of appropriate femininity and a symbol of class distinction. In the case of Lucía, though she often went without enough food, her body was not slender. The kind of food she was able to obtain (e.g., noodles, bread, lard) would probably make it difficult to develop that kind of body, even if she wanted to. Her pain was related to the scarcity of nutritious food and a lack of access of the means to obtain it, such as regular employment.

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Even for those women who were personally affected by the economic decline but were still able to satisfy basic needs, the climate of social catastrophe and the evident suffering of so many people could fuel disturbing embodied emotions. The reality of poverty demanded the attention of all members of society, sometimes provoking rejection, but in some cases inspiring a deep embodied understanding. This awareness entails more than knowing that poverty exists or the poverty percentages and figures. Jesusa, a middle-class woman, talked about embodied pain: To see women scrambling the garbage, with a lot of children, is terribly painful, uhhh . . . It’s painful at a level of? At a psychic [level], and I think that it is also physical. Where do you feel that pain? I think that in my stomach, something visceral! It is terrible, terrible, when I drive my car [home] and I see those children at 11 P.M., or women with little children, and I say, well, you know, “In truth, they don’t have anything to eat. Nobody likes to do that!” . . . One thing is to know that poverty exists, and another thing is to see it, to see it, and to be in those terribly poor and marginal places, and see that those people are really subjected to such violence.

Jesusa’s pain was evident in her agitated tone of voice and tearing eyes. She was almost weeping. This passage highlights both the painful reality of poverty as well as Jesusa’s empathy and ability to put herself in someone else’s shoes. The fact that her exposure to poverty was through “seeing” and not through her own experience indicates her position of relative class privilege. She went through economic difficulties herself, but she could still eat daily, receive quality medical attention, access adequate shelter and clothing, and enjoy the benefits of a good education. Yet her embodied pain (“something visceral”) associated with the suffering of other people who were worse off shows that the crisis touched her at a deeper level, beyond concern about her own well-being. In an embodied way, she herself became part of the suffering and shaken social body. This kind of embodied suffering is different from that of women who have been themselves experiencing poverty in their own flesh. Nevertheless, it points to the fact that the embodied impact of the economy transcended individuals’ particular conditions, blending their lives with other people’s and contributing to a collective mood and bodily state of being. Claudia was a domestic worker who struggled to make ends meet. In Claudia’s case, embodied pain was associated both with her own situation—the precarious nature of her life—and beyond. Her feelings extended to the experiences of other people she encountered in the streets, saw in overcrowded hospitals, or heard about in the media. During the interview, she also talked about “pain” and related it to the crisis:

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Well, I have many pains, an interior pain for everything that happened to me, you know? You feel that your bones hurt, that your skin hurts, that it is torn apart. Pain when my children are sick. How is that, that your skin hurts or is torn apart? Well, you feel it when, let’s suppose that something happens to me, or to my children. You know when your skin is torn apart, the pain? Like that. When I can’t heal my children, I say, “Well, how do I solve this problem?” Do you understand? If your child is hurting because of this or that, or if he has to be hospitalized—that kind of pain. Or the pain that I suffer when a kid dies, or when I see a barefoot kid begging, a little child, a six-year-old child—that’s the pain for me, to see a little child hospitalized who is suffering. That’s the pain that hurts the most. I suffer a lot for that. It is an interior pain.

In Claudia’s narrative, the embodied pain from her own life was interconnected with the suffering that the sight of poverty in the streets, or children in the hospital, provoked in her. The way she talked about poverty shows that it was not a distant or abstract phenomenon, but something that involved the body, even if one did not live in extreme poverty. According to Elina Matoso (2003), with the socioeconomic crisis the boundaries between individual bodies and the larger social body became more fluid, less clearly delimited. As Rosalía pointed out, the crisis is “part of each of us”; it is not something outside that can be held at a distance. Matoso argues that in the context of the crisis this “confusion between the outside and the inside” could provoke a number of negative bodily feelings, symptoms, and illnesses (Matoso 2003, 24). Some of the women in this study expressed a kind of embodied pain that revealed not only their personal suffering, but a wider social suffering. Their personal difficulties were mirrored by and merged with those of many other people in Argentina. Yet, while one aspect of the crisis was constituted by the material, emotional, and bodily problems that women confronted, the crisis also triggered a renewed impetus for social change in which women played central roles.

Conclusion This chapter has examined some of the negative impacts of neoliberal globalization on women’s embodied experiences in social conditions of rising inequality and impoverishment. While the economic crisis affected everyone in Argentina to some extent, the outcomes of the crisis were clearly not equally distributed. Gender practices and expectations significantly influenced the ways in which women’s embodied experiences were structured. Among women, class location was also an important factor in how they weathered the crisis and how their bodily habits and experiences were transformed. Not surprisingly, women who

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were already economically marginalized were affected by the collapse of the economy in harsher ways. The economy is not something “out there,” abstract, or with little relevance to the body, but a force shaping bodily experiences and consciousness. The scars of neoliberal globalization on women’s bodies were imprinted through lower quality of work, food, and health care and expressed through complex embodied emotions. The crisis produced bodies that were more fatigued, stressed, overworked, malnourished, and sick. In the context of economic insecurity, women’s experiences reveal a kind of social suffering that tie body and emotions, and that connect personal experiences to those of fellow citizens. My exploration of the embodied dimensions of the economy suggests different levels on which one may know impoverishment and which involve the body in distinct ways: (1) to vaguely acknowledge the existence of poverty, something possible only if one is not directly affected; (2) to know the numbers and figures of poverty—a more informed understanding, but the information may seem abstract and disembodied; (3) to see poverty firsthand and perhaps develop a bodily reaction (“visceral,” “your bones hurt”)—a more embodied recognition of the problem; and (4) to experience poverty in the flesh (e.g., living in a shantytown; not being able to satisfy basic needs)—one really knows what poverty is about; one’s understanding is thoroughly embodied. The women I interviewed navigated among these options, but given the context of economic turmoil, the heightened levels of social protest, and the visibility of poverty in the streets, the more removed form of comprehension was becoming less likely, or it required more active denial efforts. Despite its negative consequences, the crisis also functioned as an opening; an opportunity for many women to reflect on their own experiences, to collectively challenge the economic forces that impinged on their lives and bodies, and to confront their social conditions of subordination, including gender inequality. Women were often engines, more or less visible, in many survival struggles, community organizations, and social movement projects. They participated in multiple activities, from communal kitchens to neighborhood assemblies, from popular education and health care projects to collective childcare, from subsistence production to bartering clubs, from the recuperation of failed businesses and factories to the transformation of abandoned buildings into cultural and economically productive centers (Chejter 2002; RIGC 2003). In a time of social breakdown and desperation, women’s community and solidarity initiatives took care of many people’s problems as individuals, but also contributed to creating and expanding social solidarity ties, promoting social dialogue, and opening paths for a critique of neoliberal globalization and for envisioning alternative ways of living. Argentina was widely seen as a social laboratory, with men and women innovating ways of producing goods and services, relating to each other, and organizing politically. Many, like Paula—the

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factory worker—found in the crisis opportunities for personal and social change: The crisis entered everybody’s home. In my case, the crisis affected me by leaving me without a job, but it also opened the way for many things for me. . . . The crisis, along with things that you start to observe and do in your life, makes you to try other levels, to want to do other things, to open your mind to see things in a different way. . . . Some people subsist doing many different things [for example,] vegetable gardens. They endure the crisis. I also made handicrafts for a while, but I think that I need to go beyond that if I really want to change things. Because the economic crisis of the country is the political crisis of the country. . . . Society has to gain consciousness that it is not enough to do things to subsist, you see. One can’t leave subsistence for the next generations. We need a radical change, I think, so that we don’t leave them with debts.

Paula’s gain in political consciousness was by no means exceptional. The bleak economic situation catalyzed women’s growing participation in social movements and protests. For many women, their activism was rooted in embodied economic hardships. In the age of globalization, women’s marginalized bodies also became vehicles of courageous resistance.

chapter 3

z Beautiful Bodies femininity, appearance, and embodiment

Feminists have produced substantial literature showing that women’s bodily appearance and demeanor are central to the social construction of femininity.1 The way women move and dress, the amount of space they claim, and the size and shape of their bodies are essential to performances of gender, race, class, nationality, and sexuality. These practices produce and reproduce particular forms of feminine embodiment, distinguishing women from men, but also creating distinctions among groups of women (e.g., Bettie 2003; Hanser 2005; Henley and Freeman 1995; Salzinger 2003). Sociologists note that women’s and men’s bodily comportment and presentation are not merely reflective of individual preferences or choices but are structured through systems of social inequality (Lorber 1994). Through embodied reiteration or disruption of social expectations, individual men and women help to perpetuate or undermine such social systems (West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and Zimmerman 1987). Even though women’s bodies are individually diverse and have the potential to be and do many different things, dominant rules of femininity tend to narrow these multiple possibilities. These norms not only dictate how women’s bodies should look, but how women ought to behave, think, and feel. This chapter explores how gender discourses, class inequalities, unrecognized racism, heteronormativity, and national identity imperatives have helped configure certain types of feminine bodily demeanor and appearance. In Argentina, and in Buenos Aires in particular, Western expectations of femininity are alive and well, even magnified. Given a nation-building scheme that involved a purposeful attempt to become European-like, it is not surprising that women’s bodies would become one of the territories in which Argentine elites’ desires to “civilize” the nation would be carried out since the inception of the nation. This civilizing process has partly been achieved through the incorporation of Western models of femininity associated with a white European heritage. Identification with Western culture has been reflected, among others, by gender and sexuality 64

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arrangements that advanced male power and heterosexuality as the norm. In the economic realm, even though Argentina has gone through successive crises, dreams about wealthy Argentina, the celebrated world’s granary, have prevailed. Culturally sanctioned femininity echoes these themes, exalting white and middle-upper class ways of being a woman. Looking back in time one can see that privileged femininity developed concomitantly and in relation to popular (working-class, low-income) and criolla femininities.2 This dynamic tension is illustrated by the virtue awards that the Ladies of the Beneficence Society gave to low-income women, or by the beauty contests among working-class women in the industrial, agricultural, and energy sectors of the economy during the first half of the twentieth century.3 Values such as feminine virtuosity, sacrifice, altruism, dignified work, and filial and fraternal love became part of a package that added to or was associated with physical beauty as working-class feminine ideals. These notions contrasted both with the deviant working-class femininity embodied by the figure of the prostitute and with the elegant and hierarchically superior feminine embodiment of upper-class women (Lorenzo, Rey, and Tossounian 2005). The mentioned contests enjoyed the backing of prominent figures at the national and regional levels and were connected to larger political goals, such as nation-building, economic development, the promotion of the country’s natural beauty, and the celebration of governmental successes. Lobato (2005a, 181) narrates how the transformation of May Day under Peronism—which was integral to the Peronist “culture of the masses” project—included the selection of a queen of work as part of the festivities between 1948 and 1955.4 During that period, shows Lobato, one of the labor unions supportive of the government explicitly counted these beauty contests among a list of Peronist achievements in line with social justice. While women in Argentina have had to negotiate forces common to other Western/ized societies, they also contend with the legacies of country-specific historical developments that shaped how notions of femininity have been defined. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the legacies of state terrorism and its bodily discipline regime, the increasing commercial display of sexualized female bodies in the media during the democratic transition, and the cult of consumerism and bodily appearance during the neoliberal 1990s all have a bearing on constructions of femininity. Economic problems related to the subsequent economic crisis brought the classed dimensions of feminine embodiment into sharp relief. Physical beauty, judged by very narrow standards, is a key requirement of appropriate feminine appearance and plays a prominent role in Argentine culture. Feminist scholars and activists have argued that many of the bodily requirements of normative femininity and beauty in Western societies have served to perpetuate women’s subordination by restricting women’s mobility, harming their health, negatively affecting their self-esteem and self-image, and exaggerating their differences from men.5 Excessive dieting and eating problems like

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anorexia and bulimia among women (Bordo 1993b; Chernik 1995; MacSween 1993), restrictive feminine clothing (Henley and Freeman 1995), the popularization of cosmetic surgery (Morgan 1991; Dull and West 1991), and advertisement of products to alter and “improve” women’s bodies (Kilbourne and Jhally 2000) have been linked to stringent beauty expectations. Yet as serious as the implications of such bodily pressures are, some feminists note that women’s beauty practices are more than just a reflection of sexist oppression. Such practices may give women a sense of technical competence, an opportunity to develop their sense of self, and a chance to experience a kind of bodily nurturance, fun, creativity, and playfulness that may not be readily available in other realms of their lives (Black and Sharma 2001; Frost 1999; Smith 1990). Frost (1999, 117) points out that neither dominant (patriarchal, capitalist) interpretations of women’s bodies, nor many feminists’ view that women’s attention to their appearance are expressions of a “colonized consciousness,” can account for the pleasure women may derive from “doing looks.” According to Frost, women’s reported dissatisfaction with their appearance may be not just the result of pervasive images of normative femininity, but may also be explained by the fact that women’s attention to their appearance has been negatively cataloged as vanity (by patriarchal religion), narcissism (by psychoanalytic theory), and false consciousness (by feminists). In this chapter I draw attention to the ways in which women’s bodily appearance and demeanor relate to dominant norms of femininity in Argentina, particularly in Buenos Aires. I show how specific configurations of racism and class in Argentina intersect with the ways in which women who do not fit social ideals experience their bodies, and how normative femininity is firmly anchored within what Judith Butler (1990) called a “heterosexuality matrix,” negatively affecting both lesbian and heterosexual women. While I question the social pressures to achieve certain looks and the contradictions such demands create for women, it is not my job to judge individual women’s engagement with their appearance. As Frost (1999) argues, pretending that we can disengage from how we look is unrealistic and further reinforces mind/body dichotomies. Yet my analysis explores how stringent expectations create difficult situations for women and reproduce inequalities based on gender, race, nation, sexuality, and class. What exactly constitutes femininity, or what it means to be a woman in Argentina, was seemingly elusive and at times hard to articulate for the women in this study. Yet for something that is generally not taught as a formal lesson, the women I interviewed knew remarkably well what the rules of normative femininity in Argentine culture are. Whether they endorsed these norms, reluctantly followed them, strategically negotiated them, or actively resisted them, they were keenly aware of what constitutes socially desirable traits. These women were “accountable” to these norms, even if they followed a different path (West and Zimmerman 1987). Soledad, a middle-class interviewee, pointed out: “they say

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that Argentine women are the most beautiful. There’s a lot of pressure. . . . They get that very much inside your head.” As with other women, Soledad was aware of the demanding beauty expectations. This awareness, in turn, informed her behavior and shaped her self-concept. By following their own train of thought, by reflecting on specific cards they picked during the course of interviews (e.g., “femininity,” “bodily appearance”), or in response to questions like, “What does it mean to be a woman?” or “What does it mean to be feminine?” the women in this study articulated ideas about feminine embodiment that both expressed and resisted hegemonic definitions. Here I examine these perspectives, placing them in the context of broad political, cultural, and economic processes in Argentina.

Constructing Femininity Bodies Under Siege: Legacies of State Terrorism Argentina has a relatively recent history of state promotion of specific modes of feminine embodiment with particularly dire consequences for those who deviated. In her book, Disappearing Acts, Diana Taylor (1997) shows that displaying a proper, gender-specific, bodily appearance was key to the construction of national identity during the last military dictatorship. Complying with the cleancut look and gender-coded conservative dress standards envisioned by the military was a way for both men and women to deflect suspicions of having communist, leftist, or other kinds of subversive inclinations. The military aimed to ban any kind of political activity, and for women this prohibition meant a retreat into the home, to the realm of family and motherhood. Being a docile, submissive, good woman—as opposed to the bad women embodied by female subversives—was partly manifested through a proper feminine look. The bodily appearance standards the military disseminated served to reinforce gender inequality and heterosexism by encouraging the population to comply with rigid and exclusionary norms of sexuality. Men were to avoid long hair or any clothing that may have cast doubts on their heterosexual orientation, their being real men. In the case of women, “doing nationality” properly was intertwined with patriarchal ideas about femininity (Taylor 1997). Normative womanhood ideals were diffused through multiple channels, including the media, the educational system, and the church—institutions with close connections to the state that, in turn, encouraged families to monitor their own members (Feitlowitz 1998; Laudano 1998; Taylor 1997). In talking about feminine beauty ideals in Argentina, Hasanbegovic (1998) recounts how the military dictatorship torturers tried to impose their femininity standards on the women they were holding in illegal detention centers. The military expected these women to use makeup, wear dresses and skirts instead of jeans, and exhibit docile demeanors. Such compliance partially served to indicate to the military which of the abducted women were “recoverable”—that is,

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which of the women showed repentance for their previous lifestyle and were thus eligible to continue living (Actis et al. 2001; Hasanbegovic 1998). The “recuperation” process instituted in one of the most infamous concentration camps (the School of Mechanics of the Navy) consisted of selecting some of the detainees to assist the military with administrative work while expecting them to change their worldviews (Feitlowitz 1998). In the case of disappeared women who were targeted for recuperation, the process aimed not only to force them to abandon previous activist practices, reject social justice beliefs and ideals, and betray fellow militants but also to transform their physical appearance. The testimonies of women who survived the military concentration camps show the importance their military captors attributed to bodily appearance and to women’s sexual compliance (Actis et al. 2001; Diana 1996; Partnoy 1986). One of these women described the advice that another female detainee gave her when they were in captivity: I was very disheveled, with a black turtleneck and large pants that would fall off when I stood up. She was all fixed up, wearing make up, and tidy. She explained to me that navy men liked for one to be well dressed because that was a symptom of recuperation. (Actis et al. 2001, 62)

In the School of Mechanics of the Navy, women who had been abducted, tortured, and forced to work for the military were sometimes taken to fashionable restaurants and nightclubs on pseudo dates with their captors, as if these were ordinary interactions between men and women.6 The expectation was that the abducted women would look properly feminine, sometimes with clothing that the military gave them (Actis et al. 2001; Torres and Rodríguez Arias 2002). Some of the women in this study recounted stories about bodily appearance expectations during the dictatorship. Viviana, who was a teacher during that period, linked the dictatorship’s repressive ideology and the clothing standards set at school. She remembered a dispute with the school principal over her violation of the dress code: Viviana was reprimanded for wearing pants instead of a dress or skirt. Pants were seen as improper clothing for female teachers and as potentially stimulating students’ sexuality. With the return of democracy, Viviana resigned her position in this school after an argument with the principal regarding the strict dress code imposed on students, too. She was infuriated and left, asking the principal whether she had realized that the military dictatorship was over. From Viviana’s perspective, the military dictatorship was related to the school’s obsession with bodily disciplines affecting both teachers and students. Frida, another interviewee, also remembered dress expectations during the dictatorship. At that time, she was a middle-class teenager and regularly participated in a Catholic group in her parish. She recalled the way in which the church’s ideology and the military discourse were intertwined and reflected in the parish priests’ expectations about teenage appearance. She talked about how

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her local church tightened the control of the group after a priest in a nearby neighborhood was killed: Guys could not wear bell bottom pants because that was for faggots . . . No long hair for males—all the boys at the church had short hair, just in case. . . . We, the girls, were supposed to have high necklines, preferably long sleeve shirts, and no see through material. Nothing, no tight clothing, no pants or jeans, and no mini-skirts. That was for the others. We belonged to God. We were saints, and we did not do those things or show anything. . . . My adolescence was always pretty contained, repressed, right? It has also a lot to do with the issue of emotions, the repression of feelings and emotions, and with the repression that was experienced in the country. Then, everything was directed to that, right? It was a very subjected body, very much turned to the inside.

Although the dictatorship had varying levels of success in imposing the expected bodily appearance in different settings or with respect to different individuals, the military propaganda was palpable, and it aimed at shaping consciousness, behaviors, and ways of being. Such was the general sociopolitical context that surrounded the bodily experiences of women in Argentina who were teenagers or adults during the dictatorship, regardless of their level of awareness about what was going on at that time. While bodily appearance may be perceived as something trivial or frivolous, governmental and institutional investment in enforcing certain appearance rules suggests that regulating how bodies look is an important form of social control, of achieving certain kinds of citizens (e.g., compliant), and of enforcing certain kinds of social relationships (e.g., hierarchical, differentiated by sex, and adhering to heterosexuality).

Democracy and the Contradictory Politics of Feminine Bodily Appearance The fall of the dictatorship in the early 1980s was followed by a greater openness in many areas of social life that had been tightly controlled previously, including cultural production through the media. During the 1980s, the proliferation of hypersexualized images of women with scant clothing in the media was part of the cultural and commercial phenomenon known as destape (literally, “taking the lid off,” but referring more broadly to a loosening of the tight control on various forms of expression). While the representation of women’s naked or seminaked bodies contrasted with the images of good women promoted by the dictatorship’s propaganda, this aspect of the destape did not necessarily represent sexual liberation on women’s own terms, but served more as outlets for male desire. Since then, the commercialization of women’s bodies in the media and beauty industry has sometimes been used as a proxy for women’s liberation—though apparently the women having the right to supposedly liberate themselves in such ways are mostly women who embody hegemonic beauty standards.

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During the 1990s the cult of bodily appearance in Argentina became particularly pronounced and intertwined with a trend toward cultural frivolity and consumerism—what some called the Menemist fiesta, in reference to Carlos Menem, the Argentine president of the period. While neoliberal economics were implemented full scale, and some of their negative effects started to be felt (for example, the lay-offs that followed privatizations), broad sectors of the population, particularly the middle and upper classes, seemed oblivious to the growing social problems. A number of factors encouraged a culture of consumption, including imported goods flooding the market, the availability of credit plans, control of inflation, and shopping malls sprouting up all over Buenos Aires. Furthermore, the salaries of employed people were relatively high in dollars because of peso-dollar parity. As Victoria, one of my interviewees, pointed out, the appearance of prosperity was symbolized by the perception that Argentines were having “pizza with champagne”—a phrase popularized during those years. Argentina was portrayed as being on its way to the First World, partly thanks to the “carnal relations” that the country was said to maintain with the United States. A government representative used that phrase to describe the close-knit relationships between Argentina and the United States during the Menemist period, and then other people repeated this as a joke. Yet far from being equal partners, in this (hetero) sexual romance metaphor, Argentina was, in fact, a feminized partner submitting to the power and desires of the United States in the hope of obtaining political favors and economic rewards. During this period, the differences between politicians and pop stars became increasingly blurred as the former turned into wannabe celebrities and reached peoples’ homes through television shows and popular magazines. Carlos Menem, the country’s president, helped set a frivolous tone as he flirted with supermodels, mingled with celebrities, showed off his Ferrari like a playboy, and rejuvenated his looks through cosmetic surgery. Actors, singers, and sports stars became candidates for important governmental positions and the political environment—mixed with the president’s family scandals—sometimes more resembled a soap opera than real life. Politicians starred on television shows in order to bolster their popularity among audiences/potential constituents. The physical appearance of people in politics seemed to become as important, or even more so, than their ideas and plans to administer the country. These trends helped create a politics of distraction, focusing on appearance and glitter, deflecting attention from what was going on politically and economically in the country, and downplaying the likely negative consequences of the economic model being implemented. The images of celebrity women, including actresses and supermodels, were particularly prominent in setting standards of beauty and femininity, and looking youthful was integral to these ideas. Supermodels became icons to be emulated and gained increasing social stature, as exemplified by Menem’s making time to receive German supermodel Claudia Schiffer. The prominence

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attributed to the world of supermodels was also reflected by events like the “Dotto Model Scouting 2001,” which attracted eight thousand teenagers aspiring to be models (Soto 2001).7 Commenting on the appearance of Argentine teenagers a few years before, the president of Ford Models stated, “There’s something in the Argentine culture. . . . They look like they’ve been trained to be models, but they’re just normal high-school girls” (Koehl and Van Boven 1996, 8). If we understand this training as gender socialization centered on developing culturally appropriate femininity, then this beauty expert may just be right. In Argentina, physical beauty is often portrayed as one of the main values women can offer, and a number of formal and informal agents of social control make sure that women know this, including the media, family, friends, and even strangers in the streets (Hasanbegovic 1998). The cult of body improvement, modification, and decoration was integral to the Menemist fiesta. The youthful, sculptured, and pampered bodies of female celebrities were widely featured, and bodily appearance seemed to be ever more essential to the success of both men and women, but especially the latter. Cosmetic surgery gained popularity as a method to beautify women’s bodies. Argentina became internationally notorious as a hub for cosmetic surgery, and Buenos Aires, in particular, was home of an overpopulation of doctors in the cosmetic surgery field. According to Mariana Carbajal’s investigation (1999), while the World Health Organization recommended one plastic surgeon per every 150,000 inhabitants, by 1999 Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area counted one cosmetic surgeon per every 9,200 inhabitants. One of the problems with the cosmetic surgery boom in Argentina was its deficient regulation. Carbajal exposed cases of poor sanitation, inadequate inspection of facilities, lack of enforcement of informed consent norms, clandestine clinics, and pseudo-doctors selling treatments with unauthorized substances.8 The growing perception of cosmetic surgery almost as a necessity reached public hospitals, which offered free or nearly free cosmetic surgery.9 Hasanbegovic (1998) pointed out the contradiction between the relative availability of this service in public facilities and insufficient social services in the context of neoliberalism. She questioned the allocation of public resources to provide cosmetic surgery for “healthy women who have no deformities” (2), while resources for women who need, for example, shelters to escape domestic violence were scarcely available. Similarly, resources for ill people or individuals with life-threatening conditions were decreasing. Among individual interviewees in this study, 14 percent reported that they had undergone some kind of cosmetic surgery, including operations to remove wrinkles; modify the size and shape of their noses; eliminate fat (liposuction); remove sagging skin from under their eyes; and augment, reduce, and/or alter the shape of breasts. All of these women were of middle-class backgrounds and were unhappy about particular features of their bodies. Some of the women with fewer economic resources also said they would have gone through cosmetic surgery had they had sufficient money.

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The facade of a never-ending party during the Menemist era could barely hide the social and economic crisis that was well under way: more precarious jobs, laid-off workers, declining access to health care, and a system of public education suffering from economic upheaval. Poor and working-class women were already struggling to pick up the pieces left by the economic changes, but many people seemed to be in denial. As Moncarz (1997, 55) observed, at the same time that more and more women were impoverished, marginalized, and excluded by the neoliberal economic project, the model of a woman “free from conflict” and intensely focused on her bodily appearance was being advanced: enter the “light woman.” Itkin (1996) called this idealized model of womanhood the light woman to underscore the seemingly untroubled nature of her existence—that is, an individualistic, politically uncommitted, socially unaware woman mostly concerned about her looks and personal well-being. Moncarz suggests that while this model did not fit all women, it nonetheless exerted a widespread pressure toward compliance and homogenization.

Beauty, Class, and Embodied Femininity in Times of Neoliberal Crisis With the 2001 economic crisis, the party of the previous decade was clearly over and embodying the light woman became more and more untenable, both because the economic crisis made it more difficult for women to spend money on their bodily appearance and because social problems and turmoil became more salient. As examined in the last chapter, poor and working-class women faced urgent problems such as sheer survival and figuring out how they would make ends meet and feed their families. Middle-class women also faced difficulties stemming from unemployment, economic insecurity, and declining standards of living. Still, economic problems during the crisis did not mean women suddenly stopped being concerned about their looks. In this study, women’s anxieties about their bodily appearance, regardless of class, were consistent with pressures to comply with dominant models of beauty and with capitalist imperatives. Capitalist globalization is grounded in production geared to promote conspicuous consumption, particularly in relation to physical appearance, which in turn plays a prime role in the placement and perception of bodies in a global social hierarchy. Paradoxically, while globalization sells products and images of fashion and beauty for the world to consume, it also prevents more and more people from meeting such expectations. At a time in which employment was becoming an ever more precious objective in Argentina, women’s appearance could carry serious economic implications, perhaps even meaning the difference between finding and losing a job. Argentina is a place where job ads customarily and explicitly seek candidates with buena presencia (literally meaning “good presence,” but referring to physical appearance) and may require the submission of a photo of the candidate

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along with a résumé and references. In the case of women, buena presencia is a code for white, middle-class, heteronormative femininity. Women with darker skin, with worn-out faces due to poverty, with too many years of age, or with too much weight according to fashion parameters can easily face disadvantages in their search for employment. Once on the job, beauty ideals may be enforced through formal or informal means. Soledad, a middle-class office employee, told stories about her boss’s regular offensive remarks about a female coworker who was overweight and thus was deemed unfit to go to conferences and be the image of the company. Lorena, a young educated woman, suspected that her bodily features (brown skin, not “blonde and tall,” as she explained) influenced the dismissive way in which employers handled her job applications. Delfina, a young woman who worked as a promoter handing out free samples and information about products, explained that her employer provided only small uniform sizes, so she sometimes had trouble fitting into them, even though she was slim. Several women in this study mentioned that they had a hard time buying clothes that they liked because the clothing sizes available in stores tended to be too small. This problem affected not only their ability to get clothing but also their self-esteem. In the words of Diana—one interviewee who experienced this problem—if she were thinner she would feel “more comfortable with the clothing, and would not have to go through the humiliation, and terrible gaze [by store employees] that suggest: ‘Why did you come here?’” This difficulty was not exclusive of women who were “overweight.” As a possible solution, legislators of the province of Buenos Aires passed a law (which became operative in 2005) making it mandatory for the clothing industry to offer a wider range of sizes (yet this is often not enforced) (Thiteux-Altschul 2007). The goal of this law and other similar initiatives was to decrease the pressures on women, especially teenagers, to be thin. These pressures have been linked to the development of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia (Valente 2000), which are pronounced in Argentina (Meehan and Katzman 2001). According to reported estimates by ALUBA (an organization dealing with eating disorders),10 “in Argentina, 1 of every 25 adolescents suffers bulimia or anorexia. And 1 of every 10 suffers some kind of eating disorder (90% are women between 14 and 18 years old)” (Elustondo 2004). While women did not completely distance themselves from their bodily appearance during the crisis, other concerns were likely to take higher priority. Beatriz, a hairdresser, explained the drop of clients in her business, saying that some women faced the choice between “a haircut and a kilo of meat. And one would say, ‘two kilos of meat.’ It is logical. I would also do it.” Fanny, who survived as a cardboard gatherer, confirmed Beatriz’s observation: It is difficult to be a woman: sometimes you need time for yourself, but sometimes you do not have it, and you have to go around [gathering cardboard] . . . There are women who are lucky. I don’t know, they go to beauty salons, take

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Fanny’s statement highlights important themes about femininity, beauty, and social inequality in Argentina, especially during times of crisis. Her narrative suggests that proper bodily appearance continued to be a significant aspect of womanhood, even though it was more difficult to attain. In Fanny’s narrative the idea that “you need time for yourself” includes the need to pay attention to looks. However, lack of time and money can get in the way of developing a bodily appearance that fits prevailing standards of beauty. She pointed out the inequalities between women who are “lucky” and those who “had it hard,” and how this was reflected on their bodies. Furthermore, besides the social expectation to be beautiful, women are also expected to be the main caregivers for their children, and these two expectations may be in contradiction with each other when economic resources are scarce. Thus, “being a woman is hard,” particularly for poor and socially marginalized women. Rosalía, who was raised in poverty but moved up the social ladder when she partnered with a high-income man, made additional connections between beauty, economic crisis, and womanhood. According to Rosalía, having a beautiful body is intrinsically important for women. She argued that attention to bodily appearance has positive effects, which the economic crisis jeopardized: I think that [the crisis] leads you to anxiety, which is what leads you to obesity. It leads you to not take care of yourself, to not have a way of taking care of yourself, because within the crisis the only thing that you do is to continually run around urgently—so you don’t take care of yourself. Being a woman, you have to minimally fix up your hair, your nails. Because it makes you feel good, not because it is necessary, but because it makes you feel good. And “physical appearance” [referring to the card she picked], that boosts your self-esteem. You see yourself different, and suddenly you go and fix up yourself. You have nothing to do, so you fix yourself up very well and say, “Now I go out, and find a job, and do everything.” But suddenly, if you say, “I want to go out, but look at my hair, look at my nails,” or “I don’t have shoes to wear.” Then that affects you a lot, and then all the anxieties come, and you start to directly not take care of yourself.

One of the first impacts of the crisis, according to Rosalía, is a loss of control over one’s life and over one’s appearance, because the hardships are so great that women have to “continually run around urgently.” This is inflected by class, given that it is poor women who are the ones most likely to have to run around to ensure basic survival. From Rosalía’s perspective, the crisis created a vicious cycle that prevented women from paying attention to their

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bodily appearance, which in turn had an impact on possibilities for achievement and self-esteem. Such ideas resonate with discourses that blur the lines between beauty and health, between the body’s interior and exterior (e.g., fitness discourses), and between beauty treatments and “taking care of yourself.” Rosalía linked emotional-physical states like anxiety, low self-esteem, and obesity to the crisis. She also pointed to the pleasurable aspects of beauty treatments (women do it “not because it is necessary, but because it makes you feel good”). Yet this is a deeply gendered process since it is as a woman that the beauty treatments rendered inaccessible by the crisis become necessary. That is, the preoccupation to look a certain way is shaped by social norms and institutions, and it is a specific social context that makes certain bodily rituals especially satisfying. Other class dimensions embedded in Rosalía’s description include aspects of normative feminine embodiment like exhibiting fixed-up nails. This is partly about showing a particular kind of women’s (middle and upper-class) ability to avoid the hard manual labor usually done by working-class or poor women and men. Nail treatments are a way of “doing gender” as well as “accomplishing class” (West and Fenstermaker 1995). The status of a low-income woman who claims to be a hard worker may be questioned if she exhibits long, painted, polished nails. This was the case of a woman who ran a kitchen for poor children in Buenos Aires. Middle-class women who had donated food to the kitchen in the midst of the crisis criticized her long, fixed-up nails. The implication was that if she could have such fingernails, she must not have been working hard enough and was a fraud. Such perceptions contributed to casting further doubts over the legitimacy of the kitchen project, which was already ridden by other cross-class conflicts and suspicions of fraudulent activities. While women may be judged harshly if they do not comply with normative femininity, since embodiment is also supposed to reflect class structures, women who cross the borders of class (like a working-class woman adopting features of upper-class femininity) may be perceived as impostors or as being out of place.11 Women in this study negotiated femininity in complex ways, incorporating elements of compliance, circumvention, and outright resistance. Some women strove to emulate aspects of normative femininity or told stories about how they used these ideals strategically. For example, Estela, a piquetera living in a shantytown, explained that femininity involves “your behavior, your way of talking, your way of walking, your way of dressing.” She further specified that femininity means acting fina (elegant, ladylike), avoiding bad words, being deferential, fixing up one’s appearance, wearing women’s clothing. She explained that though she usually did not display many of these traits, she sometimes tried to enact them selectively for heterosexual seduction purposes. She assumed that men are attracted to stereotypically feminine women, so she performed culturally appropriate femininity when she was interested in particular men. She told the story of

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her romantic attraction to a man she used to work with and how she tried to act feminine in front of him: More like a woman, not so foul-mouthed. Because I used to say a lot of bad words, you know? Like . . . I usually don’t talk without saying something filthy every two words. You know how I am. Well, that’s how I was there, or even worse. But with him, I was different, I pretended to be more fina, to be more like, “Oh, and what do you think? Oh look!” [Feigns surprise. Laughs.]

For Estela, normative femininity was a situational embodied performance that she engaged in strategically, but that could not be sustained in the long term. The class connotations of being fina are partly related to specific clothing and accessories and a particular cultural capital that were largely unavailable to Estela. Given the context of the shantytown in which she was immersed, normative femininity could not fulfill the functions that it may serve for upper-class women (e.g., linking them to a powerful man who would support them or allowing them entrance to privileged occupations and social venues). In fact, Estela had different sets of constraints and some opportunities to display a less inhibited feminine embodiment. Much of her life context encouraged her to display supposedly unfeminine characteristics such as speaking up and doing so loudly (within her social movement or when confronting government authorities) or physically fighting in her neighborhood as a means of settling conflicts or defending herself and her children from her physically abusive husband. Furthermore, Estela’s body also exhibited the “(not so) hidden injuries of class” (Adair 2002, 454), namely untreated and maltreated health problems (missing teeth and body scars), which placed her further from beauty ideals. Her economic conditions, worsened by the economic crisis, prevented her from following a medical treatment and maintaining a special diet for a chronic disease she suffered. Thus, undergoing the beauty treatments that fina women are expected to adopt were impossible luxuries for Estela. The focus group with poor women enrolled in a social assistance program highlighted other ways in which class inequalities delineated embodied differences among women. Ana, one of the women in the group, contrasted her body with those of women with greater economic resources, particularly celebrities: [They] are more perfect, they can have surgery. They will never change. Their bodies can remain the same. They have money, so they go and have surgery and they have their opportunity. [In contrast], we are of our families and that’s all, of your husband, your child . . . And your body . . . that’s how your body develops. I feel angry because I changed a lot, I can’t lose weight, I can’t wear the clothes that I wore before, and sometimes I cry because I can’t be like I used to be . . . I would like to go back to what I was.

Ana resented the timeless quality that privileged women are able to buy for their bodies—bodies that seem untouched by work, stress, or other problems.

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Through cosmetic surgery and other expensive beauty treatments, privileged women can mold their bodies in ways impossible for poor women. Ana did not contest the normative feminine ideal but rather felt frustrated about her inability to achieve it. From Ana’s perspective, her body had a more instrumental quality that allowed her to perform her domestic duties, but that was in deep contradiction with norms that promote women’s bodies as objects of display. During the crisis-ridden period of this study, the media continued to be fixated on women’s bodily appearance. Popular magazines like Gente (People) were as focused as ever on women’s breasts and butts. A summer 2003 issue of the magazine continued to feature “the best bodies of the summer” (as it had done for the previous five years) (Gente 2003). This issue showed the bodies of female celebrities in one- or two-piece bathing suits and gave key information about these women, like body measurements, confessions of plastic surgery, and beauty treatments. Disembodied male voices (in the columns’ commentaries) were featured as experts on women’s bodies: A male photographer bragged about the magazine’s tradition of including bodies like those of “sixteen-year-old Lolita[s],” top models, showgirls, and actresses who bear the “unique stamp” of the magazine (Turienzo 2003, 24). A male clothing designer pointed out, after coming from an international fashion forum, that “the Argentine woman is hyperfeminine. . . . Argentine women are incredible. In our country we find bodies that have been very worked out and cared for, with a natural base that was favorable to us” (Adot 2003, 22). A male personal trainer explained the diet and exercise routine that he advises for supermodels (Benadiva 2003). And a journalist said, after referring to the bodies of different female celebrities (bodies that still fit narrow beauty standards), that “though the crisis in Argentina is eternal, we luckily still have women for all tastes” (Casella 2003, 26). Such statements include a number of problematic assumptions about women in Argentina, such as the idea that celebrities truly represent a wide range of female bodies; that women’s bodies exist to satisfy men’s pleasure; that women’s bodies can be branded as commodities; and that men are the best judges of women’s bodily appearance and lives. The last statement—referring to the crisis—trivializes one of the most serious economic disasters in the country’s modern history, while expecting people (men) to be soothed by women’s bodies. This playful rhetoric places the burden of ameliorating the negative effects of the crisis on women’s proper bodily appearance. The statement implies that as long as there are beautiful women in Argentina, people (men) can feel better, even if everything else is falling apart. Normative femininity, including orientation to other people’s needs and feminine bodies as showpieces, was being marshaled as a service to the nation. In a climate of economic crisis, when many men’s sense of masculinity was challenged by unemployment and the inability to fulfill traditional male roles, women’s sexy bodies were also used to reassure men of their sexual prowess.

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Such is the case of the image of celebrity Anabel Cherubito (photographed in sexy poses and scant clothing) in another issue of Gente during the same year. Cherubito was living in Argentina but reportedly left the country for Spain because of the crisis. In front of her two-page picture she is quoted, in large print, as saying, “Argentine men are more fiery than the Spanish” (Fahsbender 2003, 64–65). In a social and economic context that could make men feel more insecure and even emasculated, a woman embodying desirable femininity conveyed the idea that men’s sexual prowess remained intact. Perhaps Spanish men were economically more powerful, the owners of some of the companies privatized under neoliberalism (e.g., telephone and airline companies), but they could not compete with Argentine men when it came to sexual potency. Other media sources, like mainstream newspapers, encouraged women to keep up a proper bodily appearance by providing crisis-appropriate beauty recipes. An article in the newspaper Clarín presented “tricks and secrets to extend the usage [of beauty products] and to recycle them when they get dry, sticky, or broken” (Ortega 2003, 7). An article in the newspaper La Nación alluded explicitly to the economic conditions in the country: “Devalued salaries, slim pockets, and multiplied prices. An addition that threatens daily beauty habits (hygiene, hydration, nutrition, moisturizing, and solar protection). Some low cost measures to present a good face to bad weather” (Pandolfo 2002, 4). These homemade beauty treatments encouraged women to keep up their looks even in the midst economic problems. The article takes for granted that women have, or should have, certain beauty habits that need to be maintained. The advice is implicitly directed to women from the declining middle class: women who supposedly had access to expensive products but then saw that possibility foreclosed. The homemade beauty recipes presented were mostly based on food preparations, including slices of tomatoes, cucumbers, yogurt, milk, and oats— products that were indeed less expensive than imported skin lotions, but that poor women hard hit by the crisis probably wanted to use to feed themselves and their families instead of rubbing onto their skin or hair. The latter article plays on the saying “al mal tiempo, buena cara” (to bad weather, a good face), which in Argentina means that when confronted with problems, one should remain optimistic. In the case of women, a good face to confront bad weather (the crisis) meant quite literally complying with hegemonic beauty mandates: a face free of wrinkles, with a fresh, moisturized, smooth, even-colored skin, framed by shiny hair. A good face could serve to hide the crisis, preventing other people from detecting it in dark circles under women’s eyes, in skin tired by overwork, in teeth ruined by lack of health care. Without beauty treatments, the crisis could be more easily seen in peoples’ bodies. Beatriz, a hairdresser, was very adept at reading the crisis in the physical appearance of people around her. She was living in a working-class neighborhood in Greater Buenos Aires, and with the crisis she started to use public transportation:

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Because of the crisis, I started taking the bus. The first times I took the bus, I froze, and I thought: “What happened to these women?” The women had very worn out clothing, bad haircuts, discolored hair, poorly colored hair. [I thought], “What’s going on? Which bus am I on?” Because that’s typical of the bus line 203 [a line that goes through poor and working-class areas in Greater Buenos Aires]. And I said, “Am I on the bus line 60 [a line that also reaches well-off neighborhoods]? I saw that everyone was . . . I looked at [people’s] shoes, and thought, “Shoes that are cheap, broken, torn . . . This is the crisis.”

Beatriz hinted at how bodies could function almost as a barometer of the economic situation of the country. Women’s elegant, fixed-up bodies had been a symbol of the city of Buenos Aires as a thriving urban center, but this image was not attainable for many. Implicit in Beatriz’s comment was the idea that what made this crisis distinctive was the way in which it touched middle-class sectors in intimate ways. Their bodies were getting closer to what was more typical of lower income people. Feminine beauty has always been about class as much as about gender, but growing economic problems made this intersection more evident. Without mounting economic difficulties, one way for middle-class women to differentiate themselves from the working class was through bodily appearance. Because of overwork and/or lack of money, fewer women could afford to maintain previous bodily looks or to access expensive treatments. Mariana, a young middleclass woman, had to take multiple jobs (as a kindergarten teacher, a mini-mart vendor, and a restaurant waitress) in order to make a living. She explained, “I did not have time for myself. I did not go to the gym anymore; I did not wax myself.” Her having to take so many jobs was a symptom of the declining conditions of the middle class, but what made this decline especially visible was that she could not perform the rituals of middle-class femininity any longer. For women in the middle class, the crisis represented a certain loss of privilege reflected on their bodies. One of the indirect effects of the economic collapse was to expose the socially constructed dimensions of privileged embodied practices that were often perceived as inherently feminine and natural. Ironically, while some women longed for lost or inaccessible beautification rituals, the most expensive treatments became increasingly available to international visitors, thus further intensifying the international hierarchy of bodies unfolding under globalization. With the 2001 economic crisis, the devaluation of the national currency, and the favorable exchange rate for people from other countries (especially those holding dollars or Euros), the business of cosmetic surgery in Argentina acquired more global dimensions. Argentina’s cosmetic procedures became relatively inexpensive compared to the cost in other countries, and “weekend touch-up tours” were offered to tourists.12 These tours, advertised in foreign magazines, consisted of excursions to natural and cultural

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attractions (e.g., vineyards, river rafting, and tours around Buenos Aires) combined with “express” cosmetic surgeries (Himitian 2002, 26). A news article in the Guardian described this phenomenon as the “irresistible rise of the tango-and-boob-job break in Argentina” (Balch 2006). Class is one important marker of femininity. The neglected bodies of middleclass women during the crisis and the chronically deteriorated bodies of women living in poverty produced shock and unease partly because they can be seen to represent the general decline of the country. Yet women’s bodies are not only classed and gendered but also racialized—even in a country that has generally refused to come to terms with racism as significant to social relations within the nation.

Feminine Embodiment, Racialized Bodies, and Transnational Imaginaries The way Argentine society has excluded, marginalized, or stigmatized certain racialized bodies is evidenced in the narratives of women who did not fit the white European ideal. Feminine beauty standards emerged in Argentina in connection to racialized nationhood processes that had Western Europe as a strong referent. Among the indicators of how female beauty and nation building were entwined in the first half of the twentieth century are the Fiestas de la Vendimia (Grape Harvest Celebration) in the province of Mendoza. These fiestas, which continue to this day, include the selection of a queen as a prominent part of the festivities. Belej, Martin, and Silveira (2005, 61) note that in 1938, this celebration started to feature women dressed in traditional attires representing several European ethnicities/nationalities but left out “indigenous elements, as much in the clothing and characterizations as in the allegorical carriages referring to Mendoza’s past. The harmonious fusion between the criollo and the immigrant exclude[d] any aboriginal element.” In that way the nation was performed on and through the bodies of beautiful women who, given the dominant “national and transnational imaginary” (Joseph 2000, 333), would allow the country to qualify for civilized status in the world order. The negative connotations attributed to bodily traits such as darker skin or other features associated with indigenous, Afro, or Asian peoples are some of the signs of racism in Argentina today. This pattern is not just similar or different to racialization processes in other sites; it also shows the relationship between local spaces and transborder processes—in this case, transnational representations of feminine bodies. The slogan about Argentine women as the most beautiful in the world evokes this transnational imaginary at the same time that it claims a top position in a global, racialized, hierarchy of beauty. Argentine women’s physical appearance is celebrated with nationalistic pride, as a unique national treasure, even as the country’s global standing in other matters—for example, the economy—is shaky. In that way, Argentine women are pressured to exhibit a particularly bountiful amount of idealized attributes.

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Tania, an Afro-descendent in her early forties who grew up in a politically vibrant family and community, critically commented on dominant models of femininity. She was particularly aware of the double bind that women who are not white confront—both based on her personal life experiences and because of her activist and higher education background. During our interview, she picked the cards “beauty” and “physical appearance,” arguing that society expects from women a certain way of presenting themselves, of dressing, and of being. She articulated some of the complex intersections of race, gender, and women’s physical appearance in Argentina: Society demands that you respond to particular models and I am not one of those models. At the same time I’m also a model of a different kind of beauty, which is also wanted—to put it some way—but in a negative manner, because of what I told you about harassment. There is a contradiction there, right? Here, physical appearance has certain parameters. What are those parameters? Well, thinness, whiteness, the blonder the better, etc., etc., which has nothing to do with me. And at the same time I am harassed because I am neither thin, nor blond, nor nothing, you see? I have a different type of beauty. I don’t know. I think that the Black woman has a different kind of beauty that belongs to her. But at the same time there’s a required physical appearance that is not the one we have. It is like there’s doublespeak in society, no? Society values a beauty standard that is not ours, but at the same time we are continuously harassed because of our physical appearance. That’s why I think I chose those two things [beauty and physical appearance].

Tania’s narrative shows how she had to grapple with the contradictions of invisibility and denigration in Argentine culture, and with an excess of attention and exoticization of her bodily features, demeanor, and choice of clothing. She explained that her body triggers explicitly negative kinds of attention, mostly in the form of sexual harassment, or attention that is meant as a compliment but which is, in fact, patronizing. These comments made her feel uncomfortable because they put her constantly on the spot and usually highlight a stereotypical view of Afro-descendents. She related that one time when she braided her hair, some people wanted to touch her braids because “she looked like a doll.” At parties, she was often pressured to dance—a demand that resonated with dominant ideas about black people as great performers and entertainers. When at work or other social settings she had been effusively complimented for her colorful clothing, constructing her appearance as exotic. In her daily life, she also had to contend with pejorative ideas about black people that are ingrained in Argentine language and culture. Pejorative references to negritos (little blacks) conflate negative imagery of dark-skinned individuals (including, but not limited to, Afro-descendents) and poor or working-class people. Sayings like “caliente como negra en baile” (as horny as a negra [pejorative term for a poor and/or black

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woman] dancing) are sexist and racist constructions of Afro-women as hypersexual and available. The narrative of Franca, an indigenous woman, also speaks to the way in which systems of class, gender, and race-ethnicity are intertwined in the social marginalization of particular women’s bodies. Franca picked the card “physical appearance” because she felt that women are particularly exposed to social judgment based on their looks. She saw this in the media and in interactions with many men who pay disproportionate attention to women’s bodies. Idealized notions of beauty in Argentine society are particularly difficult to achieve for a woman like Franca, as her bodily features could never fit within that narrow frame. Unlike other women who tried to resolve this contradiction by attempting to modify ethnic noses or other racialized bodily features through cosmetic surgery (see, for example, Carbajal 1999; Hasanbegovic 1998), Franca was proud of her indigenous heritage, which she often reclaimed through her clothing, wearing traditional woven fabrics. Yet Franca’s narrative also suggests that she was concerned about how her racialized body could be read as criminal, deviant, or ignorant in the context of a racist society. As an indigenous woman, she felt that it is not as important to be 90–60–90 (the idealized measure in centimeters for breasts, waist, and hips), but to have her hair well groomed, to be fixed up, and have a clean appearance. She explained that from the perspective of dominant society someone “without good clothes, a negrito, or a villero [shanty town-dweller] is not the same as a white person—they have that ingrained.” That is, according to Franca, her feminine body would be judged not only by gender parameters (being fixed up), but also by racialized and class parameters reflected in the discrimination against negritos or villeros, and by the association between dirtiness and poverty. For women with brown skin, regardless of their actual class standing, looking clean may help avert stereotypical suspicions of criminality and of membership in the lower class. Franca offered several examples of how her darker skin and indigenous features had been a source of discrimination—from people who hid their purses in the subway when near her, to police officers who stopped her in the street suspecting she was an illegal immigrant, to doormen who assumed she was a domestic worker and told her to use the service door when entering the buildings of well-off people. She also noticed that the differences between indigenous women like her and white European-looking women are not only limited to bodily appearance but also include demeanor. She argued that some of her fellow female students had it easier than her: “they are blond, tall, [so it does not matter so much] whether they are well-dressed or not. They have another vocabulary; they speak louder; they impose themselves. Instead, we [indigenous people] are always lowering our heads.” Physical appearance that matches dominant social expectations may give some women an edge, a sense of entitlement (“they speak louder; they impose themselves”) that may be absent for people

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who carry on their bodies (“we are always lowering our heads”) the weight of hundreds of years of colonization, exclusion, and mistreatment. Bodily management was one way in which some women coped with discriminatory practices and attitudes. During my interview with Neca, a Peruvian immigrant, she picked the cards “skin color,” “race,” and “ethnicity.” She explained her choice in the following way: Because as an immigrant woman here in Argentina, we generally suffer the most discrimination because we are of the Peruvian race. “Skin color,” because we are dark and short. They discriminate against us for that reason. People already see you and they say, “This is Peruvian, ‘Peruca’ or ‘Perucha’ [pejorative epithets].” Sometimes, even one resents one’s skin color, or one’s origins. We say, “Who do they [Argentines] think they are? Just because they are white?” . . . A few days ago, my young daughter came from school and told me, “Mom, what do these Argentines think they are? I’m angry because they say that they are white; that they are from the European generation; and [asked me] why we, dirty negros, are here.”

Neca’s narrative reflects how racism and xenophobia are inbuilt in the construction of a hegemonic Argentine national identity presumed to be white and European-like. Bodily markers associated with indigenous people, and often equated with poverty, are used to further exclude people in Argentina. To be dark-skinned and short does not match the Argentine ideal, no matter a person’s actual origin. Neca’s bodily features signaled her as an outsider, and her immigrant status made her and her family vulnerable to pejorative labels and mistreatment. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that people who are discriminated against because of their national origin or ethnoracial group may reject their lineage. Neca reported that she and other members of the Peruvian immigrant community believe that Peruvians tend to literally turn more white in Argentina. It is hard to know whether people’s skin actually turn lighter (for example, because of environmental factors), whether Peruvian immigrants look more white/Western in Argentina because they adopt a different appearance (e.g., different clothes and accessories), or whether the perception of whiteness reflects a wish to blend in with the dominant society in order to avoid discrimination. According to Neca, “The truth is that we still do not understand it, we haven’t done a study of that, but we always talk about it. Why is it that we turn more white here? Perhaps God wants to do that magic, to turn us all white, so we do not discriminate among ourselves. But, well, it is not like that.” Although Neca offered a critical perspective on the way Argentine society discriminates against people with dark skin color, and during the interview she talked with pride about her origins, her narrative also shows a fleeting desire to blend in with Argentine society through whiteness (“Perhaps God wants to do that magic, to turn us all white”). Such aspirations resemble what scholars

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examining racial issues in the United States have called the “bleaching syndrome.” That is, the internalization of dominant values—such as overappreciation of light skin color—by racially marginalized people who are trying to assimilate and survive in a racist society (Hall 1995). Although bleaching is an attempt to improve life chances in such contexts, it can nevertheless produce negative psychic and physical effects on the people who engage in it. Neca wanted to look good by the dominant standards in order to gain respect and resources in a context that has been generally adverse or insensitive to the needs of immigrants from other Latin American countries. She sometimes endorsed the use of traditional national clothing for political purposes (e.g., to gain visibility as an immigrant at specific events), but she also reluctantly embraced certain aspects of femininity ideals in Argentina: Unfortunately, we have to do it to defend ourselves a bit. When we arrive at a meeting, conference, or social event, we need . . . we have to be very well fixed up. It is necessary to go there fixed up, to have good clothing, good shoes . . . Because all those things are important here. So we try to teach women, saying, . . . “Girls, please, we have a meeting, put on the best clothes in your closet. Let’s try to give a good image to people. I’m not saying that you go and buy a new suit, but try to come with the best that you can get. Fixed up, with makeup, with the hair done” . . . because here in Argentina, women are very much the kind to go to beauty salons.

Neca was keenly aware that being fixed up could prop up the position of immigrant women during their interactions with Argentine people. When she says that in Argentina “women are very much the kind to go to beauty salons,” she is picking up on the fact that a good hairdo is an expectation for many women in Argentina. Whether this is a practice that most Argentine women engage in may be questionable. Frequent beauty salon treatments were more likely for women in positions of privilege than for women living in poor households, which was more than half of the female population at the time of this study. Racialized beauty standards are pervasive and powerful, and they can be internalized by women whose phenotypes do not match such models, even when exhibiting an oppositional consciousness in some respects. The case of Beatriz, who has African ancestry through one of her grandfathers, illustrates the kind of internal conflict that racialized beauty expectations may generate. Beatriz explained that though she identified as black, other people often did not see her as such, partly because her skin tone had “somewhat bleached.” People’s denial of her African ancestry made her feel angry. She was proud of her heritage, and, in contrast to other family members, she did extensive work to trace the history of her ancestors and to connect with other Afro-descendents. She celebrated aspects of her body that she perceived as Afro, including “forehead, nose, mouth, [and] cheeks.” She commented, “I see myself as black. I tell them, ‘I’m a bit discolored because of the weather, but I see myself as black.’” However, Beatriz lives

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in a culture that denigrates and makes invisible non-European heritage, which, in turn, influences people’s self-assessments in powerful ways. As many other women in Argentina who modify their physical appearance to match hegemonic standards, Beatriz regularly straightened her frizzy hair—the “only thing that perhaps I don’t like about the black race.” External constraints shaped her dislike of the hair: The only thing that I don’t like is the hair, the frizzy hair. Of course, because it is not useful for my job. Why? Because I have to show . . . fashion, and frizzy hair doesn’t facilitate that. Frizzy hair gets puffed up, deformed. No, it rejects all kind of hairdos except the ethnic braid. So it is not useful to convey anything to my customers.

A dramatic episode in her life, when she almost died of a heart attack, shows the strong influence of racialized beauty requirement shaping Beatriz’s selfassessment—far beyond the utility of her hair for her job. When the doctors were trying to revive her and she was barely conscious, she was concerned about her bodily appearance more than with her health: “I have frizzy hair, right? I was dying and I felt that [the doctors] were throwing at me what I thought was water. And I thought, ‘My hair is going to frizz up!’ And I was dying and thinking: ‘What must I look like?!’” As a hairdresser, beauty and bodily appearance were very important to Beatriz. Although Beatriz gave job-related reasons why she preferred straight hair (i.e., the idea that straight hair is more manageable), managing her hair was not the main problem when she was almost dying in the hospital. She was clearly embarrassed about her hair because it was in contradiction with cultural beauty expectations. Her anecdote illustrates the power of dominant beauty scripts (to the point that it was a central concern for Beatriz even in a life-or-death situation) and how racialized standards shape core aspects of women’s identity, behavior, and experience. The story of Luciana, a woman born in Taiwan who immigrated to Argentina with her family when she was a baby, also depicts complex race, gender, and nation dynamics playing out on the body. Luciana was raised in and lived almost her entire life in Argentina. At the time of the interview, she was thirty-two years old, had a university education, and worked in her family’s mini-market in Buenos Aires. She navigated a bicultural world. On the one hand, she integrated into life in Argentina, with all its cultural baggage; and on the other hand, she was a part of a community of Asian immigrants who maintained many of their cultural traditions. Although when she first started talking about her experiences she minimized the impact of racism in her life—in some ways echoing prevailing beliefs in Argentina that race is not an issue—during the course of the interview she provided several examples of exclusionary practices. In Luciana’s case, language was not an obstacle, since she learned Spanish when she was a child. However, her racialized bodily features marked her as an outsider—even though

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Argentina is the only home she has known. She explained, “Perhaps when I go dancing with my friends, and even though I have been in Argentina for many years, I feel like I can’t quite adapt, because they are all Argentine, and perhaps I am the only Oriental in the dancing club, right? So perhaps I feel like they are looking at you or [saying], “Oh, look at the Chinese,” right? And that bothers me. I don’t go dancing too often, anyway, but you feel a bit uncomfortable. It is hard for me. It is hard.” Luciana was not seen as a true Argentine, which in turn reinforced her feeling of being an outsider. Thus, she differentiated between herself as an “Oriental” (resorting to the language Argentines use to refer to people of Asian descent) and the rest of Argentines, whom she called “Occidentals.” That is, in her consciousness, Argentineness did not include “Orientals.” This identification of Argentines with particular cultural and racial characteristics is reflected in statements that universalize Argentine women as exhibiting a particular body type and at the same time idealize those features, which she internalized as superior. In the context of an Argentine culture that generally does not provide critical conceptual tools to talk about race, it is not surprising that in talking about women’s bodies, Luciana implied a notion of race as biological more than socially constructed: Well, I really like the bodies of Argentine women. . . . Their bodies are very well developed. We, the Orientals, do not have that. The only advantage is that we are all thin, because that’s how the race is. Everyone asks me why we are so thin, if we do a special diet. But that’s how the race is; we tend to be very thin, no? . . . Argentine women have very well-formed bodies: what is butt is butt; what are breasts are breasts . . . They are very well-formed, something that we, Orientals, do not have . . . We are very thin, straight, and we don’t have that . . . That’s how the race is . . . Look, anything that Argentine women wear looks good [laughs]. But that’s not the case for Orientals. I like how Argentine women dress. I dress very much like an Occidental—that’s how I call Argentines. But Orientals are more feminine: they wear more dresses, and their manners are more feminine. It is an ancient culture, right? We tend more to look after men, to be more simple. Here, Argentine women are more like this [advances her chest toward the table, showing a more aggressive body posture]. There they [women from Asia] are not aggressive when they talk; they are like more simple women.

Luciana’s comparisons between Argentine and “Oriental” women is accomplished by relying on social ideologies that devalue the bodily features of the latter, except when they match characteristics valued by dominant notions (for example, thinness, “more femininity”). This idealized view of the bodies of Argentine women, “well-formed, what is butt is butt, what are breasts are breasts,” resonates with dominant beauty ideals but neglects both the variation

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among Argentine women’s bodies and the extensive bodywork they have to perform to achieve hegemonic looks. For example, the reason many women in Argentina resort to breast implants is precisely because they do not have the kind of breasts that are idealized by the culture. The stories of women whose racialized body appearance does not match white European ideals highlight the prominence of race in the construction of beauty and femininity in Argentina. While race affects the meanings attributed to different types of femininity, these links are usually not explicitly recognized in hegemonic discourses that aim to project a European identity and to naturalize socially constructed gender norms. Race also implicitly underlies Argentines’ understandings of class, which is also tied to femininity ideals, to the point that race is an absent presence in class categorization. Women in this study talked about their physical appearance in ways that exposed the connection between beauty ideals, nationalistic myths, class hierarchies, and transnational racial imaginaries.

Negotiating and Contesting (Hetero) normative Femininity Several women in the study recounted how family, friends, or coworkers encouraged them to assume gender-appropriate bodily dispositions, and how they negotiated those pressures with their other desires or aspirations. Oftentimes these expectations denoted a slippage between embodied gender identities and sexuality expectations, for gender bodily displays were also supposed to be aligned with a heterosexual orientation. Sara, a taxi driver, struggled to negotiate what she felt a feminine woman should do and look like (i.e., “to wear skirts, shoes with higher heels, a little blouse”) with the requirements of her job, usually seen as an occupation suited for men. At the time of the interview, she had recently fallen in love with a man, so she tried to make her appearance more feminine in order to be more attractive to him. Normative femininity is integral to heterosexual romance and seduction. As Diana, a lesbian interviewee, pointed out, not complying with normative femininity has its costs, and one of them is to be outside the “market of desire.” Diana’s observation may partly explain Sara’s special efforts to look more feminine during a time when she desired a man and wanted to be desired herself. Yet she expressed that outfits that are too feminine could potentially endanger her in her job by giving the impression that she is trying to flirt with men while driving the taxi. She was concerned about male passengers sexually harassing her. Thus normative femininity created a contradiction for Sara. On the one hand, it was a requirement of heterosexual romance; on the other, it was a liability for her job. Some women resolve the contradiction by staying away from jobs defined as male work (though this does not ensure that they will be spared sexual harassment). However, Sara liked her job, enjoyed working in her car, and appreciated the relative independence her work provided. She said that she “would like to be

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more feminine, not so Mari-macho [tomboy],” but she was also fond of activities supposedly inappropriate for women: “I learned to do men’s stuff. I can disassemble a car, change the tires—which I do easily. And if the mechanic is fixing the car, I like to be there to see what he is doing, to see if I can do it myself afterwards. You see? If I were more feminine, perhaps I would stay quietly sitting down in the car, waiting for the mechanic to fix it. Nothing else.” Here, Sara refers to gender ideologies that construct femininity not only as delicate and properly dressed, but also as technically incompetent, especially in relation to men’s work. Sara’s experience confirms that women’s bodily constitutions are not necessarily an obstacle to performing masculine activities well, and that female vulnerability and dependency are social constructions. Nonetheless in the current social context, women’s technical abilities may play against their being perceived as real women, especially if such skills involve exerting strength with the body or getting dirty. Similarly, Josephine, a young interviewee, worked in the production area of a bakery, where coworkers have called her the “little boy” or the “machito” [little macho] because of her allegedly unfeminine bodily appearance and disposition. When we met for the interview, she was wearing stained jogging pants and a sweatshirt. She apologized for her appearance, saying that she had come right from work and did not have time to change clothing. She expressed that if she had worked in an office she would have to be “more feminine,” “more fixed up,” “perhaps would wear different clothing, and would take more care of” herself. Yet she saw such traits and behaviors as contradictory to her job in the bakery. She declared: “I like to do my job well, and if I have to get dirty because of that, I don’t care.” Josephine challenged feminine bodily mandates that would impair her being a good worker, but the social sanctions to her transgression included unpleasant jokes and teasing. As more women enter the labor market out of necessity and/or for personal fulfillment, as they enter occupations that are dominated by men, and as they cross gender lines, the tension between normative feminine embodiment and what makes a good worker (already defined in gendered terms) may be more apparently in contradiction, with women straddling to negotiate both worlds. Some of the women in this study, particularly those who had been exposed to feminist ideas, articulated expansive critiques of hegemonic standards of femininity. These ranged from noticing some of the constraining and exclusionary aspects of normative notions, to recognizing the negative outcomes of such expectations in terms of women’s bodily image and self-perceptions, to pointing to the cross-cultural and historical variations between women, to advancing the possibility of multiple femininities reflected in a diversity of female bodies. Malena, a forty-six-year-old medical doctor who lived in an upscale area of Buenos Aires, referred to the model of ladylike femininity she observed in such parts of town as the model of “laces and ribbons”—alluding to an excessive concern with body decoration:

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I always encourage my daughters to avoid being the ones with laces and ribbons. I tried not to teach them that model of femininity, you know, so they skip that nonsense about whether this or that is fashionable or not fashionable. I think those things are irrelevant. [I tried to convey] that there other things that are much more important, like being able to defend yourself in life, know who you are, to have your place, not being subjugated because you are a woman. I thought that not allowing others to dominate you is not a masculine attitude . . . that being feminine is not about lowering your eyes while fanning yourself—or at least it is not [the kind of femininity] I would choose.

Malena emphasized a model of femininity that is not based on how women’s bodies look, but on other traits, like the ability to present ideas and to develop professional skills. She rejected the kind of upper-class femininity that reserves a decorative role for women and endorsed a model that includes women’s professional work and independence from men. These views placed Malena at the center of a dilemma. Like Malena, a number of women who expressed an oppositional view of socially sanctioned femininity still adopted many of the characteristics and behaviors connected to that model. Some used makeup everyday, were preoccupied with their weight or about the shape of their body, underwent cosmetic surgery, no longer performed physical activities considered masculine, spent considerable money in beauty products and treatments, and wore properly feminine outfits. Contradictory cultural threads shaped complex forms of feminine embodiment. The conflict that Malena and other women faced between their critique of social norms and the pressure to follow them was not simple to resolve. They had to navigate opposing forces themselves and sometimes tried to instill the seeds of change in younger generations. Tania, the black woman quoted earlier (a feminist, a teacher, and an activist), saw femininity as something socially imposed that very much conditions the body. She strongly criticized the level of constraints women in Argentina are subjected to—especially women like her, who stand further away from the imposed ideal because of the racialization of femininity. Nonetheless, she pointed out that she internalized many of these expectations: “Well, I incorporated that— I’m not going to lie—I don’t play ball anymore. I already incorporated that and it is even like a way of being, and I don’t reject it. I think it is also a way of being a woman.” Tania’s narrative highlighted the fact that each woman’s body, bodily dispositions, and appearance have a history, and that particular preoccupations or habits may not go away even when women have a critical view of them. Yet, she expressed how she wished to spare the younger generation from such pressures. The relationship between consciousness and embodiment is a complex one, and a critical view of appropriate feminine embodiment may encounter not only social sanctions but also individual women’s interior resistance, partly grounded in a bodily memory of tastes and dispositions that are core parts of subjectivity and identity, and even a source of pleasure. Tania straddled between dominant

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society’s pressures and a deep-seated critique of prevailing norms, which she saw as a reflection not only of sexism but also of racism. She celebrated her body as an expression of a different kind of beauty and femininity, but at the same time she struggled with subtle and not-so-subtle social messages suggesting that her body was deficient or only good as an exotic sexual and sensual object. While some women sustained aspects of normative femininity, partly because they derived certain social rewards from them (e.g., economic resources, class status, admiration, heterosexual romance), for other women the rewards were less clear. Guadalupe, a young lesbian, explained: Femininity is something that is basically defined by men, or by patriarchy, which assigns, for example, things that are for women. Instead of intelligence—since intelligence cannot be attributed to women—intuition. Then if something went well, it is because she is intuitive, not because she is intelligent. Or being soft or submissive . . . Basically that. For example, you know the expression “to have balls”? It is like having courage. That is, courage is not feminine because it was appropriated [for men] by language, by saying “to have balls.” You could say, “She is a woman with balls.” But then you say, “No, but how?” . . . Language appropriates those things, what belongs to women. That is, [from that perspective] a woman will never be able to be brave, like me, for example [laughs]. Or she will never be able to be courageous.

Guadalupe was exposed to feminist ideas through her activism, so she was familiar with concepts like patriarchy and interpreted many of her life experiences within that framework. Yet many of her insights about what it meant to be a woman did not come merely from a theoretical perspective; they were deeply grounded in her own embodied experience. Normative femininity, with its emphasis on heterosexuality and feminine vulnerability, did not do much for her. It is no coincidence that she questioned the way in which the male body (particularly male sexual organs) came to represent courage. Guadalupe was molested as a child—in this case, an expression of male embodied abusive power—and she survived those injuries through her embodied courage and resiliency. If femininity was incompatible with women’s embodied courage, then it was not useful for her. She had to garner a great deal of valor in order to ensure her own survival. Although she laughed when she claimed bravery for herself, she was in truth a courageous woman. She refused to comply with dominant rules of feminine embodiment in various ways: by exhibiting an alternative haircut and clothing, by actively denouncing one of her abusers, by claiming her lesbianism in everyday life and political events, and by developing a positive relationship with her wounded and abused body (i.e., with herself). The social pressures to look like a real woman is partly linked to heterosexual desirability and to what Adrienne Rich (1980) called “compulsory heterosexuality.” As in the cases of Sara the taxi driver or Josephine the bakery worker, women are socially deprived of womanhood status if they display unfeminine

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bodies. They become deviant. In Argentina, lesbians are stereotyped as the ultimate unfeminine women, as being Mari-machos, or as having failed in attracting men. The idea that femininity and lesbianism are contradictory is exemplified by an episode in which Diana, a lesbian interviewee, came out to one of her male coworkers. He was very surprised by the revelation and exclaimed, “But you . . . ? You, who are so feminine!” Although it is true that some lesbians adopt a bodily appearance and demeanor that deviates from social standards of femininity (and this is sometimes a conscious strategy of resistance), many people in Argentina would be surprised to find out many lesbians do not conform to that stereotype—and that, in fact, there are many more lesbians than may be presumed solely based on physical appearance. Lesbians, as well as other people who do not abide by the heteronorm, experience multiple forms of discrimination in Argentine society, discouraging many of them from coming out.13 In the absence of other clues, those women whose lesbianism is more apparent to other people may be precisely the ones who have adopted bodily traits that resist gender appropriate embodiment. Lesbian interviewees in this study spoke about their negotiation of dominant views of femininity, which by definition excluded the kind of womanhood they were carving for themselves and contradicted their embodied desires, identities, and sexual attraction to other women. Some of these women adopted an oppositional look (for example, allowing their gray hair to show or exhibiting an androgynous style), while others adopted aspects of the dominant aesthetics, sometimes because of explicit external pressures. For example, Violeta recounted how she was pushed into maintaining a normative feminine look in her work because she was the image of the company. She was expected to show a somewhat fixed-up appearance, dye her gray hair, and fix her teeth. After many years in feminist and lesbian groups, one day she said enough and left her hair almost white. Another lesbian interviewee, Ursula, spoke about how she resisted dominant norms of feminine embodiment. Ursula was in her early forties, had children, was living with another woman as her partner, and identified herself as a feminist. She explained that she usually passed as heterosexual, partly because of her bodily demeanor and long hair (she added that her body disposition is not so much that of a young man as her partner’s was) and partly because she had children, which gave her a “direct passport to the norm.” Yet her intention was not to pass. In fact, besides her lesbian sexual orientation, she broke other rules of normative femininity as well: I stopped waxing myself by the time I was twenty years old. That causes quite a shock in Argentine beaches [laughs]. I practically never use makeup and I have standard clothing that I wear to go to work and in everyday life: [loosefitting] country pants, t-shirt, and a bandana on my neck. It is not something that worries me, and I can’t pay attention to that. I have more important things. And, well, that develops a kind of aesthetic that settles in.

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Ursula explained that her transgression of social mandates emerged both from a feminist consciousness and from her own body. She explained that she first noticed certain things about her body, decided to let them be, and then interpreted this decision from a feminist perspective or by looking at alternative models of womanhood. This process started many years before she recognized herself as a lesbian or a feminist: Some changes emerged from the body first and then I rationalized them with theory. For example, [I asked myself], “Why can’t women have hairy legs?” I have hair on my legs since I was ten years old. Obviously, as soon as I could, [I shaved them] with a razor, which turns things worse. And then, of course, there are waxes. Wax hurts, takes a lot of time, is uncomfortable, and then these things grow . . . You always have hair anyway: shorter or longer, you still have it. [And I thought], “Why do I have to do this? Why?”

Ursula’s perception that there must have been something wrong with the norm, and not with her body, was confirmed during a trip to Europe, where she saw women in the swimming pool with long hair on their armpits. She asked herself, “If they can do that, why not me?” and then she never again waxed or shaved her bodily hair, except for a few months when she had a job with a dress code that required skirts. The women she met in Europe provided an alternative to the model of femininity she had been exposed to in Argentina. Ursula rejected the imposition of a dominant model of femininity, and not necessarily all of the contents of such a model. She was not against women waxing their legs per se (in fact, her partner did so and Ursula accepted that), but what she did not like was that such behavior is socially imposed as part of a patriarchal and heterosexist system. She also noticed how such standards create feelings of dissatisfaction in many women—for example, “if you are hooked with the image of Gente magazine, and with waxing, and with makeup, and [thinking] if he liked you or not, or if he is cheating on you—because what if he looks for another woman—and with having to wear this.” She explained that, unlike women who fully embraced the dominant model, she enjoyed greater freedom to adopt aspects of normative femininity or not: I sometimes do it. And I do it now. In order to seduce the person I want to seduce, I could dress like . . . playing . . . That is, as long as it is a game, something consciously chosen . . . I say, “Now, I’m going to play and wear black lace underwear.” One thing is if I choose it in order to have fun and another one is if it is imposed as a sine qua non condition to sustain a long-term relationship with a male of the human species.

Ursula’s irreverent response to cultural mandates allowed her to explore a range of ways of being a woman that seem off-limits to others. She could use normative feminine underwear—when she wanted—but she did not feel compelled to wax her body hair, and, in fact, she laughed at people’s shocked reactions. Still,

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she was not completely immune to social pressures, and this was reflected, for example, by her shaving her legs when working in a job that required wearing skirts as part of the uniform. Dominant femininity standards are not only established with regards to men’s standpoints, desires, and fantasies but also as a way of creating differences and inequalities among women based on class, race, sexual orientation, nationality, and other social statuses (Bettie 2003; Myers 2004; Witt 1994). Fer, a policewoman, drew on discriminatory discourse when she complained about the stereotypes associated with women who join the police force. She argued that people think that in order to be a police officer a woman has “to be a negra, a prostitute, or a torti [pejorative term for lesbians].14 That you did not care about anything, and that was not my case.” Although Fer was upset about the stereotypes attached to female police officers, she did not question the social stigmatization of the women she was referring to. In fact, she was colluding with such vilification. She wanted to distance herself from women perceived as deviant because of their class, race/ethnicity, and sexual identity or behavior. The performance of proper femininity was one way in which she held on to womanhood status in a profession dominated by men and in a society that demonizes women who do not fit idealized racial, class, and sexual bodily standards. By embracing proper femininity through bodily displays and her identity as a mother, Fer asserted her status as a good woman vis-à-vis men and in relation to other women deemed deviant (e.g., negras, prostitutes, and tortis). Perhaps because Fer’s femininity was at risk due to her holding a male-identified job, she felt particularly obligated to demonstrate that she was, indeed, a real woman. She did the emotional work associated with womanhood, for example, by lending an ear to comfort people she interacted with through her work. She also managed her bodily appearance to conform to the gendered demands of the police profession, invested in upholding gender difference despite, or perhaps especially because of, the incorporation of women in the institution: “You have to have your hair well-done, to be fixed up, and wear a bit of make up because that is what people like, what society likes.” In 2001, a scandal involving the police force in the province of Buenos Aires raised the specter of corruption and brought beauty standards into focus: fifty women police officers were criminally charged of defrauding their health plans by undergoing noncovered cosmetic surgeries (particularly breast implants) but instead reporting them as insured medical procedures, such as varicose veins operations. Besides the individual motivations that each of those women may have had, this case poses questions about whether women in male-dominated occupations—and particularly those most associated with an aggressive physical masculinity—are particularly motivated to exhibit hyperfeminine bodies as a token of their femininity in a male world. Fer had risked her life in armed confrontations due to her job, yet she said she was fearful of developing wrinkles and gray hair. She would undergo cosmetic surgery if she could afford it: “Who wouldn’t like to have

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perked-up boobs, a perfect butt, or to undergo a lipo [liposuction] to get rid of all this [extra fat]?” Having crossed some gender lines by entering a male occupation did not shield Fer from embodied femininity mandates. Women in this study performed various versions of femininity—coping with existing ideals, strategically performing different types of femininity, incorporating aspects of dominant ideologies and rejecting others, struggling with the contradictions between ideologies and their material conditions, and creating their own ways of being women within the constraints and opportunities available in the Argentine social milieu. Their bodies were central to these performances.

Conclusion In this chapter, I examined the social expectations and practices that enforce feminine bodily standards in Argentina. I addressed one of two hegemonic modes of feminine embodiment: one grounded on the body’s aesthetic appearance and disposition in a Global South country imbued by Western norms. These norms exclude many women, such as those who do not fit the model because of their racialized body features, those who reject and challenge heteronormativity, those who could conceivably fit the model but choose not to, and those whose class status impedes the attainment of ideal gender displays. Such norms enforce the privilege of women who match those ideals more closely, though not without costs, and they generate particularly difficult conflicts or impossible situations for women whose bodies stand further from the ideal. Women in this study responded to these forces in a variety of ways, but they generally felt the influence of pressures that shaped their embodied consciousness, experiences, and perceptions of the self. While beauty may seem a relatively superficial issue, social expectations about women’s looks are integral to how women are disciplined and controlled in contemporary society. In Argentina, remarkably stringent requirements are functional to the continued subordination and devaluation of women’s work and lives, and they shape core aspects of many women’s identity and self-assessment. Cosmetic surgery is one increasingly popular route for women to fix their supposedly deviant bodies—a route taken or envisioned as desirable by a number of women in this study. The particular context of the economic crisis intensified the contradictions that trying to comply with normative femininity created for different women and made more visible the classed character of these norms. At the same time, social investment in sustaining proper femininity in the midst of the crisis may suggest another burden for women: to soothe society and ameliorate the negative emotional impacts of economic downturns through a pleasing bodily appearance.

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Women’s bodies are usually perceived as deeply individual entities, yet the interpenetration among cultural norms, political developments, economic forces, and women’s performances of femininity shape the contours and appearance of their bodies. But women are not just expected to be beautiful or objects of male desire. They are also expected to be mothers. In the following chapter, I examine how the pressures to turn women into maternal bodies conflict with individual women’s needs and desires at different points in their lives and are resisted through embodied practices such as abortion in a place where it is largely illegal.

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z More Than Reproductive Uteruses maternal bodies and abortion

As in other parts of Latin America, motherhood is an expected, celebrated, idealized, and naturalized role for women in Argentina (Tarducci 2008a). In addition to the aesthetic aspects of feminine appearance and demeanor, motherhood—which also requires a particular kind of bodily performance— is another hegemonic mode of feminine embodiment. Even though not all women’s maternities are equally valued, women are generally supposed to embody motherhood not only through pregnancy but also through an abnegated body oriented to the needs of others. Here I outline some of the expectations concerning the maternal body and analyze the obstacles that women face if they attempt to break—even temporarily—with the motherhood mandate through abortion. The cultural and institutional constraints surrounding abortion are paradigmatic of how women’s bodies are socially regulated in Argentina. Although this topic is particularly relevant and visible in the current political climate, there are relatively few scholarly works about abortion in Argentina, especially from the point of view of women who have undergone such experience.1 The maternal body evokes a generous, nurturing, all-giving female body that dedicates corporeal resources to her offspring during pregnancy and beyond (Burín 1987; Ramos 2000). The maternal body refers not only to the pregnant or nursing body but also to one that displays the traits culturally associated with motherhood, especially nurturance and sacrifice on behalf of others (Park 2006; Tarducci 2008b). These characteristics are commonly seen as rooted in women’s biology and reproductive capacities. However, scholars have shown numerous ways in which particular forms of social organization and discourse produce specific kinds of male and female bodies, disputing any simple casual relationship between biology and social practices (Connell 1999; Fausto-Sterling 2001; Hubbard 1990). While many women’s bodies indeed have the capacity to be pregnant, give birth, and nurse babies—activities which may entail different 96

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degrees of sacrifice and/or pain—it does not follow that women’s nature is sacrificial and nurturing at all times and places. The gendered division of housework and care work in Argentina is one way by which the sacrificial attributes of maternal embodiment are produced and reinforced. Social arrangements that disproportionately require women’s daily, embodied, care work rest on assumptions about the unlimited generosity and self-sacrifice of maternal bodies. Women are expected to dedicate their bodily energy and resources to family, and by extension to community, even if that means sacrificing their own bodily needs or health (Di Liscia and Di Liscia 1997). As argued in chapter 2, the structural adjustment measures implemented in Argentina relied heavily on women’s corporeal resources. These polices implied that the social deficits and needs created by the economic model would be taken care of somewhat—most likely through women’s embodied labor. For instance, as Noleen Heyzer, former executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, pointed out, when “healthcare systems break down because countries are not able to invest in their healthcare system . . . [women] become the healthcare system” (World Chronicle 2005, 5). Maternal bodily giving has also been enforced through state policies, such as those criminalizing abortion or preventing adequate access to contraception. As shown in this chapter, state pro-natalist policies have historically attempted to enforce and naturalize the maternal body through the law. Only relatively recently has the state started to reverse these trends, but it has faced formidable challenges from the Catholic Church hierarchy and conservative religious groups in doing so. Powerful ideological influences embedded in Argentina’s cultural norms and institutions have encouraged women always to embrace motherhood regardless of their own needs and aspirations (Checa and Rosenberg 1996; FDR 1997; Ramos et al. 2001). Religious rituals and beliefs provide a considerable repertoire glorifying maternal bodies. The Catholic Church has fervently promoted the cult of the Virgin Mary—the embodiment of both chastity and abnegated motherhood. In Buenos Aires this is evidenced, for example, by the massive yearly pilgrimages to Luján, a site where the Virgin Mary is said to have expressed herself and where a basilica has been built in her honor. The Virgin Mary synthesizes two contradictory characteristics: virginity and biological motherhood. This is impossible to achieve for most women but is nevertheless held up as the ideal. Expressions of popular-religious syncretism also embrace notions of abnegated maternal embodiment. The cult of another mother, Difunta Correa, is a case in point. According to popular beliefs, Difunta Correa died while crossing a desert in Argentina with her baby. Yet her maternal body assured the survival of the child since it was able to nurse the baby even after Difunta Correa’s own death. This miraculous outcome epitomizes the generous, self-sacrificing nature ascribed to maternal bodies and motivates the popular adoration of Difunta Correa through elaborate shrines on the sides of many provincial roads.

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Among the women in my study, the case of Mabel—a fifty-three-year-old middle-class woman who became blind as a result of diabetes—exemplifies the force of social expectations about sacrificial maternal embodiment. Before the onset of her vision impairment, Mabel had decided she would avoid pregnancy because it would speed up the complications of diabetes—including blindness. Despite the physical risks she was exposed to, family and friends still pressured her to become pregnant: Everyone would give me advice or would tell me that at least I should have one child. In fact, my husband sort of inflicted a psychological torture, saying that I had made a totally selfish decision. And I felt bad, I don’t know . . . perhaps deep down I would have loved to have children, many of them. But I partly knew that it would accelerate all of the processes of blindness. At that time, I was already experiencing vision problems and kidney complications, which are the complications of diabetic people. Didn’t your husband know that those were possible complications? Yes, but the only thing he wanted in life was to have children—despite the fact that I had previously talked about this with him, before getting married. I suppose that he thought he would be able to convince me.

Mabel felt a great deal of guilt because of her decision to forgo motherhood and ended up divorcing her husband. She was perceived as selfish for placing her own physical well-being before maternity. Although this is perhaps an extreme example, it illustrates what taking the naturalization of maternal sacrifice to its logical conclusion can entail. Motherhood was a common experience among the women in this study. Most of the individual interviewees were mothers. Sixty-two percent had given birth to children and 38 percent had not. Many of the women who had not borne children expressed desires to be mothers, and two of them were raising children: one of them had a late miscarriage but had adopted children, and another one was a lesbian who was engaged in raising her partner’s biological child. A few women had decided to not have children. This was the case of Viviana, a middleclass woman: I have not had children because of a personal decision. You don’t want to have children? No, no, no . . . I don’t know, I am forty-three years old, and perhaps in the future I will have children. But I don’t believe in motherhood just as a biological event. Perhaps in the future I will have children. I love children and it is not because . . . well, because at the time in my life when it would have been the time to have children I did not want to have children. So I did not have them, and that’s it.

While Viviana had decided to avoid biological motherhood, she still left the door open to motherhood in the future. Yet she seemed skeptical about that

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happening because she did not have a partner and “did not conceive motherhood outside a project with a partner.” Nina, a middle-class interviewee who ended up having children, expressed that she had rejected motherhood for many years: “I never had a project to have children—not at a conscious level. In fact, my project was not to have children or family. I was not interested in family or children.” Yet since she got pregnant several times (and terminated some pregnancies with abortions), and since she had contraceptive knowledge, she started wondering why she was getting pregnant in the first place. Through psychoanalysis, she came to the conclusion that, in fact, she did want to have children. The “psy culture” provided her with a powerful interpretative framework to understand life course events common in women’s lives such as motherhood and abortion. When I asked questions about what it meant to be a woman or the meaning of femininity, respondents often established links between womanhood and motherhood. For some women these two identities were so closely associated that they almost became interchangeable. For example, Luciana, a middle-class woman in her early thirties, said, “It is nice to be a woman. I’m not a mother yet, but they say it is something very exciting. In the future, I would like to have children and know what it is to be a woman.” In this statement, motherhood seems to confer authentic womanhood: One is not a real woman unless also a mother. Rosalía, a young woman raised in poverty who had a miscarriage, said, “I believe that [to be a woman] is wonderful, and it is a great responsibility because one has to be a mother and has to take a lot of responsibilities.” According to Rosalía, motherhood and the demands that come with it are an expected, even taken for granted, aspect of women’s life course. The statement of Alexandra, a young woman who lived in a shantytown, is even more direct. She explained that after she gave birth to her child she “felt more like a woman, because I had the baby. That’s when I became a woman [laughs], because before I wasn’t. I was a male.” Alexandra used to feel bad about her body and dressed “like a male,” but motherhood made her feel more confident in her female body. For her, motherhood was a turning point, perceived as an entrance into real womanhood. A positive value attributed to motherhood was reflected in comments like Yamila’s, whose child was the product of sexual abuse as a teenager: “What I like about being a woman is that we can give life.” Despite the hardships that Yamila faced in bearing and raising her child, she still valued motherhood. Similarly, though Claudia, a domestic worker, implicitly recognized that there are different ways of being a woman, motherhood had salience for her as a source of feminine identity: “What I do makes me feel like a woman. That’s also to be a woman: to have my children makes me feel like a woman and mature at the same time.” Although women generally expressed positive associations with the idea and/or actual experience of motherhood, this did not mean that they thought having children was a good idea at any time in their lives and under any circumstance. The use of contraceptive methods and abortion were two ways by which

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women prevented having unwanted children. In this chapter, I explore some of the social forces that have enforced maternal embodiment and the ways by which different women have resisted becoming just a maternal body. I also explore some of the obstacles women encountered in trying to avoid pregnancy at different points of their lives.

Reproductive Politics On January 12, 2003, the Sunday magazine of the La Nación newspaper published a powerful statement about women’s bodies and their relationship to reproductive politics. It was an advertisement showing a black-and-white full-page photo of a woman’s naked belly. It could have been one of many other ads that depict fragments of a woman’s body, but this ad had a distinctive feature: The contours of a small fetus were inscribed like a tattoo on the woman’s belly. On one side of the page, in small white print, read the following: “The defense of abortion covers up its criminal nature through confusing or evasive terminology, hiding murder with phrases like ‘voluntary interruption of pregnancy’ or with concepts like ‘the right to decide’ or ‘the right to reproductive health.’ None of these language artifices can hide the fact that abortion is a crime. The Perfect Crime.” The woman’s belly occupies the whole space, but since the body is fragmented, the woman disappears as a whole person. Her belly is just the backstage of the perceived principal actor: the fetus. Thus the woman’s body becomes merely a container of her seemingly unavoidable social duty: to be a mother.

As September 2003 came to the end, thousands of women from diverse grassroots and political organizations marched in Buenos Aires and other cities in the country as part of actions calling for the decriminalization of abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of the movement’s main slogans was the demand for “contraception to prevent abortion, and abortion to prevent death.” In Buenos Aires, women protesters gathered in front of the national parliament and many marched to the Plaza de Mayo, where the executive government palace and the Cathedral are located. Young women in informal clothing, older women who did not shy away from the frontlines, piqueteras wearing colorful vests, professionals, students, feminists, lesbians, women with indigenous clothing and babies on their backs, women from neighborhood assemblies, workers’ unions, human rights organizations, and leftist political parties demanded contraception and legal abortion through eloquent speeches, signs, and chants. Even some men joined women in their demands. During this march, Mujeres Pu´blicas, a group that specialized in artistic interventions, pasted cartoon bubbles with phrases on top of street advertisements. These messages promoted women’s bodily self-determination and broader sexual possibilities. In that way, Hollywood star Nicole Kidman announced from a

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poster advertising the film Dogville that “women enjoy a sexuality external to the vagina, without pregnancy risks.” And Chayanne, a famous Latin American pop singer, looked at passersby from his ad, saying, “The right to decide over our bodies.” A few days after the march, the lesbian feminist music and activist group Caramelitas en Calzas performed in a crowded recreation area in the city of Buenos Aires, advocating for legal abortion through their music and poetry.2 Their purple, glittery outfits satirizing nuns’ clothing, their funny and flippant demeanor, and their songs raised awareness, with a creative approach, about serious issues such as women’s rights to make decisions about their bodies.

These episodes highlight the ever more contested nature of procreation, contraception, and abortion in Argentina. The first episode, the publishing of the antiabortion ad, demonizes women’s ability to control their reproductive capacities. The second, women’s protests, reflects women’s agency and efforts to promote women’s bodily self-determination. As in other societies across the world, women’s bodies in Argentina have historically been the playing fields of cultural wars and state decisions concerning population size and women’s position in society (CLADEM 2002; Hadley 1996). Feminist scholars and activists have long pointed out that the social control of women’s bodies, particularly attempts to control women’s sexuality and reproduction, are crucial ways in which sexist oppression is expressed and perpetuated. From a feminist perspective, women’s access to safe contraception, abortion, and other reproductive options on their own terms are key to ensuring women’s rights (e.g., Gordon 2002; Morgen 2002; Petchesky 1990). Although this argument is well known by now, it remains relevant in twenty-first century Argentina, where women from all walks of life, but particularly those socially and economically marginalized, continue to struggle to make meaningful decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives. Feminists have developed fruitful frameworks to understand and assert women’s bodily rights, and many of its elements have been usefully applied in concrete political struggles in Argentina. As Rosalind Petchesky (1998, 4) summarizes, [The] feminist ethics of bodily integrity and personhood . . . requires not only that women must be free from abuse and violation of their bodies but also that they must be treated as principal actors and decision makers over their fertility and sexuality; as the ends and not the means of health, population and development programmes. And it applies this imperative not only to states and their agents but to every level where power operates, including the home, the clinic, the workplace, the religious centre and the community . . . [T]his feminist perspective links the rights of the body and the person directly with the social, economic and political rights—the enabling conditions—necessary to achieve gender, class and racial-ethnic justice.

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In Argentina, reproductive politics, especially struggles around contraception and abortion, reveal how social inequality plays on and via women’s bodies. Diverse activist women, from middle-class feminists, to piqueteras, to women in leftist political parties, have framed demands for legal abortion and reproductive health as matters of social justice and as integral to women’s right to decide over their bodies. In the following sections, I first offer an overview outlining the role of key players in the field of reproductive politics, including the state, the Catholic Church, and the women’s movement. With this frame of reference, I then focus on attitudes and on the embodied experience of abortion in a context of illegality and explore the consequences of such criminalization.

The Role of the State While a number of developing countries have experienced international pressures to reduce their population by controlling women’s fertility (Hartmann 1995), this was not the case for Argentina given its relatively low population (Margulis 2003a, 200). In fact, since the dawn of the nation, different governments in Argentina implemented policies to increase population size. The nineteenth-century maxim “to govern is to populate” expressed the idea that Argentina needed a larger population to progress politically, culturally, and economically.3 In the second half of the twentieth century, the 1974 constitutional (Peronist) administration and the succeeding military dictatorship (1976–1983) promoted pro-natalist policies and banned birth control assistance in public facilities (Lubertino 1996; Ramos et al. 2001). Despite efforts to make access to contraception more difficult, this move did not completely prevent people from regulating their fertility. Thus the fertility rate in Argentina remained low.4 Difficulties in reconciling issues of sexuality and reproduction through public policy have been reflected in years of debates, advances, and retreats in the national parliament around projects addressing these matters. A national law on reproductive and sexual health was finally passed during the period of social turmoil following the economic collapse of December 2001.5 Although women’s organizations pointed out serious limitations with this legislation, it was still recognized as a step toward the promotion of women’s rights. This law stated a commitment to universal access to sex education and allocated funds from the national budget for the massive purchase and distribution of contraceptives that are temporary, reversible, and nonabortive, and that these contraceptives are to be provided for free in public health care facilities and covered by medical insurance. According to the Consorcio Nacional de Derechos Reproductivos y Sexuales (CONDERS 2003a), a network of nongovernmental organizations monitoring the implementation of the law, this was the first time in Argentine history that this kind of budget allocation took place. In addition to that law, a number of legislative changes signal a budding shift in sexual and reproductive politics in Argentina, including the creation of

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similar programs in several provinces, the passage of laws in the city of Buenos Aires allowing the civil union of same-sex couples, and pregnancy interruption in cases of fetuses with severe brain malformations (that would make extra uterine life impossible), as well as more recent national legislation promoting comprehensive sexual education in public and private facilities. Although contraception and sex education remain contested political terrains, mainly because of the opposition of the Catholic Church, the single most controversial issue concerning women’s reproductive self-determination in the country is abortion. In Argentina, the law considers abortion a crime except for narrowly defined circumstances: (1) if it is done with the purpose of averting a risk to the mother’s life or health, when that danger cannot be averted by any other measures;6 or (2) if the pregnancy is the result of the rape of an “idiot” or “demented” woman. In both exceptions, abortion must be performed by a licensed physician, with the woman’s consent in the first case, and with the consent of the woman’s legal representative in the second.7 These exceptions are rarely applied, and when women choose to go through the courts, the process tends to be too slow. Except in these cases, a woman who has an abortion may be penalized with up to four years of prison (though this rarely happens). There have been various projects in the national parliament proposing different levels of decriminalization of abortion, but none have passed yet. One may wonder why abortion remains illegal, despite the lack of legal enforcement, and what are the effects of this prohibition on women’s lives. Actually, the prohibition of abortion does not make it disappear. In a country with about 700,000 live births per year (OPS 2001), the estimated number of yearly abortions ranges from 335,000 to 500,000 (Ramos et al. 2001).8 Seen from a global perspective, “Argentina has one of the highest abortion ratios in the world, with one abortion estimated to occur for every two live births” (Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2001, 31).

Influence of the Catholic Church In Argentina the Catholic Church hierarchy has historically and contemporaneously opposed abortion, most contraceptive methods, nonheterosexual sexualities, and sexual activity outside of marriage. Given the political clout of the Catholic Church in Argentina, this institution’s perspectives are not inconsequential for women’s rights (Borland 2002; Gutiérrez 2002; Novick n.d.). Most of the population is nominally Catholic, and the church has traditionally had strong ties to the state, receiving subsidies from it and striving to influence its policy. During the neoliberal 1990s, the Catholic Church found a partner in then president Carlos S. Menem, who supported the conservative international agenda of the Vatican with respect to women’s sexuality and procreation. One visible sign of such backing was Menem’s Decree 1406/98 instituting March 25 (the day the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary is celebrated) as the “Day of the Child to Be Born”—a clear message against the legalization of abortion.

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According to Blofield (2006), in a climate of economic restructuring and growing inequality, this strategic state-church alliance helped to prevent criticism from the Catholic Church concerning the neoliberal economic plan implemented by Menem. The Catholic Church has also attempted to mold the population’s attitudes and behaviors on sexual and reproductive matters through several avenues. Besides the church’s involvement in state politics, its views are disseminated through religious, educational, charity, and media organizations. Moreover, the Catholic Church has tried to influence other important spaces of political exchange such as the annual Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Meetings), a vital women’s movement venue that has attracted thousands of women from all over the country. Since 1997 the church has adopted several intervention or sabotage strategies, ranging from attempts to impede the event, to the promotion of parallel meetings with women subscribing to the church’s perspective, as well as the training of Catholic militants to attend the Encuentros. At the beginning of my research, I was rapidly introduced to these ideological battles through my participation in the 2002 Encuentro, which took place in the province of Salta. Banners and flyers distributed around the city encouraged people to adopt the stance of the Catholic Church and demonized those who did not agree with it. A flyer I picked up in the area surrounding the Encuentro’s main location said, “Lord of the Miracle, Redemptory Christ of the people of Salta, do not withdraw your love. People of Salta: You, who have a fidelity pact with the Lord of the Miracle cannot allow by any means neither abortion, nor the destruction of the family.” A large street banner read: “Abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes. God’s Commandment is: DO NOT KILL.” Street messages linking abortion to murder or sin, or conflating womanhood with motherhood (e.g., addressing women as “woman-mother”) were disseminated around the city during the period of the meeting. In addition to arguments based on religious or moral issues, Catholic Church representatives have also resorted to or co-opted anti-imperialist and nationalist discourses to support their views (Vasallo 2003). In the 2002 Encuentro, Catholic activists argued that feminist demands around sexual and reproductive rights respond to the designs of international organizations that are trying to depopulate Argentina in order to dominate the country. When the law on sexual and reproductive health was sanctioned, a pro-life group argued that it “corroborates the mandates imposed by the new world order over our Argentina, and therefore, the complacency of many public officials who legislate against life and family, and above all, against our national sovereignty” (AICA 2002). This line of argument is not new and resembles the confusion between population control initiatives imposed from international centers of power (like abusive sterilization campaigns that have nothing to do with promoting women’s rights) with projects that attempt to empower women to make free decisions about their sexuality and reproduction (Hartmann 1995).

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From a feminist standpoint, access to contraception and abortion are rights that should be guaranteed in a democracy (Durand and Gutiérrez 1999). According to this view, when the Catholic Church and other conservative groups pose obstacles to those rights, they fail to recognize women as citizens entitled to make meaningful decisions about their lives and bodies. An interesting question, given the church’s efforts to shape gender norms and arrangements, is to what extent women internalize and resist these teachings, which are directly related to their bodies. As it is shown later in this chapter, a number of the women in this study grappled with these kinds of contradictions and dilemmas.

The Women’s Movement The generalized wave of social protest against the neoliberal economic model, governmental corruption, and the many problems confronting Argentina in the post-2001 crisis were opportunities for renewed demands and struggles concerning women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Paradoxically, while U.S.-dominated conservative trends in global politics (e.g., President George W. Bush’s reinstatement of the gag rule) created adverse conditions for the promotion of women’s rights in international arenas (Corrêa 2003), in Argentina the opposite pattern seemed to be unfolding. The economic crisis shook key institutions and dimensions of social life, and the context of social movement activism nourished women’s movements demands. Argentines loudly demanded deep social transformations, and women were actively engaged in those struggles. The gains made by women’s movements in sexual and reproductive rights must be situated against this backdrop of broad social mobilization. As long-term women’s movement members argued in activist forums, the public debates about women’s sexual and reproductive rights flourishing at the time of this study were hard to imagine only a few years earlier. Yet recent legislative accomplishments in that field and the societal support many of these issues were gaining (CEDES, CELS, AND FEIM 2003) cannot be understood as separate from the steady political organizing of women activists at least since the 1970s (though interrupted by the dictatorship) (Bellotti 2002; Cano 1982). Women’s grassroots organizing during the National Women’s Meetings, starting in 1986, and the proliferation of feminist and women’s organizations since the restoration of democracy have constituted important resources for women across the country and have exerted pressure on the government to enact political changes favorable to women. During my research period, women’s meetings, workshops, conferences, and protests occurred across the city of Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area. Not only feminists but also many women in popular assemblies, piqueteras, women in recovered factories, and human rights organizations were reflecting upon and making demands about their sexual and reproductive rights. Long-term feminist demands such as access to contraception and legal abortion are now being adopted by wider sectors of the women’s movement and political organizations.

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For example, during my fieldwork, groups of piqueteras in Buenos Aires marched to health centers to demand contraceptive devices, putting the recently passed law to the test. In the 2003 National Women’s Meeting, the sight of thousands of women in the streets of the city of Rosario joined in the demand of “contraceptives to prevent abortion, legal abortion to prevent death” was an eloquent testimony that more and more women were willing to take a political stand on these issues (CONDERS 2003b). Women’s movement organizations have disseminated information on reproductive rights through several venues, including public protests, flyers, graffiti, participation in multiple political groups, and contributions to more formal settings such as governmental institutions, professional societies, workplaces, and nongovernmental organizations. During different women’s protest slogans, like “Take your rosaries out of our ovaries,” “If the Pope were a woman, abortion would be the law,” “Neither god, nor master, nor the State decide about our bodies,” and “Down with Capitalism and Patriarchy,” identified and publicly exposed sources of women’s bodily oppression. Some activists stressed the need to obtain legal and free abortion on demand as a public health issue and in order to avert poor women’s health risks or death. Others emphasized women’s rights to decide over their bodies or rejected the imposition of religious morality on what should be a secular democratic State. Some groups emphasized pregnancy prevention, demanding better access to contraceptives, and still others made connections to broader issues of sexuality, questioning the role of compulsory heterosexuality in unwanted pregnancies.9 For many of the women involved, the importance of these protests, performances, and interventions around sexual and reproductive issues, and particularly abortion, was that they have helped to more firmly establish an overdue debate in Argentine society and to provide alternative frameworks to understanding sexuality, procreation, and women’s bodies. Instead of naturalized motherhood and sexual guilt, many in the women’s movement assert women’s rights to sexual pleasure, to a sexuality not necessarily linked to reproduction, and to decide about the number of children they want to have. Instead of women’s bodies as public property, many women have been claiming their rights to make free decisions about their bodies as a basic citizenship entitlement and human rights issue. They also recognize that these decisions are not a just matter of personal choice, but that basic economic and social conditions need to be in place in order to be able to make real choices.

Unwanted and Unplanned Pregnancies: Abortion as an Option While motherhood is socially glorified and encouraged in Argentina—and while many interviewees reported positive experiences and joyful feelings in relation to pregnancy—pregnancy is not always a voluntary or happy event for women.

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Forty-two percent of the women I interviewed individually reported that they became pregnant at some point in their lives unintentionally and/or when they were without the means or desire to have a child. The reasons behind these pregnancies were varied, including the failure of contraceptive methods, inconsistent use of contraceptives, sexual violence, inadequate information about sexual matters, silence and shame around sexuality, and unequal power relations between the women and their sexual partners that prevented the former from asserting their bodily needs and desires. The World Health Organization (WHO 2003, 12) indicates that “no contraceptive method is 100 per cent effective . . . Even if all contraceptive users were to use methods perfectly all the time, there would still be nearly six million accidental pregnancies annually.” In this study, some of the women who became unwillingly pregnant had taken precautions to avoid pregnancy but “the condom broke,” “the diaphragm failed,” or other contraceptive strategies did not work out as expected. Sometimes contraception was used inconsistently, and the reasons reported range from psychological factors (e.g., an “unconscious desire” for motherhood), socioeconomic reasons (e.g., unsteady access to contraceptive methods or services), unequal power relations (e.g., difficulty negotiating the use of condoms), and lack of sufficient planning (e.g., sexual intercourse happened in a moment of “negligence” or “just the minute when I did not have the diaphragm with me”). The women who had unwanted, unplanned, or unexpected pregnancies took one of two different paths: continuation or interruption of the pregnancy. However, the boundary between these two options was not always clear-cut. Ambivalences, fears, moral dilemmas, economic constraints, family pressures or support, health practitioners’ attitudes, and the length of pregnancy shaped women’s actions. Seventy-one percent of the women who reported unwanted pregnancies underwent abortions. The controversial and emotionally charged positions heard in public debates about abortion also emerged during conversations and interviews with the women I met in the context of my study and women’s rights activism. The in-depth interviews and focus groups revealed the complex feelings, needs, and constraints embedded in women’s decisions on sexuality and procreation, and on abortion in particular. Through small workshops, conferences, women’s meetings, and political protests in which abortion was the central topic, I also gained a deeper understanding of the quandaries, ideologies, and intricacies involved in abortion discussions.

Attitudes toward Abortion The majority (72 percent) of the women I interviewed individually were decisively for or at least sympathetic with the legalization/decriminalization of abortion; some (20 percent) were opposed; and a few women (6 percent) made ambiguous or ambivalent statements about this issue.10 Although the three

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groups included women from different social classes, middle-class women were more concentrated in the first group (pro-legalization or decriminalization), while working-class and poor women were more heavily represented in the other two groups (opposed and ambivalent). A survey conducted by Römer y Asociados in Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area and reported in La Nación (2004), found that 30 percent of respondents accepted abortion without any conditions, 47 percent of respondents would accept abortion in special circumstances (risk to the mother’s life, pregnancy as a product of rape, or fetal malformation), and 23 percent were completely opposed to the practice of abortion. The women in this study who supported legal abortion offered two main lines of argumentation echoing the frameworks used by women’s movements activists. One argument was that abortion is a personal decision that women have the right to make because it concerns their own lives and bodies. The words of Tania, an Afro-descendent activist, exemplify this position: I support those who say that women own their bodies and have [the right] to decide. I believe that, many times, abortion is necessary and I’m in favor of that. I’m not in favor of abortion per se, but of the woman who has decided to [have an abortion]. I respect her reasons, and I think that if she decides to do it, then it is all right. This [decision] belongs to the private sphere, to the realm of personal decisions, and I believe that we need to have absolute freedom—in that sense, I’m in favor.

Tania’s distinction between being in favor of women’s decision to undergo abortion yet not of abortion per se is important, for it clarifies a common misunderstanding in polarized political debates. Many of the people who advocate legal abortion are not promoting abortion, but supporting women’s right to decide and to try to avert risks to their lives and health. In fact, many of the women who were in favor of decriminalization of abortion emphasized the need to provide good access to contraception and sex education in order to avoid abortion in the first place. The other main argument for the decriminalization/legalization of abortion was that the law’s prohibition fosters dangerous procedures that put women’s bodily integrity and life at risk. Eugenia, a flight attendant and union member, illustrates this position: “If you legalize abortion you are preventing that they be done illegally. You are protecting the lives of many women who die because of illegal abortion practices. Because [abortion] exists; it exists. . . . So if it is illegal you have to go to those hovels where a midwife does it with a knitting needle, and people get an hemorrhage and die. So then you are giving priority to the embryo and you are killing the mother. I think it is a bit contradictory. [Abortion] should be legislated, well legislated.” Like Eugenia, other women in the study brought up dramatic examples to support their perspectives, such as cases of raped women, pregnancies that

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endangered women’s lives, pregnant girls, and fetuses with serious malformations. The reasons offered were not mutually exclusive, but often additive; that is, women offered multiple reasons to justify their views. A few women also pointed out the difficulties of low-income women supporting too many children, resorting to a discourse somewhat reminiscent of population control arguments (e.g., reducing poverty by reducing poor people’s fertility). The need to end corrupt abortion business practices was also mentioned. Given the complexity, the emotional and bodily costs, and the moral dilemmas involved in this issue, it is not surprising that even those who supported the decriminalization of abortion stressed that abortion is something to be avoided if possible, emphasizing the need to prevent unwanted pregnancies. One-fifth of the women in the sample of individual interviewees strongly condemned abortion, equating it with murder. Estela, a low-income woman, illustrates this position. She had several children, and when her teenage daughters got pregnant she convinced them not to undergo abortions. She explained why: “I’m an enemy [of abortion]. I think that at the same moment that you engendered a child, in the same moment that you make love, you could say, and you get pregnant—that already has life. It is as if you got a one-year old kid and you cut his throat with a knife. That’s how I see it.” Some of the women who took this position were fairly committed to the Catholic Church or to other Christian churches (e.g., taught catechism or were involved in the religious community) or had subscribed to religious teachings. Despite their condemnation of abortion, some of these women felt that rape should be an exception to penalization. Three women (6 percent) in the sample were ambiguous about whether abortion should be penalized, seemingly leaning to one direction or another but without making a definite statement. These women negotiated perspectives that condemn abortion with feelings of guilt, fear, and/or empathy for the women who go through abortions. Luciana, a middle-class woman of Asian descent, suggested that abortion is a personal decision, and she brought up the case of rape to support her point. When I asked about nonrape cases, she was less sure and said that “she should be in the woman’s place” in order to know. She focused her attention on contraceptive prevention and said she was not sure who the law should penalize. Yolanda, a working-class Peruvian immigrant, also encouraged contraception, but she said that she was very much an “enemy of abortion.” Still, during one of her pregnancies she had considered undergoing abortion herself but did not do it because of family pressures. When I asked her whether abortion should be penalized, she responded, “Well—but—well— I say—there are sometimes pregnancies, that you get pregnant because of rape. And well, you do not want to have that child, so there are people who decide to take it out. So well—sometimes I say—no?—if you do not know who is the father, if you got pregnant because of rape . . . But the Catholic religion never allows abortion, no matter what.” Yolanda’s statement shows that she was

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struggling to articulate her position on a matter that she did not perceive as clear-cut. She seemed to be sympathetic to abortion decisions in some instances, but she tried to negotiate that position with the perspective of the Catholic Church, which repudiates abortion. She did not clarify what the stance of the state in these matters should be. Candela, a young woman who lives in a shantytown, also provided a mixed view of abortion. Above all, she was fearful of the risks of undergoing abortion, given the dangerous conditions in which it is usually carried out in her neighborhood. Candela knew that abortion was prohibited, but she did not know that it was defined as a crime that could carry a prison penalty. She was surprised about that because she knew many women who underwent abortions, and because it was “so common” in the shantytown where she lived. She spoke about friends of hers who performed the abortion themselves, either with pills or with the sonda (catheter), and about the case of a friend who died in the process. With respect to her attitudes, on the one hand, she experienced feelings of guilt regarding the procedure. These emotions were partly grounded in religious beliefs: When her mother encouraged one of her sisters to have an abortion, she thought, “Oh God, forgive her because she is not saying that with a bad intention.” On the other hand, she was empathetic toward other women who undergo abortions: “I try to put myself in the place of that person, and the reason she did it. Because she thought that if she brings that creature, what could that creature expect? What could she offer? Many people say that love and affection. But I had a friend who said: ‘I can’t feed [the baby] just with love, and I can’t clothe [the baby] just with affection’ [laughs]. She always said, ‘the budget, the budget.’ Everyone was upset when she said that, but she was somewhat right.” Candela’s position highlights the difficulty of making abstract moral statements about abortion and how multiple forces may shape women’s views, including religious influences, women’s economic situations, the experiences of friends or family members, and the conditions in which abortion is done. Candela’s willingness to imagine herself in other women’s shoes (bodies), shows the contrast between moral abstract views and concrete embodied positions, which also inform moral standpoints. The discussions within the focus groups also reflected the contested nature of abortion in Argentina. The focus group with poor women enrolled in a social assistance program exhibited differences of opinion, with some supporting abortion in certain cases and others completely opposing it. The content of this exchange raises questions about the reasons for some poor women’s opposition to this practice. In some instances, disagreement seemed to be grounded in the high value these women placed on motherhood (an important source of status and perhaps influenced by cultural and religious beliefs too), but it might have also been a way to resist discourses that suggest it is morally wrong to have children if one does not have sufficient economic resources (economic arguments sometimes inform population control policies). For women living in conditions

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of chronic poverty, endorsing acceptance of such arguments would foreclose their possibility of having children, making fertility control not so much a choice but a mandate (Solinger 2001). Ana, one of the women in the focus group, articulated her opposition to abortion by suggesting that women can support their children even if they have few economic resources: I have five [children], and they are with me. To me, abortion is the worst thing that exists. Why? Because you are throwing the child to the garbage can. A [bad] conscience remains knowing that you . . . you could have perfectly had it, like I do. I have five. I have a plan [workfare subsidy]. I do not have a luxury job. I only have 150 pesos [approximately fifty dollars per month], and the 150 are for my children. And my children do not lack anything.

Ana’s effort to raise her children in the midst of poverty was certainly a great challenge, and she was proud of her efforts. Although she faced severe economic hardship (it was next to impossible for a large family to survive on only 150 pesos), she tried to demonstrate that she could still be a good mother who satisfied her children’s needs. While Ana’s having five children might have been the result of lack of real contraceptive choices and/or the moral repudiation of abortion, she might have also been asserting her desire and right to have children like any other women with greater economic power. Yet, Ana used her own experiences and efforts to raise her children as a platform to reject the decision of other women to undergo an abortion, implying that they are bad women or that they are unwilling to sacrifice themselves enough (reverberation of maternal sacrifice discourses). Abortion was a particularly touchy issue in the focus group of domestic workers. One of the women in the group had strong feelings against abortion, equating it with murder, while another—her good friend—shared her own abortion experience during the interview. At some point the discussion could not go any further because the woman who opposed abortion insinuated that she did not want to offend her friend. In a sense, her personal relationship took precedence over her moral convictions, casting doubt on whether she could really take her abstract position to the logical conclusion: that is, her friend would be a murderer under her definition of abortion. While the difficult interaction revealed the emotional responses and ethical dilemmas that abortion elicits, the group still recognized that abortion was a widespread practice. I mentioned that one perspective on abortion was that women who undergo such a procedure should be punished with a prison sentence. One of the women in the group responded in the midst of generalized laughter: then “all women would be en cana” (slang for “in jail”). This group also highlighted the social inequalities that mark the conditions in which abortion takes place and how lack of economic resources sometimes mean having to wait more time to be able to pay for

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an abortion. Some in this group conveyed that the longer the wait the more troublesome the decision, as the abortion goes from being the expulsion of “just blood” to the extraction of something that more closely resembles the human form. The focus group of lesbians showed the most uniform support for women’s abortion decisions. None of the women in the group opposed it. This group expressed a clear sense that women should be the ones to decide over abortion matters, citing women’s ownership of their bodies, and suggesting that women should not be forced to lend their bodily resources to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Myrna, one of the women in this group, expanded her reasoning to other realms, arguing that women have a right to decide over their bodies both in relation to abortion (often framed as a reproductive right) and in relation to their sexual identity (usually defined as a sexual right). This connection echoes efforts by some activists and scholars to bridge the work of people more strongly aligned with either one or the other side of the sexual/reproductive rights split. According to Brown (2008), with a “focus on the axis of (sexual) freedom and not just on (social) equality, the demand for the legalization of abortion functions as a hinge between reproductive and sexual rights” (280). Myrna identified the Catholic Church as a crucial player that has also made the connection between issues of sexual identity and reproduction, but with opposing goals—that is, restricting women’s capacity to make decisions about their bodies in both areas: [According to the church,] God is the one who gives you life and who takes it away. Then, of course, [the church] is opposed to the notion that women are the owners of their lives. If they are the owners of their lives, then they can also decide about their sexual identities, they can decide on everything else they want. On the other hand, like all theories, it is difficult for me to put into practice, that is, to break with the mandate that the only objective that women have, the only reason they are in the world for is to procreate [emphasis added].

The focus group with volunteers in a Catholic charity organization clearly demonstrated the contradictions between Catholic teachings and the reality of women’s lives. It showed how difficult it is, even for committed Catholic women, to sustain the discourse of the church. The discussion on contraception and abortion was initially somewhat dominated by Francisca, a sixty-nine-yearold woman who seemed to enjoy respect and authority in the group. She clearly endorsed the ideas of the Catholic Church advocating natural contraceptive methods and talking about the promiscuity of teenagers today. Her words started to lose some of their power in the face of uncomfortable silences or other women’s remarks about how contraception is really a “personal decision” or how the Church does not allow condoms but “AIDS is the other side.” Another woman added: “I have sons and I see condoms in their drawers. They are taking

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care of themselves. What am I to do? They are twenty-five and twenty-seven years old, and I’m happy to see the condoms, to see that they are taking care of themselves.” Perhaps the most surprising part of the conversation, given the focus group setting (church-related premises) and the fact that these women said they were devoted Catholics, came when we reached the topic of abortion. I had expected these women would reject abortion outright, or at least be very cautious in their words. Yet I was wrong. They were very agitated about this issue, and some of them offered passionate arguments about why abortion should be allowed in certain cases: Pupee: It is something very personal, it shouldn’t be prohibited, and each person should be able to choose according to her own criteria, her way of being, her environment, her social and economic situation, her principles and moral beliefs [another woman repeats, “according to her morals, to her principles”]. There should not be a prohibition. Each person should be free to choose. I wouldn’t say “do it,” but it is each person’s criteria, right? Delta: I’m in favor of therapeutic abortion, or if there was rape. Chiqui: Yes, that, of course. Delta: That little girl of fourteen years old who got pregnant—I think she was not from here, in another country—and she got authorization . . . Francisca: To legalize abortion brings promiscuity along. Free love is promiscuous. Delta: And what do you think, that there’s not free love today? Francisca: I’m not saying there isn’t. Chiqui: To legalize [abortion] is to avert a lot of problems, like women . . . Francisca: Well, that’s one way of thinking. Chiqui: . . . like women who undergo abortions with a knitting needle and get to the hospital with a hemorrhage. Delta: It is terrible. Chiqui: That could be averted. [Silence.] Pupee: It is very personal. Chiqui: Anyway, I believe that abortion is a very personal issue, and I agree with what she says about therapeutic abortion. And it is essential because of rape. Suddenly, they get a ten-year-old girl . . . Delta: like it happened in a Central American country . . . 11 Chiqui: or a drunk in the streets . . . Francisca: That’s a very particular case. Chiqui: Why not authorize abortion in those cases? Francisca: Well, it is probably authorized. Chiqui: No, it is not authorized. Delta: Not here, you have to go to the judge, you have to . . . Chiqui: Meanwhile the nine months [of pregnancy] went by.

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The conversation continued with more examples in which different participants felt the law should have supported women (e.g., rape, unviable fetuses). Yet as shown above, the idea that women have a right to decide about their bodies, even if not in these extreme cases, was also mentioned. While as practicing Catholics these women subscribed to many of the church’s teachings, they also had their own ideas, many of which contradicted the church’s ideologies on contraception and abortion. They came to these ideas by reflecting on their own observations and trying to make sense of information they gathered from sources like the media and from their everyday life. These processes evidenced fissures in the rigid framework provided by the Catholic Church. Some of these women’s statements resonated with feminist arguments, though they would probably not identify them as such. The attitudes of the women in this study toward abortion reflected the ethical, religious, and practical quandaries that abortion poses in a society influenced by the Catholic Church, plagued by social and economic inequalities, and in a period of crisis when gender relations were in flux. The public debates on reproductive health that surrounded the sanctioning of the new national law, the renewed activism and visibility of the women’s movement, and the media exposure of dramatic cases (e.g., the ordeal of raped girls or of women pregnant with seriously malformed fetuses) prompted the public to interrogate their beliefs and positions on abortion and reproductive rights. For example, studies suggested widespread support for increased access to contraception and sex education (CEDES, CELS, and FEIM 2003). While the Catholic Church perspective filtered or shaped the views of different women in this study, the frameworks of the women’s movement were also implicitly and explicitly enlisted. Having reviewed the attitudes of women I interviewed about abortion, I will next examine the actual embodied experiences of women who terminated their pregnancies.

Experiencing Abortion Fifteen out of fifty individual interviewees reported that they had undergone abortions. Some other women experienced the process secondhand via close female friends or relatives. Since I did not ask women directly whether they had undergone abortions—this information was volunteered by interviewees—it is possible that some women experienced abortions but chose not to report them. The majority of the women who reported abortions were middle class (ten women); the rest were poor or working class (five women). Besides these fifteen women, a working-class interviewee whose period was delayed said that she used an injection “to get her period back,” but was not sure whether this procedure was abortive or not. Only one women in the four focus groups reported having had an abortion, but the less intimate context of focus groups may have made it more difficult to share this kind of information. In the following sections I explore several questions: What are the effects of the clandestine and illegal status of abortion for the women in this research?

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How did women decide to have an abortion? How did they frame their decisions? What were the conditions in which abortions were performed? These women’s voices challenged cultural assumptions that deny the reality of abortion and marginalize or demonize women who make this decision. They also relate the inherently gendered (and classed) bodily dimensions of these experiences.

Motivations Ideologies that reflect the criminalization of abortion either disregard or downplay many women’s reasons for having abortions, concentrating mainly or exclusively on fetal rights. Since women’s bodies and existence are so deeply enmeshed in processes of pregnancy and abortion, it seems appropriate to hear what they have to say. In general, the women who had abortions explained that the timing of the interrupted pregnancy was not right either because they were too young, had other projects that were not compatible with a child, already had other children, and/or faced economic problems. One woman said that at the time of her unwanted pregnancies, she was just not interested in having children or forming a family. Some women terminated their pregnancies because their partners did not want the child or because they themselves did not want to have a child with a particular partner. Often, it was a combination of several conditions that shaped women’s decisions to undergo an abortion. About two-thirds of the women who reported abortions had children at some point before or after. Frida, a forty-year-old middle-class woman, stated that the factors that intersected in her decision to have an abortion included domestic violence, marital dissatisfaction, already having a child, and her career plans. She was married and had a child with a man with whom she did not enjoy sex and who was becoming increasingly violent. They had sexual relations very sporadically, and she got pregnant. Frida had already decided to separate from her husband and pursue other projects and knew that he could use a future child to trap her: “I was clear that I wanted to finish my studies. I was clear that I already had a child, that I wanted to work on something related to my studies, that I wanted to separate [from my husband], and that this kid would have made all that more difficult . . . I was clear that [the kid] should not come because [he/she] would be burdened with a shitty history.” From Frida’s perspective, continuing the pregnancy had high costs: resigning an emergent independence derived from career opportunities and being stuck in a violent and unhappy relationship. Although from a very different economic and social background, Alexandra (twenty-four years old) also had to weigh multiple and complex life conditions in her decision to undergo an abortion. At the time of her pregnancy, Alexandra was living in a shantytown and was already raising a small child on her own given that the father had left them. Her new pregnancy was the product of a casual relationship with another young man. Her decision to have an abortion was not easy, for she experienced tension between her Catholic upbringing and her inclination to terminate the pregnancy. She finally rejected the Catholic perspective. When I asked about her abortion experience, she lowered her voice and

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explained: “I didn’t want, I do not want [to have another child], because of the situation I was in, and my relationship with that guy was nothing serious. We were together, but no . . . each of us was leading one’s own life, so no, there was not a relationship like saying ‘let’s have a . . . [child].’ So I said ‘no.’ I thought about it, I thought about it, and we decided. Even though I was raised in a nuns’ school—which means that [abortion] is wrong—I was not going to bring [a child] to make him suffer.” Alexandra’s economic difficulties, her previous experience of male abandonment, and the casual relationship with her last sexual partner influenced her decision. If she were to birth another baby, she wanted to offer her child the possibility of at least basic well-being. Her fear of hardship was based on the economic difficulties facing a poor single mother in a depressed economy. She already knew what it was like to raise a child alone, without the father’s contribution and childcare support, and she knew much about the challenges a second baby would pose. She also did not envision the man she was dating as a person she would want to have a child with, given that their relationship was “nothing serious”—and she felt that having a child was serious business. Although women are socially condemned for having abortions, few ask what role men play in these decisions, almost as if women got pregnant by themselves. Sometimes the identity or the wishes and situations of the women’s sexual partner are key in their decision about abortion. While many women raise children by themselves, supported by extended families, or with partners (male or female) who are not their child’s biological parents, for others it is very important to be able to count on the support of the men who impregnated them. When the future father withdraws his support, or when he is not someone a woman wants to have a child with, this may tilt her decision toward abortion. Ursula, a middle-class woman who got pregnant when she was a teenager, stressed how much her boyfriend’s lack of support weighed in on her decision to terminate the pregnancy. At that time she felt that abortion was “the only thing I could do, because I couldn’t do it alone, and if I chose this [to continue the pregnancy] everything was going to be harder, because he did not want it, and if I didn’t have his support, I was not going to do it.” In the case of Franca, an indigenous woman from a northern province, the decision was partly based on her desire to spare her lover any trouble since he was married to another woman. These women took into account their relationships with men, their ideas of what constitutes a suitable family and home for the child, and their partners’ desires. Yamila, a working-class woman who identified herself as a sex worker, got pregnant when the condom a client was using broke. Her description of how she tried to convince her gynecologist of her reasons for wanting an abortion show the various threads entangled in her decision-making process: I realized [that I was pregnant] one month later, when I missed my period. It looks like the condom broke when I was ovulating, and I became pregnant. I went to talk to Berta [the gynecologist], and I told her, “I can’t have it.” And

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Berta said, “Why not?” Of course, doctors want to brainwash you to have it. [I said], “No, you don’t understand, he is a customer, a person who I don’t love.” She said, “But it is a life.” [I replied], “Yeah right, but I can’t have a child now, not at this moment. Perhaps if it would had happened at another time I would have had it, no matter who the father was.” But it was not a good time to have a child. I was coming out of a separation, out of many problems, you know, and I did not want to . . . So I did it myself. I inserted a pill in my uterus.

Abortion decision making is a context-related process. Yamila did not want to have a child with someone “she did not love” and right when she was splitting up with her partner, but she might have had a baby at another time, under different circumstances. Ursula, who at the time of the interview was in a committed lesbian relationship raising her children with another woman, mentioned that having a child without her former boyfriend’s support was not a viable option when she was eighteen years old, but the situation would be different now. I presented different cases of abortion motivations to underscore that, though abortion decisions are personal, they do not happen in a social vacuum. They are influenced by broader social conditions, power relations, and inequalities. Simple assumptions about women who undergo abortions hide the multifaceted, and often painful, nature of these decisions, particularly in a context where women who take this path are socially demonized or marginalized. This adverse social milieu also shaped the conditions in which abortion occurred.

Abortion Conditions The unsafe conditions in which millions of abortions are performed worldwide present this practice as a serious public health issue. A World Health Organization report estimates that the annual number of induced abortions around the world ascends to 42 million, and about 20 million of those abortions can be considered unsafe. Legal restrictions on abortion do not seem to avert the practice, as the great majority of abortions (around 98 percent) happen in developing countries with such restrictions (WHO 2007). While legislation in most countries (98 percent) permit abortion to save a woman’s life, only 27 percent allow abortion on request (WHO 2003). Although legalization is not enough to ensure access for all women (for example, because of economic or geographic constraints), in places where abortion is illegal women face additional challenges (Mundigo and Indriso 1999). The main effect of the criminalization of abortion in Argentina is not incarceration of women or the eradication of abortion, but clandestine abortion practices. Consistent with global trends, restrictive laws have an impact on how abortions are conducted, under what conditions, and with what economic, emotional, and bodily costs. In this section, I offer a glimpse of the disparate circumstances in which abortion is performed in Argentina and how women in this study experienced this procedure, given the context of illegality. All of the

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abortions the women I interviewed went through were clandestine, with different degrees of safety and quality of treatment. Most of the abortions reported were performed by health care practitioners (doctors, midwives), but this did not always guarantee minimum hygiene conditions, good medical attention, or humane treatment. Against the backdrop of criminalized abortion, safety and good quality health care cost significant amounts of money. Women with fewer economic resources had fewer choices of methods to use or places to go, which could mean taking greater risks. Yet even for middle-class women, abortion in better facilities was very costly. Women’s economic resources and support networks, as well as their relationships with and reactions of their doctors, shaped how they navigated the different clandestine circuits of abortion. In what follows, I explore these circuits and how women enlisted support for or tried to overcome the obstacles to their decisions to terminate their pregnancies. Among the most economically and socially disadvantaged women, two resorted to precarious homemade abortions. In one case the procedure was performed with the infamous sonda and in another with a medication containing misoprostol, which taken in certain amounts produces uterine contractions. Alexandra, the young woman living in a shantytown, could not afford to have an abortion in a clinic. Even one that was relatively inexpensive was still beyond her economic reach. Thus, she contacted a friend of her sister who made her a special deal (approximately seven dollars) to practice the abortion with a sonda in Alexandra’s sister’s home: How was the experience? Ugly, because she inserted the sonda [in the vagina]. I don’t know if you heard about it or . . . I don’t know the procedures really well. Well, it is because it is illegal, you know. Well, she inserted that [the sonda] . . . She asked me to lay down on a bed. I mean, I went to my sister’s home to do [the abortion], because I would have to stay two or three days in bed, more or less. . . . First I was scared, and then I did it, and I got up the following day and I felt something that fell, and when I went to the bathroom, the placenta fell and then I was losing [blood]. I had a strong hemorrhage, a strong hemorrhage, and my mom told me, “Why don’t you go to the doctor? Go and find out what you have.” But I did not want to tell her. Well, then I was, [the hemorrhage] started to decrease, but I couldn’t get [my body] straight for about a week. I got stuck like that, bent over. Because I still had it there, I hadn’t expelled it yet.

After a few days, the abortion was completed and luckily she did not suffer further side effects. This very dangerous procedure put Alexandra’s health and life at risk, but it was the only method she could afford. The illegality of abortion, combined with her poverty, influenced the dangerous conditions in which it was done. Alexandra relied on one of the methods that often result in health

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problems requiring medical attention. Yet like many other women, Alexandra never went to a medical center, adding to the nonregistered numbers of abortions that take place in Argentina every day. Yamila, who made a living through prostitution, had what she called a homemade abortion and found out about this method from information that circulated among her compañeras. She reported using an analgesic and anti-inflammatory medication with misoprostol, inserting some of these pills in her vagina and taking additional pills orally in order to produce contractions that cause an abortion: “I laid down, and I got up the following morning, but it hadn’t come down. I came to the office and when I got home I started to have cramps, like in my belly, and I went to the bathroom and expelled everything. . . . I felt pretty bad, because I also have gastritis, you know, and those pills are for the bones, so they are really strong, you know? They killed my stomach, and for one week my stomach did not get better, but I expelled everything, even the placenta.” Yamila could not afford a fancy clinic or an expensive doctor to do the abortion or to give her sound advice about abortion procedures. When she talked to her gynecologist in a public hospital, she did not help her. Rather, the gynecologist tried to convince her to continue the pregnancy. Thus Yamila relied on the informal network of women in prostitution to find out how to do the abortion herself. Both Yamila and Alexandra alluded to the physical pain that their homemade abortions provoked (“they killed my stomach,” “I got stuck like that, bent over”), but they were lucky that these procedures did not take a greater toll on their health. Legislation that makes it difficult for women to access safe abortions influences the high proportion of abortion-related deaths among maternal deaths in Argentina. Particularly for poor women, the dangers of clandestine abortions and justified fears of going to the hospital to obtain post-abortion attention may place their lives in jeopardy. The Ministry of Health estimated that 31 percent of maternal deaths in Argentina are caused by botched abortions (Ministerio de Salud 2002), which means that abortion constitutes the first cause of maternal death in the country (see also Ramos et al. 2004). These numbers, however, are not exhaustive, because of the clandestine nature of the procedure. It is also suspected that some of the maternal deaths that are registered as produced by other causes are, in fact, related to abortion (Ramos et al. 2001). Furthermore, many women who undergo clandestine abortions suffer infections that may jeopardize their organs, including ovaries, uterus, lungs, liver, and kidneys (Mormandi 2001). As Mundigo and Indriso (1999, 24) state: “Death is not the only tragic cost of unsafe abortion. Many more women survive the experience, only to suffer lifelong consequences of serious complications. Sepsis, hemorrhage, uterine perforation, and cervical trauma often lead to problems of infertility, permanent physical impairment and chronic morbidity.” While some women seek medical help because of abortion complications, many more do not. For example, in the province of Mendoza, it was estimated that “for every woman who arrives at the hospital during the course of an

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abortion or abortion complications, there are three or four cases more who never reach hospital attention, and thus are not part of the records” (García 2003, 4). In the province of Buenos Aires, about 32,000 women per year were reported to seek medical attention in public hospitals because of abortion-related complications (Clarín 2003). As long as abortion remains illegal, and safe abortions expensive, poor women like Alexandra will continue risking their lives and bodily integrity in order to control their fertility. While Argentina joined over 190 countries that pledged to fulfill the United Nations Millennium Development Goals—one of which is to improve maternal health—the 2007 Argentine government report avoids a discussion of the legalization of abortion as one of the necessary steps to reduce maternal deaths. While the report (Presidencia de la Nación 2007) endorses humane post-abortion attention, this does not solve the inadequate conditions in which currently illegal abortions are executed in the first place. In a society where abortion is a crime, where women have been traditionally subordinated, and where women who do not choose motherhood are viewed with suspicion, one of the risks of undergoing abortion is mistreatment by those who perform it. Even the women who could pay more money for an abortion could not count on humane treatment. For example, the first abortion of Diana, a middle-class interviewee, was in a doctor’s private office. Yet Diana recounted that this doctor treated her badly: “When I woke up from my first abortion, I saw a bucket with blood and other things next to the bed, which they could have placed in the bathroom. The guy [the doctor] complained the whole time, before and after the abortion: ‘This [pregnancy] is too advanced. I don’t know if this should be done or not! Later, if you have an infection, it will be your own responsibility, do not call me!’ [He said] those kinds of things.” In Diana’s case, the doctor did the abortion and was paid for it, but washed his hands of any responsibility or accountability in relation to the procedure or her physical health and emotions. The fact that she was doing something illegal meant that she would be unlikely to report medical malpractice to the justice system or, if she did, she would probably find no sympathy. Lorena, a university student in her twenties accompanied her best friend to have an abortion in a private house with a terrible smell that stayed with her for many days. This place was run by two women who performed the abortions, but Lorena was not sure whether they were doctors. Lorena described the mistreatment women undergoing abortions received: [The abortion practitioners] would tell the women, “Oh, what are you whining about?”—and [my friend] was hurting—“What are you whining about? You liked it, right?” It means that if you did it [having sex], you should have thought about it before. And when my friend was hurting, they would tell me. “Oh, don’t pay attention to her, don’t pay attention to her. They play the role of victims, but they are very manipulative.” And I was very scared. I did not say

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anything because, at that moment, I was not interested in what they told me. They take advantage and gain money.

In Lorena’s narrative it is possible to infer multiple reasons for why abortion in such conditions jeopardizes women’s physical and psychological well-being: the implied lack of hygiene in the building (the terrible smell), a corrupt business set up (“they take advantage and gain money”), and abusive or disrespectful practitioners whose discourse is infused with negative cultural scripts about women’s sexual bodies (i.e., the idea that women should suffer if they had sex— and abortion is that punishment). This context contributes to heightening women’s pain and fears. Abortion practitioners like the ones Lorena described are obviously not concerned about promoting women’s rights or well-being. While there are networks of activist women and health practitioners who support women who decide to terminate their pregnancies, many women end up in the hands of corrupt people who are more concerned about profit-making and who lack any accountability. Some of the women who had abortions were able to access quasi-normal medical facilities or at least relatively safe and hygienic places. Yet this kind of attention required monetary resources that women themselves often lacked, so that they had to collect or borrow money from other people in their circle of friends or relatives. When Diana decided to have a second abortion she did not want to risk being mistreated again, and she aimed for a better abortion facility. This time the abortion took place in a clandestine clinic that cost her a “fortune,” but afforded adequate treatment and some level of tranquility: “The second time it was more institutional. I went with my partner. It was very expensive. I was able to rest there for a while, and the guy [the doctor] bothered to explain that—what he probably tells himself—that this was not more complex than a dental extraction. He gave me a medication to take with me, he told me I could call him at any moment, I mean, as if he was a normal doctor. And, I was less paranoid about being busted by the cops. I don’t know, the first time I was scared about that.” Diana’s second abortion was done in a “first class” facility (as another interviewee would call it). The high cost of this type of abortion offered the bottom line of what “normal doctors” are expected to do: explain the procedure, be available to patients, and be mindful of patients’ bodily and emotional needs. Diana’s reference that the doctor treated her as if he were a normal doctor resonates with another interviewee’s experiences in expensive abortion facilities, who mentioned that the procedure almost seemed legal. This sense of normalcy or legality contributed to making the abortion experience less problematic to these women. Still, even some women who had abortions in relatively good conditions, and who supported the legalization of abortion, referred to abortion as a hard embodied experience. In some cases, the difficulty of abortion has partly to do

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with the physical pain of that type of bodily intervention, but also with how such pain is merged with the social context, moral dilemmas, and cultural expectations of Argentine society. Ursula, who had an abortion in a good site, without complications, and who believed in women’s right to decide over their bodies, offered a poignant explanation about why abortion can be such a difficult decision and experience for women: In the best-case scenario, [abortion] is an unpleasant procedure. In any case, it is not like having a dental extraction, which is another unpleasant procedure. It is not like having a mammogram, which is another unpleasant procedure. This is big. And it is big because it goes against everything that we talked about, things that are taught and learned, things that are culturally transmitted. And you were raised and taught to believe that that thing that they are taking out from you at that moment [the embryo/the fetus]—because you decided to have it taken out—you were supposed to carry it full term, breastfeed it, raise it, educate it, clothe it, and give your life for it. And you are taking it out. How can that not be violent? It is [violent], in the body, the mind, the soul, in everything you can think of. You did not want that; you did not want to be in that situation, but you are and it is horrible, horrible. In fact, it hurts less than giving birth, but when you give birth the whole culture is supporting you. “You shall give birth in pain.” . . . but then you have the baby. And even if what you are aborting is not a baby; it is not a person. What I’m trying to say is that you are still aware of all of its potentialities, and they are there, inside.

From Ursula’s perspective, abortion is a painful experience that affects the whole embodied self, even if it can be conducted with minimal physical pain and risks. She suggested that the embodied pain experienced during abortion cannot be isolated from cultural expectations promoting motherhood and encouraging a deep embodied attachment to the potential human being developing inside the woman’s body. Culturally, this embodied attachment is supposed to transcend pregnancy and may even entail the ultimate sacrifice a person can make (i.e., to give one’s life for another being). Thus, interrupting the course of a pregnancy, cutting that connection, going against the cultural expectations, was disturbing to Ursula even if she did not regret her decision. Rocío, who had two abortions with a medical doctor, and who also thought that abortion should be decriminalized, talked about these experiences as leaving “a kind of wound.” She recounted how it is to “wake up after an abortion, and the pain that one feels, the sensation that one was asleep the whole time, but was not completely numb. It is a feeling of pain, there in your belly. It is something very hard. I don’t know, because of lack of contraception. [We need] greater awareness, more information.” Rocío would have preferred to avoid abortion and to prevent an unintended pregnancy. She regretted not having used contraception. In telling her experiences of abortion, she talked about the physical environment of the doctor’s office and how during the second abortion she

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perceived the surfaces as older and not too clean (even though he was a “first class” doctor). She reported crying and experiencing emotional and physical distress. She also compared abortion to other bodily experiences, saying that abortion is not like taking out a breast lump: In the case of abortion, “you are hurting something vital, you are wounding, cutting, extracting, bleeding, not letting the natural course of events to continue.” She argued that there is an energy, a spiritual connection that is at stake when undergoing an abortion. Even though she is not Catholic, she attributed such perception to the church’s influence. The physical pain she experienced was intertwined with the meanings she attributed to abortion and the social context of such procedures. Interestingly, when she was waking up after one of her abortions, she looked at the doctor and said to him “never again.” The doctor immediately connected such expression to the name of the book Nunca Más (Never Again), which reports the tortures and other human rights violations during the dictatorship. This episode evokes associations among different kinds of distressing physical experiences taking place in clandestinity (experiences of torture under the dictatorship vis-à-vis abortion in a situation of illegality) and shows the social character of the embodied experiences and meanings attributed to abortion. Women’s relationship with doctors and support networks influenced the conditions under which abortion was carried out. Doctors’ attitudes are not irrelevant in abortion cases, as they have the power to obstruct or support women already making a difficult choice (Ramos et al. 2001). Doctors’ ideas about women’s bodies and rights, their moral convictions, their interpretation of the law, and their relationships to the women involved affect abortion decisions and experiences. In this study, doctors sometimes facilitated the process of abortion by connecting women with fine practitioners or providing good quality attention during abortion interventions. That was the case of Ursula, who recalled: “Given that abortion is illegal, I had a relatively good experience. I was lucky. . . . It is illegal, and well, my own obstetrician recommended someone in a relatively good place. There were two women who treated me well. It was easy and I didn’t have any complications.” Ursula’s experience of abortion was easy in the sense of taking place in a good facility, without undergoing major health risks (though it was hard in the ways she described before). Her own doctor helped her in the process. In contrast to Ursula’s experience, doctors’ fears about legal repercussions and/or their moral convictions may mean that they are unresponsive to women’s abortion decisions and needs. Viviana, also a middle-class woman, described a doctor’s unresponsiveness when she decided to undergo an abortion. Viviana suspected she was pregnant right away and wanted to interrupt the pregnancy. But the doctor she reached did not assist her: I remember that when I thought I was pregnant, I looked for a doctor in my health plan in order to do the pregnancy test. And I looked for a doctor, and

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I said, “I will make an appointment with this one whose name is Pagan, because he probably is not Catholic” [laughs]. And it turned out that Pagan was more Catholic than the pope. And I told him, “Well, I think I’m pregnant.” I believe that the guy realized that I wanted to do [an abortion] and he treated me really badly. . . . I don’t remember exactly what he said, but that he could give me the prescription for the pregnancy test, and if I was pregnant he would continue with the care I needed. And I said, “Well, no, in fact, if I’m pregnant I would not want to continue the pregnancy.” [He said], “Then there’s nothing to do!”

In this case, the doctor abided by a law or personal beliefs that made it hard for Viviana to follow her own moral convictions. The effect of this kind of response was not to deter Viviana from abortion but to risk further complications because of the delay. She ended up having an abortion anyway. Similarly, the case of Frida, who also benefited from middle-class status, shows her frantic efforts to obtain medical help: “First I felt desperation and loneliness because of not knowing with whom to share this. So, I went to a gynecologist, and after the [test] was all right, I forced him to give me an address [of an abortion place]. Of course, he told me that he did not know any. No to this, no to that. I told him that if he didn’t do something, I would do it myself, in a different way, and that I would risk my life, and it would be worse. I asked him to please help me with this.” The doctor finally gave Frida an address of a place to get an abortion, but it was so expensive that she could not afford it despite her middle-class position. It was through her mother’s support that she was finally able to get the abortion elsewhere. The abortion experiences that turned out to be relatively less troublesome for the women I interviewed combined good health care (often expensive) with a network of people who offered different levels of support: emotional (“she accompanied me,” “she took care of me”), practical (child care, money), or a combination of both. Beatriz, who became pregnant during particularly difficult economic times, was able to talk about her decision to undergo abortion with her family and received extensive support from her relatives. Franca, an indigenous woman who migrated to Buenos Aires, was able to find fine medical attention with the help of a women’s network. Nina, a middle-class woman who had her first abortion when she was young, also relied on networks of friends who pooled money to get the abortion with a “super, super, super doctor,” so that everything turned out “perfect.” Family support was also key in the case of Frida, the woman who almost had to threaten her doctor in order to obtain an abortion referral: I asked my mom for money. My mom asked me for what. I asked her to sell her jewels and give me the money. She asked me for what. So then I told her. She said that she knew a person, that we could go to see her. Well, it was my midwife. . . . Then we went to see her, and she examined me, and there was no

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problem. And my mom accompanied me with this. So, I went to an hygienic place, with good care. . . . I went with my mom and I was all right. I stayed at home when we came back and [my mom] took care of me. She took my child [temporarily out of the house] and she took care of me. So no problem.

Many of my interviewee’s testimonies show the strong impact of support networks: mothers, sisters, friends, and partners were crucial to different women’s abortion experiences and their bodily effects. These networks helped somewhat to cushion the consequences of a social environment adverse to abortion. The actions of third parties suggest that in a context in which abortion is illegal, it is not only individual women who are forced into clandestinity and illegality but also a whole web of “accomplices,” including those motivated by altruism or solidarity, and those who aim for a financial gain. A flyer by the Foro por los Derechos Reproductivos (Forum for Reproductive Rights), a women’s movement organization that was calling people to demonstrate in support of legal abortion, shows such interrelationships, emphasizing the social nature of abortion practices. The flyer states: Women of all ages, social and religious conditions, resort to abortion to avoid involuntary motherhood. But a woman never has an abortion alone. Behind an abortion there is: a male who helps or abandons, women who take care or censor, professionals who collaborate or deny their help, parliament members who do not legislate, and a whole society involved.

(FDR 2002)

The Effects of Clandestinity and Illegality Sonia Corrêa (2003, 2) argues that laws that criminalize abortion “remain in place basically to sustain a cultural climate of moral condemnation of women who resort to the interruption of pregnancies” more than to actually incarcerate the millions of women who have abortions every year. This adverse climate has several damaging effects, such as facilitating corrupt businesses, depriving women of needed support, and impinging on women’s subjectivity and bodily integrity (Checa and Rosenberg 1996). The stories of the women interviewed here highlight the profits that clandestinity and illegality nourish. Rocío, a middle-class woman, suggested that the “first class” doctor who did her abortions had probably bribed the neighborhood police officers to look the other way. Lorena commented how the practitioners in the abortion clinic she went to with her friend benefited economically from illegal abortions, implying that clandestinity serves corrupt people’s interests. Jesusa, who did not undergo an abortion herself, but is a medical doctor, pointed out the profits, and sometimes the hypocrisy, of many physicians who take part

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in the “business of abortion.” Her views coincide with feminist critics who expose the double standards of doctors who are against abortion in their public practice but perform abortions underground for handsome profits. Clandestinity and illegality also enhanced the sense of secretiveness and silence around abortion, which reduced the support women could obtain in these situations and heightened their feelings of loneliness or despair. For example, these women had to pick and choose carefully with whom they would share their decision to undergo abortion out of fear of disappointing or angering family members (because asking for help would reveal their sexual activity and/or because their relatives were morally opposed to abortion). Others asked family members for help only as a last resort. Doctors were not always helpful, and getting other institutional support was virtually impossible because of the illegal status of the procedure. Abortion legalization advocates often mention how clandestinity increases the risks to women’s life and health, especially for poor and working-class women. Illegality widens the inequality gap between well-off women who can pay to have an abortion in fancy or relatively safe places and women living in poverty, many of them with brown bodies already socially devalued and facing multiple forms of discrimination. Intersecting inequalities are likely to magnify the risks of clandestine, unsafe abortions to poor women’s health, bodies, and lives. The kinds of bodily risks poor women may undergo are best exemplified by Alexandra’s experience with the sonda and her post-abortion refusal to seek medical help. Other studies show that this reluctance to reveal abortion to doctors is fairly common because women fear they will be reported to the criminal justice system (Ramos et al. 2001). Of course, the women I interviewed who reported abortions were able to talk about these experiences because they survived. Other women were less lucky, and I heard of some of these women’s deaths secondhand through my interviewees’ stories. The women I interviewed also revealed a less-mentioned effect of clandestinity: the effects on women’s sense of self and embodied emotions. Although going against the mandate to be mothers may be sufficient to provoke upsetting emotions in many women (Checa and Rosenberg 1996; Rosenberg 1994), feelings of fear, guilt, shame, and humiliation cannot be completely understood without looking at the context of clandestinity, lack of practitioner accountability, and the kind of treatment women receive. Some suggested that what makes abortion a particularly bad situation in Argentina, or in the words of Diana, “a shitty experience,” is its clandestine, illegal nature. Different interviewees mentioned how illegality and clandestinity heightened their sense of danger, fear, loneliness, or guilt in relation to abortion. Diana mentioned her “paranoia” about being caught by the police during her first abortion. Other women described a feeling of eeriness in relation to the underground abortion facilities they attended. Clandestinity also contributed to women’s sense of precariousness, feeling that they might die or damage their bodies in a “bad death” clinic or

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“butcher’s shop” clinic, that they were at the mercy of unscrupulous abortionists who did not care about their emotional or bodily integrity or of expensive doctors who would take economic advantage at women’s expense, that if something turned out wrong they would have no protection from the state or from medical institutions. In summary, abortion is a difficult decision per se for many women, but abortion illegality, the condemnation of the Catholic Church, and a polarized political debate that does not leave space for nuance, ambivalence, or contradiction all contribute to making abortion experiences quite problematic for women in Argentina. Yet the silence, secrecy, and shame that clandestinity encourages is being counteracted by more and more women who are organizing, speaking up publicly, and pushing society to look honestly at one of the most controversial social issues affecting women’s lives and bodies.

Conclusion Argentine society attaches high cultural value to maternal bodies, and the special place reserved for mothers may be both a blessing and a burden. It is a burden to the extent that motherhood is a hegemonic expectation that often requires heroic sacrifices. The demonization of women who deviate from the motherhood mandate and the obstacles these women face reveal the compulsory nature of the social norm. While women are the ones who become pregnant, give birth, and disproportionately assume the responsibilities of rearing children, some institutions and individuals want to limit women’s abilities to decide about their reproductive bodies. Maternal embodiment in Argentina is enforced through the state, religious ideologies, cultural norms, and economic arrangements such as the sexual division of labor. While women in this study tended to value motherhood, many of them were unwilling to be just maternal bodies, or in the words of one interviewee, just “reproductive uteruses.” These women aimed to interrupt the link between sexuality and reproduction by resorting to contraception and/or abortion. Yet women’s ability to make decisions about their bodies was not merely a matter of personal choice but was profoundly embedded in a web of social inequalities. Contexts of sexual violence, economic scarcity, inaccessibility to reproductive health services, and punitive laws contributed to restricting women’s reproductive options and bodily self-determination. The context of the crisis during the period of my study heightened the social inequities entrenched in women’s reproductive options and posed additional burdens to motherhood requirements (for example, the hardships poor women faced to feed their children in the midst of increasing poverty, declining living conditions, and widespread unemployment). On the other hand, the crisis also triggered new openings and spaces of contestation, including the questioning of gender norms and arrangements as well

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as other social injustices created through neoliberal economic policies. The intensification of political protest during this period included women’s renewed demands in the area of sexual and reproductive rights. Discussion of women’s difficulties asserting reproductive choices took place not only in feminist circles but also within other women’s and gender-mixed social movement organizations. Many of these groups organized to influence public policy on sexual and reproductive health. The undeniable context of the economic crisis meant that these demands were not just for formal laws but were often linked to broader economic and structural changes regarding jobs, health care, and food access. It is interesting that during one of the worst economic crises in the country’s history the passage of a national law allocating economic resources to expand women’s reproductive freedom was finally achieved. One of the reasons that activist women’s vocal demands for universal access to abortion and contraception faced the repudiation of institutions like the Catholic Church is that such demands counter mandatory maternal embodiment, a central piece in hegemonic conceptions of what constitutes a “normal” family and “natural” relationships between men and women in Argentina. Increasing sectors of the population, particularly women, are now challenging such views. Yet, while public opinion and policy reflect greater willingness to expand access to sex education and contraception, abortion remains a thornier issue. The criminalization of abortion continues to be a way in which the state regulates women’s bodies, forcing women into involuntary motherhood or into illegality, and in the case of women with few economic resources, into the bodily health risks or death associated with unsafe abortion practices. The terrain of reproductive politics is centered on the female body to a large extent because pregnancy happens inside women’s bodies, but also because social attempts to regulate women’s reproductive capacities continue to be crucial ways to sustain women’s social subordination.

chapter 5

z Embattled Bodies violence against women

Social aggression directed at women’s bodies is expressed not only through social structures and institutions but also through micro interactions. In the previous chapters, I examined women’s bodily experiences in relation to the Argentine political economy, cultural norms of femininity and beauty, and the regulation of women’s procreation capacities. An examination of each of these areas reveals significant levels of structural violence (Farmer 2003) that play out on women’s bodies—violence that causes physical harm and emotional strain, that leaves scars on the body, and that even kills. We see this violence, for example, on the bodies of women who die or damage their health in clandestine abortions. In the context of economic crises, we may also detect structural violence in the bodily effects of a market-oriented system that denies poor people access to needed food and health care, and on the bodies of women who become physically exhausted as they try to stretch their families’ survival chances in the midst of unemployment, wage cuts, withdrawal of public services, and community disintegration. Structural violence, though pervasive and extremely harmful, is often underplayed or not defined as violence per se. In this chapter, I address a type of violence that is better recognized as such but not always dealt with appropriately: interpersonal violence. This type of violence is a form of direct control over the body, exerted by one person over another with the intention and/or likelihood of inflicting bodily and psychological harm. Interpersonal violence also triggers different levels of recognition and denial among individuals and communities. Bodies bruised, scarred, and mutilated are more easily identified as targets of violence than bodies deprived of liberty, verbally and psychologically harassed, or threatened. Although such actions may not leave obvious physical traces, they are usually damaging to a person’s sense of self and bodily security (Velázquez 2003). The social location of perpetrators and victims, and the conditions in which violence occurs, also 129

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influences social perceptions, reactions, and willingness to address the problem (Jackman 2002).1 Structural and interpersonal violence are dynamically related. Here I look at male-perpetrated, interpersonal violence against women not as an individual phenomenon but as integral to a system of “sexual terrorism” that, to a large extent, relies on fear of violence, coercion, and physical force—including battery, sexual abuse, rape, and sexual harassment—to control women and keep them in subordinate positions (Sheffield 2007, 110). These acts do not respond to a grand plan or conspiracy to subjugate women, but neither are they random acts. They are embedded in social inequalities shaping relationships between individual men and women, linked to a larger ideological framework and material arrangements that support violence. Scholars and activists describe such violent acts as “gender violence” to highlight how they are “structured to harness cultural notions of femininity, masculinity, procreation, and nurturance and to put them into the service of state wars and mass murder or to fuel peacetime forms of domination” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004, 22). These types of bodily violence, however, are not exclusively rooted in a patriarchal social structure but are configured at the intersection of various inequalities. The violence experienced by different groups of women can be best understood in connection to systems of power that mutually constitute and reinforce each other (Collins 1997; hooks 1998; Smith 2005). Heterosexist or racist ideologies that demonize lesbians or construct women of color as overly sexual intersect with sexism in the promotion of interpersonal and institutionalized violence against these women (INCITE! 2006; Rich 1980). Gender inequality in intersection with class location can contribute to women becoming trapped in abusive relationships and influence their possibilities of dealing with violence. Practical opportunities to leave a battering husband, for example, are diminished for women with few economic resources of their own (WHO 2002). Forms of gendered aggression that target women’s bodies can be conceptualized as blatant expressions of “power-over”—that is, a repressive form of power intent in controlling and dominating.2 Different conceptions of power in contemporary society encourage distinct understandings and attention levels to this type of bodily subjection. One of the most influential theorists of power and the body has been Michel Foucault. Foucauldian frameworks have helped to tease out how power operates on the body through pervasive, yet subtle, forms of social control—through social discourses and institutional disciplines. However, such perspectives seem less useful to understanding women’s exposure to interpersonal embodied violence. Foucault argued that in Western societies, control of the body shifted from more repressive forms (e.g., direct physical punishment) to methods seemingly more benign, but which, in fact, have a strong grip over the body. Modern methods of social control constantly regulate the body and enlist individuals’ collusion and participation in their own surveillance through institutions like hospitals, prisons, factories, the military, and the medical system

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(Foucault 1978, 1989). From a Foucauldian perspective, institutional disciplines and discourses regulate every detail, movement, and capacity of the body, quantifying, creating standards, normalizing bodies, and penetrating bodily habits, gestures, and behaviors. In sum, such methods aim to create “docile bodies” useful to sustaining systems of power and domination (Foucault 1992). While such kinds of disciplinary power and bodily control are certainly important, here I would like to highlight the continued significance of direct, interpersonal physical violence as a method of social control by which systems of oppression are maintained. This form of power over the body coexists with, and often serves to reinforce and reproduce, more subtle forms of disciplinary power, and it is especially important to understanding women’s embodied experiences. Feminists have observed that one shortcoming of Foucault’s work is a male-centered analysis that tends to neglect gender-specific dynamics (McLaren 2002). Still, feminist scholars have found Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power useful and have adapted them to women’s realities in order to understand, for example, how prevailing conceptions of femininity discipline women’s bodies, partly relying on women’s own participation (Bartky 1998; Bordo 1989; Sawicki 1991). Nevertheless, feminists have also paid substantial attention to repressive, direct, and violent interpersonal methods by which gender and other forms of inequality are sustained (O’Toole, Schiffman, and Edwards 2007; Young 1990b). When thinking about power, violence, and the body, we must ask whose experiences are taken as reference points for the analysis. For instance, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1989, 79) argued that the reduction of violent state punishments (e.g., torture and public executions) was correlated with a decrease in “blood crimes” and other forms of physical aggression since the end of the eighteenth century. However, we might ask whether the definition of blood crimes adequately accounts for women’s lives, especially when the state has not considered many violent acts targeting women’s bodies to be crimes in the first place. Historically, many women have been battered, tortured, violated, and punished by men in their own homes, and the state often condoned such actions—more invested in protecting the privacy of the home and the authority of the pater familia than protecting women from such crimes (Jones 2000). In thinking about the social control of women’s bodies it is necessary to consider the continued importance of raw interpersonal violence in those processes. When I asked the women in my study about their bodily experiences, many of them revealed painful histories of interpersonal violence playing out on their bodies. For these women repressive and physically damaging or debilitating forms of bodily control had not become obsolete. They were direct forms of disciplining the body. Women from different social backgrounds interwove complex stories about violence—stories in which, for example, sexual abuse and other seemingly unrelated problems such as negative body image and eating disorders were part of the same matrix. In talking about their bodies, a whole

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array of violent interventions emerged. Speaking to these issues is particularly important because violence against women in Argentina, as in other parts of the world, continues to be surrounded by an aura of silence and misunderstanding within families, communities, and the broader society.

Violence against Women in Argentina: A Social Problem Background Information Violence against women is a serious social problem in Argentina that has been brought to the public’s attention thanks to the voices of individual female targets of male violence and to campaigns organized by women’s groups, particularly feminists (Chejter 1995). Despite these efforts, existing strategies and solutions have exposed only the tip of the iceberg, and women’s groups have demanded that the government commit itself to gathering basic information to assess the severity of the problem and effectively address it. Experts in the field of gender violence in Argentina have pointed out that obtaining complete statistical information on this issue has been a real challenge. To the problem of underreporting, we should add that recorded information on violence against women has traditionally been partial, deficient, and often processed in ways that made it difficult to compare across regions (Bressa and Schuster 2003; Chejter, Ruffa, and Flores 1999; Lipszyc et al. 2002). The National Council of Women has relatively recently started to implement the System of Information and Monitoring of Family Violence Against Women in an effort to record such events through a unified system covering the national territory. Centralized databases on the wide range of gender-based violence are still lacking, but the partial information available starts to show the magnitude of the problem. In the city of Buenos Aires, the Dirección General de la Mujer, a government institution created to address women’s issues, set up a hotline in 2000 to assist victims of violence. From August 2000 until April 2002 the Family Violence line received 53,869 calls, and the I’ll Help You line (for children and adolescents) received 40,257 calls (Bressa and Schuster 2003). According to a study carried out by the government of the province of Buenos Aires, reported in La Nación (2003d), it is estimated that one of every four women are victims of violence in that province. The study also indicates that 67 percent of all the criminal complaints women file concern cases of violence, including rape, battery, threats, and sexual abuse. Among the cases of domestic violence, 75 percent of the victims were women and 2 percent were men. Twenty-three percent of the cases were recorded as violence mutually exerted by both (La Nación 2003d, 13). (It is important to note that sometimes in the latter scenario women are actually defending themselves from male aggression.) By 1999, the number of reported rapes per year at the national level ranged from 5,000 to 7,000, but the number of convictions for sexual crimes was only about 400 to 500 per year (Chejter, Ruffa, and Flores 1999). It is estimated that only 10 percent of all sexual crimes

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are reported each year and that the actual number of instances of sexual violence could be up to 60,000 (Lipszyc et al. 2002). In recent years, governmental and nongovernmental organizations have continued recording and exposing the damaging effects of violence against women. A study by the feminist organization La Casa del Encuentro counted 207 murders of women in Argentina during 2008, based on cases featured in media reports during that period (which does not include many women who enter hospitals because of sexist violence and subsequently die) (La Casa del Encuentro n.d. [2009]). The numbers of complaints received by the Family and Women’s Police Stations in the Province of Buenos Aires grew significantly in just a few years: from 19,644 in 2006 to 52,351 reports of family violence from January to October 2008 (a 166 percent increase). Eighty percent of the reported perpetrators were male (Carbajal 2008). To deal with this type of problem, in 2008 the Supreme Court of Justice for the Nation opened an office specializing in domestic violence located in the city of Buenos Aires. As Eleonor Faur from the United Nations Population Fund suggested, new institutional spaces that address gender-based violence combined with greater public awareness about this social problem have perhaps encouraged women’s increased use of the available services and reporting rates (Carbajal 2008). In reflecting about several facets of their lives, the majority of the women interviewed individually shared information about their experiences of interpersonal violence, including sexual harassment within institutions (e.g., at work, school, doctors’ offices), street harassment (offensive sexual comments and physical contact in the streets, train, or bus), child molestation, sexual assault and abuse as adults, rape, and domestic and intimate partner violence. Narratives about violent experiences were sometimes brought up by interviewees who chose the card printed with the word “violence”; sometimes they emerged in connection to other aspects of their lives; and sometimes they were told in response to specific questions (e.g., “Have you ever received unsolicited or unwanted sexual attention?”). Although I did not select women for my sample based on such experiences, during the course of interviews, it turned out that interpersonal violence constituted a significant feature of their bodily experiences. Feminist theorists and researchers have relied on the “continuum of violence” concept in order to map the spectrum of violence that takes women’s bodies as objects of control and domination. One of the advantages of this concept is that instead of looking at instances of violence as separate or unrelated, it helps highlight the common elements of different manifestations of gender-based violence. The second advantage of the concept is that it “enables documenting and naming the range of abuse, coercion and force that women experience” (Kelly 1987, 48). In this study, about three-quarters of the women interviewed individually reported experiences that fall on a continuum of violence. Among individual interviewees, a little over half reported violence involving unwelcome/coerced physical contact (i.e., beyond verbal aggression)

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exerted by individual men, in some cases when they were girls. Such unsolicited, unwanted bodily contact included sexual fondling (e.g., of breasts, genitalia, buttocks), forced sexual acts such as fellatio and intercourse, as well as domestic and intimate partner violence, including battery and sexual abuse. Consistent with other research on gender violence, the perpetrators were often men that the women knew (e.g., an uncle, a stepfather, a family friend, a neighbor, a cousin, a boss, a husband, a doctor) (Jones 2000; Stanko 1985; Velázquez 2003). Instances of violence against women involving strangers included the case of a woman who was raped on the street (two other women were raped by men they knew) and cases of sexual harassment in public transportation and on the street. Violence against women was also discussed in the focus groups. Women in each of these groups either told stories about other women who had suffered gender-based violence (for example, acquaintances or family members) or shared personal experiences of violence, mostly street and sexual harassment involving offensive/obscene comments and/or aggressive physical contact, such as unwelcome touching of breasts or buttocks and forceful kissing or hugging. Women both in the domestic workers’ group and in the group of social assistance recipients told experiences of sexual harassment in the context of domestic work. They spoke about how such jobs, occurring in private homes, place them at particular risk of sexual harassment from male employers. The focus group of lesbians pointed out specific forms of aggressions they are exposed to because of heterosexism and how fear of verbal and bodily aggression have conditioned their behavior—for example, prompting them to avoid physically showing affection to their partners in public. The group of Catholic charity volunteers tended to talk about other women’s experiences of violence, especially the women who seek assistance from their organization. Perhaps these women did not experience this type of violence themselves, but it is also possible that it was easier to talk about other women’s experiences, especially those of poor women, than about their own. Ideas about why and how violence against women occurs were addressed in all groups, yielding interesting insights about social discourses on gender and violence in Argentina. The group of lesbians was the most sympathetic to the plight of women targets of violence, emphasizing social structures that place women in disadvantageous positions. They mentioned women who would prefer to leave their batterers but “perhaps do not have their own house, do not have anywhere to go, do not have a job, and have to leave with their children,” or who, in the context of patriarchal society, were “led to believe that [they] can’t do it.” The women enrolled in a social assistance program explained violence against women by resorting to a combination of individual explanations (“lack of communication” between partners), essentialist notions about women (women’s “weakness”), and more structural influences (“the pressures of daily life”). The responses of the other two groups—domestic workers and charity volunteers— mixed elements of feminist frameworks (for example, mentioning machismo)

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and popular beliefs that have been disputed by feminist researchers (e.g., Scully 1990; Velázquez 2003), such as characterizations of battered women as masochists or provokers of violence (“There are women who like to be beaten up”) and male perpetrators as mostly mentally ill individuals (“I think that rape comes from someone sick”). The testimonies of women in this study provided rich accounts that show intricate relationships between gender, violence, and female bodies. In the following sections, I first focus on two historical and culturally specific examples of how violence against women is intertwined with broader social, political, and economic processes: the legacy of the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983) and the period following the socioeconomic crisis that erupted in December 2001. I then discuss multiple ways in which violence shapes women’s embodied experiences and brands their bodies with visible and invisible marks. Finally, I explore individual and collective strategies women have used to address violence against women in Argentina.

Legacies of State Terrorism: Connecting Political and Private Violence In Argentina, the legacy of the dictatorship is a reminder that, in order to maintain power, systems of oppression often resort to repressive and coercive means of bodily control, such as physical-psychological torment and violent killings.3 Those methods are as essential to maintaining domination as are other more subtle forms of power deployment, such as surveillance and the organization of consent through fear, control of imagery, and dissemination of propaganda. Why is it important to remember the military’s violent methods more than three decades after the coup d’état, and what does this have to do with violence against women during democratic times? How much of the violence during the dictatorship was an expression of existing forms of violence in Argentine society, including but not limited to gender violence, transferred to the sphere of political power? How much of the violence produced during the dictatorship and disseminated to the rest of society still survives in direct or subtle forms? Here I would like to highlight some of the points of convergence between the violence exerted by a system of political domination like the military dictatorship and the broader patriarchal system that partially shaped the military actions at the time, as well as the social ideologies that persist today. Establishing these connections is important in the Argentine context for a number of reasons. First, the legacy of the dictatorship still affects the country’s political and cultural life. Second, such a violent political regime was infused with gendered meanings that fueled ideological justifications to the practices and power of the military, an archetypical male-dominated institution. Last, the extreme violence exerted by the state was envisioned and carried out by individuals, mostly men, who utilized gendered discourses—among others—as resources for torture. There are a number of overlaps between the military violence against the disappeared (men and women) and interpersonal violence against women in general.

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During the military rule many people accused of political subversion were tortured and violently murdered by state representatives.4 The bodies of the disappeared, about one-third of them women (CONADEP 1984), became sites of intense social control, torment, and humiliation. While both men and women were subjected to unthinkable torture practices, Diana Taylor (1997) noted that the logic of domination implemented by the military played out through the feminization of all the people being subjugated. Women were reserved a submissive and devalued place in society, so the people—men or women—who were forced into positions of submission (for example, through torture) were, in a sense, feminized. Furthermore, torture directed at women built on gendered notions about women’s proper place in Argentine society. The women kidnapped by the dictatorship were perceived as “double transgressors” of the military order and morality (González 1992, 181). They were seen as politically subversive and deviant women who rejected proper roles of motherhood, domesticity, and femininity. Many of the women cataloged as subversive paid for those double transgressions in the flesh (Actis et al. 2001; Arditti 1999). State-sponsored torture techniques were infused with gendered and sexualized meanings and connotations (Bunster-Burotto 1994; Taylor 1997). Examples of the kinds of torture women suffered included rape, insertion of harmful objects into the vagina, electric shocks to breasts and genitals, and other forms of sexual degradation, humiliation, and bodily and psychological harm (Duhalde 1999). While the military also subjected men to sexual torture and abuse (for example, applying electric shocks to testicles and torturing bodies of two males on top of each other simulating homosexual intercourse), Taylor (1997, 155) argues that these kinds of actions drew on prevailing gender ideologies that identify heterosexual masculinity as “insertive” and femininity as “receptive.” Thus, through different forms of torture that forced men to assume receptive or submissive positions, the military effectively feminized their male victims. As Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004, 22) point out with respect to sexualized violence, “whether male or female bodies are being raped, whether individually or collectively, whether in times of conflict or peace, rape is an act of violence against the female or the feminized male body and against the male owners and supposed protectors of those same bodies.” Gender specific tortures and ideologies are also manifested in the torture of pregnant women. A number of pregnant women experienced miscarriages as a result of the hardships of captivity, and others had to give birth under the most humiliating and precarious conditions (Regueiro 2008). Hundreds of children, included those born in captivity, were appropriated by the military and given to military families or other people they contacted (Arditti 1999; Bunster-Burotto 1994; Taylor 1997). Pregnant women were subjected to particularly vicious forms of psychological and physical torture, such as the insertion of electric prods in the vagina in an attempt to harm both the woman and the fetus (Arditti 1999).

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Duhalde (1999, 61) argues that pregnant bodies—female bodies that would give life and perpetuate the lineage of so-called subversives—were particularly aggravating to a military project that had annihilation as a principal objective. Nina, one of the women in this study, was illegally detained by government armed forces and tortured when she was five and a half months pregnant. She was temporarily “disappeared” during the period of state repression that was under way a few months before the military coup d’état. A group of military men tortured her naked body by applying electric shocks to her breasts and other sensitive areas, by forcing her head inside a bag to prevent regular breathing, and by beating her up with a piece of rubber or similar object. (She could not see the object because her eyes were covered.) Although she considers herself a person with a high tolerance for physical pain, she felt humiliated, vulnerable, and terrified about having a miscarriage: I never thought that they would rape me, or anything like that. I did not think about that. Let’s say that I didn’t have the conscious fantasy, but being naked, it was like being unprotected, like something humiliating, awful, no? . . . It is like you had the whole awareness of your body. I was naked. [I thought], “I’m here, naked. I’m here, naked.” I don’t know how it is. I can’t, I can’t interpret it, it is the sense that you are there, you are naked, and you are at their mercy. . . . And I thought: “Oh! These sons of a bitch. What if they hit me in just the wrong way and they smash my kid.” Because I did not think they wanted to kill me. I did not think that I was in danger of dying. I felt that these guys were torturing me, and they were screwing me. And I thought, “Maybe these assholes do not want to kill me, do not want to take away my child, but what if they kill the child?” So I would tell them: “You are going to kill the kid!!” [And the men responded], “Oh, well, hija de puta [literally, “daughter of a bitch”], you should have thought about your child before.” . . .“Why do you tell us? You should have taken care of your child yourself, hija de puta, look who you are with” [referring to Nina’s partner, who was wanted by the military].

Nina’s naked body served to construct her feelings of vulnerability, partly because of the intrinsic power inequality of having the body exposed to a group of men she could not see and who could do with her what they pleased.5 The fact that Nina was a pregnant woman added a gender specific dimension to the torture. Through the control and abuse of her body the military implicitly aimed to produce the very characteristics associated with femininity in a patriarchal culture—helplessness and submissiveness. She mentioned how being naked in front of her torturers accentuated feelings of helplessness, of being “at their mercy.” The reported military comments were gender scripted, resorting to an ideological repertoire about women’s place in society and about what it means to be a good woman and a good mother. Nina explained that though she participated in a militant organization, the military were really more interested in her

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male partner, also from the organization. That is, the military tortured her partly because she was perceived as the “woman of” (a common role ascribed to women in Argentine society) and hoped to get to her partner through her. The torturers’ comments suggest their perception of Nina as a bad woman who made a poor choice of sexual partner (“Look who you are with!”), and as a bad mother who through her militant activities endangered her child (“You should have thought of your child before”). From the military perspective, Nina was responsible for the risks to the future child that they themselves were inflicting. The torturers seemed to be punishing Nina as much for her sexual choices and perceived motherhood failure as for her political stance. Even though the military are no longer in power, echoes from state terrorism still reverberate throughout Argentine society. Argentina is still coming to terms with this painful past and only recently—during the government of former President Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007)—were the impunity laws finally overturned (trials are under way and convictions of key dictatorship figures have been already achieved). Equally important, the authoritarian culture and moral thinking of society members who condoned, trivialized, or denied such violence still exist in different institutions and individual practices. During the period of my study, the killings of two young women, Leyla Nazar and Patricia Villalba, in the poverty-stricken province of Santiago del Estero, was paradigmatic of the links between gender violence and state violence, between past and present. Nazar was killed after her attendance at a party with powerful individuals in the province. An apparatus of state complicity—including Musa Azar, a local police chief—contributed to covering up the situation for some time (Página 12 2003; Rodríguez 2003). Patricia Villalba, who was apparently killed for knowing the circumstances of Leyla Nazar’s death, was tortured and murdered. One of the lawyers promoting the investigation of these crimes pointed out that the signs of torture found on Villalba’s body resembled torture techniques common during the dictatorship. In fact, Musa Azar and other people accused of these crimes had previously been reported by human rights organizations for the torture and disappearances of other people in the area, some of these crimes going back to the dictatorship (Lipcovich 2003; Página 12 2003). In that way, the legacy of the dictatorship endured through the actions of individuals who were accused of having committed torture during that period and who continued in positions of authority afterward (as the murder of Leyla Nazar and Patricia Villalba suggests), and through the institutionalization of violent practices and beliefs that remain during democracy and are entangled with sexist gender ideologies. The case of Leyla Nazar and Patricia Villalba received extensive media attention to a large extent because it involved politics, sex, and powerful members of the local elite. It is worth asking, however, how many other women have been battered, sexually abused, brutalized, and murdered by regular individuals without state authorities or society at large doing anything to prevent or condemn these actions. Feminist studies have suggested

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that there are significant connections between private violence against women and more overtly political violence. The narratives of some of the women I interviewed illustrate the overlaps between state terrorism and what Claudia Card (2005, 143) called “terrorism in the home,” which often targets women’s bodies (e.g., battering, sexual abuse of girls). This concept emphasizes that “like other terrorists, abusive intimates use threats and heightened fear to manipulate and control.”6 Card also defines rape as “torture and terrorism,” which aims to subdue and produce fear in the victim and “teaches her that she will have in her own body only the control she is granted by another” (125). While contemporary gender-based violence in the home (and other spaces) in Argentina is not a direct consequence of the dictatorship, broad contexts and histories of institutionalized violence feed current individual actions. As Kaufman (1997, 33) points out, the “‘language’ of the violent act, the way the violence manifests itself, can only be understood within a certain social experience.” At the same time, violence against women is a worldwide and long-term phenomenon, occurring in times of peace and war, in public spaces and in the privacy of the home, sponsored by the state or individually driven (Amnesty 2001; WHO 2002). Thus, charting historical as well as transnational linkages between different forms of violence can also yield fruitful results. In her book Pedagogies of Crossing, M. Jacqui Alexander (2005, 192) alerts us to how violent practices and discourses have a “capacity to travel, to overlap, and circulate” among different, historically specific formations—across time and space. Without losing their context-related character, many of these practices are reinscribed over and over in situations that may be perceived as disconnected. Alexander uses the figure of the palimpsest—a parchment that has been written on and erased, but with traces of the text still showing through—as a metaphor for how layers of the past are inscribed in the present. In addition to cross-time connections, transnational linkages demonstrate how extralocal forces affect violence against localized bodies. For instance, the dictatorship in Argentina collaborated with other military dictatorships in Latin America, utilized counterinsurgency approaches borrowed from the French experience (e.g., fighting in Algeria), had members trained in the U.S.sponsored School of the Americas, and wholeheartedly embraced the doctrine of National Security emanating from ideologues in the United States at the time (Homeland Security became its new version post September 11, 2001, under the Bush administration). Yet state terrorism in Argentina was not simply an import; it was infused by local cultural norms and ideologies—including sexist gender discourses—and created a repertoire of practices and ideas that were transferred to other areas of social life even after the dictatorship ended (Feitlowitz 1998; Taylor 1997). The latter became apparent in the course of this study, for example, when interviewees directly or indirectly evoked the legacy of state terrorism in order to explain or share bodily experiences, such as interpersonal gender-based

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violence. During the focus group with volunteers at a charity organization one of the women recalled that it is common for authorities to dismiss women’s complaints about violence and act in a way that blames women. This is something that occurs in other countries as well, but the way she explained it resonates with Argentina’s particular history. She said that the police usually minimize women’s charges by suggesting that battered women “must have done something.” Interestingly, the phrase “they must have done something” circulated during the dictatorship times to deny or justify state violence against the people disappeared by the military. It was a way of blaming the disappeared for their violent fate. The focus group addressed the social pattern of victim blaming as follows: Delta: Most [women] feel guilty. Chiqui: Yes of course, that’s why they do not defend themselves, do not file charges, do not ask for help. Delta: Until they end up wounded in the hospital. Pupee: But it is the fear about the mistreatment they receive [at police stations] that prevents them from filing charges. There are many people here who tell you that. Aurora: But, also, they [the police] do not even want to process the complaint. At least, where I lived, there were many couples that had that problem, and women would go to the police station and they [the police] didn’t want to process their complaints. Delta: If the [mark of the] hit is not visible, they don’t process the complaint. Aurora: Even if it is visible they do not want to process the complaint. Pupee: No, they are machistas. Aurora: They would say, “Well, she must have done something.” Pupee: It is like they blame you, like you are guilty about your husband behaving in that way.

The women in the focus group gave different reasons why many women do not file criminal charges against their abusers, including internalized feelings of guilt, police mistreatment, and police failure to process their complaints. Yet Aurora’s account about police authorities’ reactions to women’s complaints also suggests some parallels between past state violence and present ways of dealing with violence against women. Her narrative suggests how some of the most damaging ideas from the times of the dictatorship are intertwined with ways of interpreting contemporary gender violence. “They must have done something,” a phrase that fostered denial about the disappeared, now becomes a handy way of minimizing and dismissing domestic violence against women. This is so both because it echoes with ideological repertoires persisting since the dictatorship and because it fits well with pervasive sexist ideologies that blame women for the violence to which they are subjected.7 Some popular ideologies in Argentina suggest that women are masochists who like to be beaten up, that they provoked the

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violence, or that they somewhat deserved it (e.g., for being unfaithful, for wearing particular clothing, for failing to leave their batterers, and so on). Another example of the ways in which past legacies of state violence haunt the present, filtering into the most intimate spaces and relationships, is provided by Rocío, a young woman whose ex-boyfriend battered her. In talking about her experiences with violence, Rocío evoked state terrorism by calling her ex-boyfriend “Tigre Acosta,” the nickname of one of the most well known repressors from the dictatorship. In the course of the interview she also described her boyfriend’s violent actions as torture, another concept linked to the dictatorship legacy in the consciousness of Argentines: Torture, for example, he would pretend being friendly, pretend that everything was fine, then would come to my house, insist to come to sleep at my place, insist and insist. And when I close the door, he closes the door and takes the key [and says], “Now you’ll explain, come on!” Yes, psychological torture. I would call him “Tigre Acosta.” Yes, yes, it was torture, torture. Like, he would interrogate you? Rocío: He would interrogate me, beat me up, coerce me, poke around my stuff, get my notebook [and demand to know], “Who is this [guy]? Who is this?” And what did you do in that situation? I was very scared, but I would not speak against myself, ever, because sometime I spoke against myself and it was worse. So I would try to make him think things over, to [tell him] that life is not like that, that is not a good thing to get inside a person’s home and torture her, threaten her, give me death threats! So many times.

Rocío’s spontaneous association between her individual experience with violence and state terrorism blurs the boundaries between the private and the political. Her narrative suggests that the private, invisible violence that many Argentine women undergo in their homes may not look too different from many of the methods utilized by state-sponsored torturers. Her narrative brought up other parallels, like her boyfriend searching her belongings and grabbing her address book to violently make her identify names (men with whom she supposedly was having affairs). During the dictatorship, people subjected to torture were also coerced to identify other people, and sometimes names and personal information were obtained from personal address books. Rocío’s reaction to her boyfriend’s demands (“I would not speak against myself”) recognizes that he was trying to extract a confession from her—one of the things that torturers do. As in the dictatorship, a combination of psychological coercion and physical violence is sometimes used in patriarchal society to keep women in their places, to force them into submission. In telling her experience of violence, Ursula, a middle-class woman, also evoked domestic violence and state violence during the dictatorship as part of a

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terrifying system that negatively affected her life, creating a sense that there was nowhere to escape. “My mother married a very violent man. [He was violent] toward me, my mother, my sisters. He beat us up. We lived in terror. The dictatorship was outside and my stepfather inside. I would sometimes escape from my home, go to the train station to see which train I would throw myself under.” Ursula’s narrative suggests that her home and family were not the safe haven of love and harmony idealized in popular culture. Nor was the dictatorship defending citizens’ safety in the public sphere, as discourses of national security portrayed. Both constructions of safety were a fiction. Terror was an omnipresent structure in Ursula’s life, shaping her actions and consciousness. Terror in the home and state terror blended in Ursula’s memory and experience. The parallels between political violence and private gender violence and the ways in which gender infuses political violence—for example, when rape is used as a war weapon—has led a number of women’s and human rights organizations to frame violence against women as a human rights violation (Amnesty 2001, 5). From this perspective, many instances of such violence in families and communities, exerted by private individuals, fit the definition of torture. As the Amnesty report points out, these actions carry harmful psychological and bodily consequences for women (e.g., trauma, unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, physical wounds, contagion of sexually transmitted diseases) and are employed “not only to extract confessions but also to instill profound dread into victims, to break their will, to punish them and to demonstrate the power of perpetrators” (6). More than two decades after the dictatorship ended in Argentina, it is still an illusion to think that torture has been fully eradicated. This is not only so because of persistent cases of abuse by state representatives—for example, physical torment in police stations and prisons (CELS 2002)—but also because of the continued violence against women exerted by private individuals, often with state complicity through inaction and inadequate action.

Gendered Violence and Economic Crisis Times of economic crisis tend to exacerbate interpersonal, community, and state violence against both men and women (Hicks et al. 2003). Although unemployment, underemployment, declining wages, and lack of prospects for the future are not necessarily the causes of interpersonal violence, they create a favorable environment for all sorts of aggression within families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and the larger society. For instance, the violent repression of social protests and labor conflicts by the police, as exemplified by the killings of dozens of protesters in connection with the December 2001 popular uprisings, were indicators of an escalation of state violence in the context of the neoliberal economic crisis. While state-sanctioned repression is often seen as a legitimate form of violence and not perceived as a social problem, rising crimes against property or against personal safety by nonstate actors are likely to trigger many people’s

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concern. Trying to understand the latter kind of violence without reference to the context of economic policies, however, would be missing an important piece of the picture. In the age of neoliberal globalization, a society with growing inequalities, where more people have less to lose, that systematically blocks opportunities and hopes for the future and that closes avenues to legal ways of making a living provides the breeding ground for violent crime (Portes and Roberts 2005). The middle and upper classes have visibly protested against what is commonly termed “insecurity,” referring mostly to the rise in crimes against property (often involving physical violence) and to the kidnappings of upperclass individuals. Many of these people—who otherwise oppose workers’ or poor people’s street protests and public demonstrations as being too politicized— organized massive protests to demand from the government a stronger response to crime.8 While some middle-class women in this study spoke about fear and insecurity in connection to violent crimes against property that they were likely to experience,9 the women in this study who lived in shantytowns emphasized violence in their neighborhoods, such as gun shootings, police brutality, drug-related violence, and confrontations between gangs. Although dominant discourse often disregards or treats as inevitable the kind of social violence that poor women spoke about, when insecurity affects middle- and upper-class people, vocal outrage often ensues. Yet the fear and feelings of insecurity that middleclass people started to experience only in the relatively recent past have been likely common currency among the poor all along. Estela, who lives in a shantytown, gave many examples of the daily violence to which she was exposed: “Violence here in the neighborhood: This is a place where, for example, a shooting starts while the children are drinking their milk. Now the [kitchen building] is more or less built with bricks, but not before. You can’t imagine! The children were drinking their mate and a shooting started from one side to the other, and the comedor was in the middle. We had to make the children crawl protecting their heads with their hands, fearing that they [the shooters] would hit the children.” To the challenge of having to feed children when economic resources are scarce, Estela showed the additional problems of trying to accomplish that task in the midst of a violent environment. She also spoke about the limited economic opportunities for people living in the barrio and how that situation constitutes fertile soil, for example, for drug consumption and drug dealing, which often spiral into more violence (e.g., confrontations with the police, violence among those dealing with drugs, and robbery or prostitution in order to pay for drugs). Estela knew of these occurrences firsthand. She reported that one of her daughters became addicted to drugs and was beaten up and raped by a gang member. When I asked about the causes of violence in the neighborhood, she did not hesitate to respond: “Because of the lack of work . . . the lack of work, hunger. There are so many [unsatisfied] needs here. There are people whose children have AIDS, and they can’t get medicines.”

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As members of the middle and upper classes demanded that more resources be devoted to increasing police presence in the streets and to implementing get-tough-on-crime measures, I wondered to what extent structural factors of violence, particularly growing inequalities, would be addressed with this approach. Furthermore, how many resources would be allocated to redress the more hidden crimes that women were disproportionately likely to experience, including domestic violence and sexual violence not connected to property crimes? Elizabeth Stanko (1994) points out that discourses that focus on violent street crime often dismiss the kinds of violence that target women specifically. In Argentina, shifts in the handling of women’s police stations (comisarías de la mujer) were paradigmatic of the low priority that some government authorities assigned to women’s experiences of violence and how prevailing get-toughon-crime discourses were not necessarily concerned with gender violence. These police stations were originally instituted as an outlet for women who were targets of violence to file charges and obtain support. Besides the lack of sufficient funding and the low status attached to those who staffed them, the purpose of some of these police stations underwent substantial changes. Instead of being primarily places to support women victims of violence, a number of these police stations were transformed in places to hold women charged with crimes. Furthermore, in some of these facilities mainly male officers started to process women’s complaints, though originally the personnel in charge were supposed to be women (Bressa and Schuster 2003). At a time when police stations and prisons were overcrowded, the women’s police stations become a convenient patch for the system at the expense of the needs of women targets of violence. Even violent crimes against property, which may seem gender neutral, are in fact riddled by gendered practices and discourses (Stanko 1994), with perpetrators and victims resorting to or expressing gendered ideologies in order to achieve particular goals. The close encounter of Luciana (one of my interviewees) with male criminals shows how the experience of violent property crimes can be different for men and women. Luciana was in her home with her brother when two burglars broke into the house with guns. While both Luciana’s and her brother’s personal safety were at stake during this incident, the tactic the criminals chose to terrorize Luciana with was the threat of rape, a tool of sexual terrorism. Luciana explained, Look, here in Argentina we are living very difficult times. We are always at risk of being robbed. Here, in our business, we were robbed many times. And the truth is it is a very bad experience. The first thing that you think is, “Well, they didn’t kill me, I saved my life.” The same thing happened in my house. Two hooded people entered and pointed at me with their gun when I was in bed. It was horrible. They tied my hands up, and they kept me for one hour and a half as a hostage. They threatened to rape me. Well, that hour and a half was terrible.

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Luciana later saw her attackers, two young men with whom she tried to negotiate her and her brother’s safety. She offered that they take any of the material goods in the house and tried to calm them down, since they were very nervous. She did a kind of “emotional work” that women often perform in other settings (Hochschild 1983). When I asked Luciana if the burglars also threatened her brother with rape, she said “no, ’cause I’m a woman.” Both Luciana and the criminals tacitly agreed that it was Luciana’s body, a woman’s body, the one that could be constructed as sexually vulnerable. During the period of my study, some of my interviewees and women I heard in social movement venues spoke of another kind of bodily violence and insecurity affecting women in particular. As a result of mounting economic hardship during the neoliberal period, some gender expectations about women’s labor force participation had to give way. Specifically, gender norms that place men as the main economic providers and women as housewives or secondary earners were challenged. More and more women had to search for paid work out of economic necessity.10 Although more flexible gender norms were certainly welcomed by many in the women’s movement, the structural violence of the economic crisis, compounded with the interpersonal violence exerted by men who clung to traditional gender expectations, were undesirable effects of shifting gender arrangements. Domestic violence was one way in which some men seemed to channel the frustrations caused by unemployment, by their inability to be proper breadwinners, by their wives’ work outside the home, and by the test that this situation presented to hegemonic masculinity (see Causa 2008). Furthermore, some women were also becoming more rebellious through their collective organizing. A number of women I encountered in the course of this study, particularly in activist arenas, reported having disputes with husbands or boyfriends who wanted to impede their activism—activism that in many cases attempted to redress the economic hardships provoked by the crisis. Some of these women were battered by their intimate partners because of their participation in movement organizations and their consequent “neglect” of their domestic duties. Paula, a factory worker, spoke about the bodily risks faced by some of the women participating in labor organizing. These women not only faced the risks that company threats and heavy police vigilance presented to their bodily integrity, but also the physical violence inside their homes. Paula explained how domestic violence emerged as a serious problem for women workers at the height of a labor conflict: We held the assembly outside of the factory, where the girls were, in a tent that was already installed. And they decided to give the fight. First, there were many of us, and then [the number of women] declined. More than anything, what was demonstrated in the tent—especially because it was a women’s tent— were all the problems and obstacles that women have to overcome, right?

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Because, for example, there was a girl who, in two opportunities, came battered to the factory. There was another girl whose parents did not want her to come, [saying] that it was crazy. And then their husbands would ask them why they didn’t stay [at home] doing the laundry for them and taking care of the children. But while she worked, it was useful to him. So it was a whole experience in that sense, right? And the woman who was beaten up, why was that? Because they didn’t like [the women] to come to the tent, because we were exposed to many risks, you know? But we came anyway. We would come; do activities, for example, marches; we would write newsletters; do fundraising; gather food. We marched during the December [protests] in the frontlines.

Apparently, domestic violence was not just a way of punishing women for the alleged neglect of their domestic responsibilities. According to Paula, some men accepted such “neglect” for the time they economically benefited from their wives’ factory work (“While she worked, it was useful to him”). Yet women’s participation in labor and political organizing was another step that some men were not willing to accept. Ironically, it seems that domestic violence was one way allegedly to spare women the risks of activism. It appears that women were being penalized for being strong, independent, risk taking, and in solidarity with each other. Activist women were shaking the power (im)balance between the sexes and between social classes. Through their political activism, women in the factory were breaking femininity norms prescribing that women should be submissive, weak, and dependent, and they were also challenging class relations presuming that workers’ bodies and livelihood should be sacrificed in the service of capital. Paula also pointed out how a central form of institutionalized violence such as class exploitation—reinforced by the economic crisis—was interwoven with expressions of interpersonal gender violence. In a social context in which employment became more precarious and workers more vulnerable to capital’s unfair demands, gender scripts were deployed as a way of assuring capitalist profits. Paula described how, under the aegis of neoliberalism, the work process sped up and became more exploitative. So she refused to do work she considered dangerous and she challenged management’s attempts to speed up production. This was not well received by the company, which was intent on maximizing profits, even if it was at the expense of workers’ bodily integrity. Paula reported that a male manager urged male machinists conducting the production process to push women workers to work harder. The tactics that the manager proposed were utterly violent: “He would tell the machinists to slap us, or to insert a stick somewhere [in our bodies], but that they make us work, because we were tired, you know? And we couldn’t work anymore. Because they wanted more production, and more production. And that is violent, that is a way of exerting violence, too. So I define violence in many ways.” Paula was conceptualizing class

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exploitation as an instance of violence that had bodily consequences, such as physical exhaustion. But she was also alluding to another kind of violence: words that encourage men to use physical aggression to control women. Applying a generous interpretation, one might think the manager did not literally mean it when he told men to hit the women or insert a stick somewhere in their bodies (probably playing on the popular, but aggressive, saying, “to insert a stick in the ass”). Yet such threats, verbalized by a man in a position of authority, aimed to produce gender and class disciplining effects, and it resorted to gender scripts legitimizing violence against women. So even if the words were half serious, the background reality of this kind of violence lingered like a threatening cloud. The fact that men are more likely to be in positions of authority over women, as in this factory, further reinforces the power of such threats. Probably the manager would not have offered such advice to a female machinist in charge of male workers. Given dominant ideologies that construct male bodies as aggressive and female bodies as vulnerable, such a threat would have made little sense or produced little effect. In situations of growing economic insecurity and precarious jobs, gender violence finds fertile soil. For example, in a context in which women desperately need an income and in which employers have gained considerable leverage thanks to neoliberal economics, women may become particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence. The crisis pushed many women into occupations that inherently expose them to multiple forms of violence, such as prostitution. As pointed out in chapter 2, prostitution significantly increased in the city of Buenos Aires (by 42.85 percent, according to a study by AMMAR [Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de la Argentina], an organization of women who identify as sex workers, funded by the World Health Organization). The secretary of AMMAR claimed that “many sex workers are heads of households. Before, they were domestic workers or at least had some job, but now they don’t know what to do. They must bring some money home” (Mujeres Hoy 2004). These women were victims of structural economic violence, of violence associated with having to sell sexual services in order to survive, and, as media reports on the murder of women in prostitution suggest, of violence and extortions by police mafias.11 The crisis particularly affected the ability of women of low economic means to deal with interpersonal violence, showing yet another way in which class intersects with such experiences. A member of a support team in one women’s police station who regularly dealt with violence against women described how, with the crisis, fewer poor women and more middle-class women survivors came to the support group.12 Apparently, one reason for this change was that, before the crisis, middle-class women could afford to access private venues (e.g., individual psychotherapy) to deal with the ravages of violence. But the crisis challenged that possibility. In the case of many poor women, they no longer had the means (e.g., money for transportation) to get to the women’s police station.

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Thus members of the support team started going to the poorest neighborhoods in order to work out solutions within existing community spaces. This experience drew on the ability of people in poor communities to generate resources and strategies to deal with violence, for example, by strengthening networks of solidarity among women. Although the economic crisis is not the cause of gender-based violence, this section suggests that it fueled opportunities for different forms of such violence. One aspect of the crisis was the proliferation of violent street crimes, but the gendered dimensions of those actions are often ignored or addressed as if they could be understood apart from widening social inequalities. A perspective that incorporates the intersection of gender with other forms of social injustice needs to be included in the discussion of why some violent crimes receive more attention than others and how women are affected when social discourses about crime ignore those that disproportionately affect women.

Visible and Invisible Bodily Marks of Violence Marks of violence are often inscribed on the body. Scars, open wounds, swollen areas, internal bleeding, broken bones, burnt skin, and ruptured tissue are supposed to offer the most conclusive evidence that an act of violence has been committed. The military dictatorship in Argentina knew well the power of injured, violated, and tortured bodies. As long as people were disappeared, as long as their bodies were vanished, the atrocities committed could be more easily denied. Without the body as evidence, who would think that captive persons were being thrown out of planes into the water, or buried in collective graves? Bodies tell powerful stories about violence. In the case of violence against women, women’s bodies take on particular relevance, since women’s words—particularly those of women most socially marginalized—often do not count. As other research (e.g., Velázquez 2003) has documented, different women in this study also reported having a hard time convincing or conveying their experiences of gender violence to others. Fear of being disbelieved or stigmatized may sometimes prevent women from speaking out about their experiences in the first place. When women report sexual assault to the criminal justice system, if the police actually follow up the procedures, women’s bodies are traditionally scrutinized to corroborate the veracity of their charges. When the body does not offer hard proof of violence, women’s narratives may be thrown into doubt, leading to an institutional re-victimization of women who experience violence (Bressa and Schuster 2003). In the context of a culture that often assumes women secretly want to be sexually assaulted or that they provoke such violence, women are often required to offer their wounded bodies as proof that they have been violated, that indeed such an act was against their will.13 In Argentina, as in other places, it has historically been difficult for women to demonstrate before courts or the police that

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they did not consent to a sexual assault if their bodies seem to be “intact” after a violent event, if they offered little physical resistance and instead resorted to other means of dissuasion, or if they followed the common advice not to resist in order to avoid being harmed (Hercovich 2000; MacKinnon 1989). It seems that the more broken, the more brutally harmed a woman’s body is after an assault, the greater the chance she will be believed.14 The most brutal cases of violence, the ones in which women’s bodies are dismembered and the pieces are spread around—as among hundreds of murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (Fregoso 2000, Staudt 2008)—are also the ones that are more likely to make it into the news. The scattered body parts of a woman’s body speak to the undisputable truth that, no, she did not consent to the violence. But even then we hear victim-blaming statements. There are other, more subtle ways in which violence marks women’s bodies. These may not be easily proven in a court of law, but they are nonetheless real. These scars may not be obvious, but they are experienced at a concrete bodily level. Guadalupe was sexually abused as a girl by two different men she knew. Her neighbor tried to rape her when she was about five years old, and her stepfather subjected her to long-term sexual abuse through her childhood. The consequences of such violence for Guadalupe, a young interviewee, included problematic feelings about different parts of her body, as well as eating disorders. Other studies have found relationships between experiences of sexual abuse and eating problems (Thompson 1994; Velázquez 2003). Guadalupe had a hard time eating certain foods and, for some time, even eating at all. She also had symptoms of bulimia, and she was “sure that it is related to the child molestation.” Eating certain foods became almost impossible or made her feel like vomiting because they brought flashbacks of sexual abuse—for example, of being coerced to swallow her abuser’s semen. Guadalupe felt that violence left invisible, but deep, scars on her body: Look, there are zones of my body that not even I can touch. For example, I can’t touch my neck. And nobody can touch it. So, for me, it is not an erogenous zone at all. Like, I can’t even, I don’t know, it is like traces that are left and they are, well, it’s a bummer because there are zones that are, I don’t know, the clitoris [laughs] is a very problematic zone because it has a lot to do with the abuse, but it also has to do with pleasure. And it is hard for me to define those things, to say that one thing is the abuse and another thing is pleasure.

Guadalupe’s sexuality suffered long-term effects from the abuse, marking her body as a landmine, with dangerous places, areas that should not be touched or should be avoided. Guadalupe explained that the bodily and psychological abuse she suffered was a way of denying her embodied existence, of reducing her to an inert object, “because [when I was abused] my body was denied. I was denied my right over my body, over my sexuality, over my needs, over myself. So it was as if I didn’t exist; I was like a statue.”

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The subtle bodily effects of violence may also be reflected in gestures and bodily demeanor that reproduce normative femininity traits (McCaughey 1997). For instance, the incorporation of bodily gestures of fear, restricted mobility, and deferential demeanor reproduce the position of submission and helplessness that women are expected to assume, so that men can be not only aggressors but also protectors (Hollander 2001). Franca is an indigenous woman who started to be battered by her ex-boyfriend after she became involved in the women’s movement. Her participation helped her to be more assertive, which was reflected, among other things, in her attitude during sexual intercourse (“It was not the man on top and me below anymore”). The more self-confident Franca became, the more upset her partner was, and he tried to force her into submission by beating her up. He was partly successful for some time, as Franca became increasingly fearful. However, even at the risk of escalating violence (he pushed her down the stairs when she was attempting to leave), she finally left him. But the legacy of violence persisted in her body in the form of frightened gestures, almost reflexes, which transferred to her relationship with another man: “Look, I am now dating a guy that I met about one year ago, and he was surprised . . . because I would crouch with fear. He was sometimes playing or dancing and I would protect myself. And he would say, ‘I’m not going to hit you, why do you defend yourself like that?’ And I would respond, ‘I don’t know, it just happens.’ I had incorporated into my gestures to do that.” Franca adopted gestures like bending her body and protecting herself with her hand in order to soften the blows. Such a demeanor also reproduced the scared stance that women are expected to adopt in a patriarchal society as well as the servile attitude socially assigned to marginalized indigenous ethnicities. They became part of her “bodily memory” (McCaughey 1997, 103), a set of bodily dispositions that became almost second nature for her. As McCaughey points out, much of women’s bodily memory is shaped by gender arrangements that generally undermine women’s position, including sexist discourses and institutions that “seep into our bones” and “operate through the lived body” (38). One of the most extreme manifestations of sexism is the bodily, concrete, material experience of violence against women. As feminist scholars (e.g., Hollander 2001; Sheffield 2007) argue, women’s experience and fear of violence restrict their bodily movement and prompt “women to engage in a variety of cautious and modest behaviors” (McCaughey 1997, 43). In the case of Franca, a frightened bodily memory was not the consequence of natural bodily dispositions, and not just the result of general sexist ideologies, but also the outcome of a very concrete experience of violence against her own body. McCaughey demonstrates that women can acquire a different kind of bodily memory—for example, through self-defense training—to replace the one developed through gendered socialization, institutions, and interactions (see Hollander 2004). In the case of Franca, she started to shed the bodily memory of violence through her lived experience of a more egalitarian relationship

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with a new partner. Her participation in social movements, including the women’s movement, also helped her strengthen her stance and recover a more assertive bodily comportment. Rape is one of the most invasive attacks on women’s bodies, leaving both tangible and less tangible bodily marks. Among the potential tangible effects of this kind of gendered aggression are pregnancy, contagion of sexually transmitted diseases, and physical wounds. Two interviewees, Neca and Yamila, became pregnant as a consequence of rape. Neca tried to commit suicide afterward and Yamila, who was thirteen years old at that time, barely survived the birthing of her child. Rape may also leave a woman with invisible marks, such as the sense that her body is stained, even if more tangible marks are not present. The first thing that Frida, who was raped by a stranger, did when she was able to reach home was to clean herself, to get rid of any physical traces of the man who attacked her. Still, she mentioned that her sexuality was negatively affected and that she remained very sensitive to certain smells like alcohol, perspiration, and semen, which triggered memories of the rape experience. The feeling of uncleanliness was also expressed by Alondra, a domestic worker who experienced verbal sexual harassment, which can be considered a less serious aggression, but that nevertheless targets women’s bodies. She said that she felt dirty when her male boss made obscene phone calls to her. Women interviewed individually and in focus groups also reported being targets of offensive sexual comments in the streets and at work. While in the streets or using public transportation, many were subjected to men’s offensive comments about their bodies (e.g., “What tits!” “What an ass!” or unintelligible sexual remarks pronounced with libidinous intonation). Unsolicited sexual touching sometimes accompanied or replaced such comments. Some women told stories about men touching their breasts or buttocks in the streets, of being fondled in crowded busses, and being exposed to male exhibitionism, such as masturbation in public places. During my stay in Buenos Aires, I was the target of that kind of behavior in the streets myself, including compliments, utterly obscene remarks, and exhibitionism. These behaviors reveal men’s sense of sexual entitlement and reinforce the idea that women’s bodies are up for grabs. Besides street harassment, a number of women faced inappropriate sexual advances and comments in the workplace. Diana, a journalist, was upset that one of her bosses had an image of fellatio on his computer screen and did not even bother to turn it off while discussing work with her. Paula, a factory worker, resented some male coworkers’ remarks about her body, such as “there goes big ass.” Guadalupe, who worked as a secretary, narrated how her boss clearly told her that if she did not have sexual relations with him he would fire her. She refused, and she lost her job. Marina, a middle-class young woman, quit her job in a pharmacy because her boss tried several times to touch her breasts and other parts of her body, sometimes pretending it was an accident.

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Among the women insulted by frequent sexual comments and overtures was Tania, an Afro-descendent woman. Her narrative shows that sexual harassment as an expression of power inequality takes particular forms when directed to women of color. Sexual harassment may be peppered with racist connotations that construct women of color as special targets of male sexual demands. Tania reported that male sexual overtures, including racial slurs (e.g., “black bitch,” “shitty Negra”), had been common in her life. Although she recognized that male aggression targets all kinds of women, she specified some of the ways in which racism played out in her case: As you grow up, especially if you are a woman, you start to be harassed, especially in the streets and in other spaces, right? There’s like an image of the black woman as if she was ready for sex or only oriented in that sense. And everybody has, or feels that they have, the right to harass, to request, to say a compliment, from the most naive to the most audacious. And they take it with such familiarity, with such looseness, that it seems normal to tell a black woman the first thing that crosses your mind. Like, in the streets, “Negra, would you like to marry a white man?” And perhaps I look at him and he is not as white as he thinks he is.

The kind of sexual harassment that Tania described highlights how gender, race, and sexuality are mutually constitutive in experiences of sexual violence in Argentina, although racism is seldom mentioned.15 The reality of racism can be seen in this case. The harasser, even if “he is not as white as he thinks he is,” resorted to his relative whiteness and Tania’s blackness to reinforce the disproportionate power of masculinity. Addressing Tania as Negra is a way of emphasizing black women’s social subordination, and it shows how black femininity is constructed as an indicator of (hetero)sexual availability. Tania was clear that such constructions of gender and race have a history: And well, fondling in the bus, obviously many women suffer that, right? Not just the black woman. But it seems that the black woman not even has the right to complain, and in the end it seems that she provoked the situation. There’s a whole imagery about the black woman, which comes from the times of slavery: that the black woman is a kind of sex animal, lubricated, always available, and that kind of thing, which are deeply marked in Argentine consciousness. When a black, dark woman enters the scene, there’s a tension in the environment because of that, right? Nobody talks about it—sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t—but there’s always that incitement to the body, to movement: “And why don’t you dance?” “Do your show.” “Well, now is your turn.” “You all know how to dance.” And perhaps one did not say anything, did not do even a minimal exhibitionist gesture to show that one knows how to dance.

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Such unwelcome remarks contributed to restricting Tania’s bodily movements and to partially silencing her. She said that she sometimes would censor herself from dancing—something she loved to do—in order to avoid fueling the kinds of comments she mentioned. Also she sometimes let sexist and racist sexual comments pass because she wanted to avoid “being constantly at war” with others. The forms of control narrated here consist of both tangible violent acts (battering, sexual abuse, rape) and less tangible forms of aggression and harassment that turn hegemonic meanings about women’s bodies (e.g., violable, weak, submissive, passive) into flesh. As the following section shows, the visible and invisible marks that violence leaves on and in the body not only testify to the serious nature of violence against women, but has also prompted women’s individual and collective resistance.

Women Resisting Violence A number of women in this study confronted bodily violence in order to prevent it, ameliorate its effects, and redress it. While violence sometimes produced a sense of paralysis, confusion, the feeling of being overpowered, or the perception that there was no way out, sooner or later most women engaged in behaviors that may be considered resistance. Actions ranged from persuading or negotiating with the abuser to reduce harm, temporarily leaving the premises, fleeing the scene, screaming, splitting up with an abusive partner, filing criminal charges, fighting back physically, reporting the violence to family or friends, reaching out to support groups, and verbally and physically confronting harassers and abusers. These actions were not always immediate, and they sometimes required external help and some time to figure out the best strategy. Some resistance strategies were successful at stopping violence or preventing it from escalating, as in the case of Camila, who physically fought with and screamed at a man who tried to rape her when she was eighteen years old. She successfully escaped from the room without physical harm. Or Violeta, who was able to keep a job she almost lost due to sexual harassment by pursuing charges against her boss and harasser. Or Estrella, who verbally confronted and stopped a medical practitioner who sexually fondled her in the midst of her therapy. Flor told a neighbor in a straightforward manner to quit yelling obscenities at her as she walked by everyday—and he did. Other women insulted their harassers or hit them back. Such resistance is remarkable given the abundance of messages that, on the one hand, fault women for not resisting enough (e.g., not leaving an abusive husband immediately, not screaming loud enough, not fighting back physically) and, on the other, assume that women are vulnerable, powerless, weak, with little chance to successfully protect themselves and thus in need of a male protector.

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After years of enduring battering and all kinds humiliation, Estela, who has a petite bodily constitution, physically confronted her husband. Previous attempts to prevent or escape from his violence had proven unsuccessful in the long run. Leaving the house in the middle of the night with her children to wander around the city did not stop the next round of battering. Trying to please the most capricious demands of her husband—as when he woke her up in the middle of the night insulting her and demanding that she iron his clothes—did not keep her safe. Estela reported that one day he came with a machine gun, made her and her children form a line next to the wall, and pretended that he was going to execute them all. The last straw came one day when he hit one of their daughters so hard she passed out. Estela reacted physically to this aggression: It was the first time that I hit him. When I saw that she passed out, I went crazy. I hit him so much with the broom that it broke, creating a pointy aluminum stick. So, I hit him and cut him, and when I saw the blood, I went even crazier. And I started to nail him in different parts, and I was all bloody. Then I went to the police to file charges. . . . Of course, then he couldn’t even look at me, because if he looked at me in a bad way, I would hit him. It was as if he got scared of me, because he knew that I would get the knife, or anything, and hit him. “No more,” I proposed to myself. “You will not touch me ever again. You will not touch me ever again.” I told him, “For twenty-something years you mopped the floor with me. Not anymore. I am not trash.”

Estela’s situation was especially complicated: she lived in a shantytown, she had practically no economic resources, several children to feed and care for, and nowhere else to go. Furthermore, one of her husband’s maneuvers to force her into submission was periodically to take one of their children with him and threaten her with keeping the child away from her. Support for battered women was very limited in the area where she lived, and the police were rarely receptive to the needs of people living in the shantytown. Estela endured her husband’s cycles of violence for many years. Although some may perceive her violent reaction as extreme, it can be seen as the result of a chronic experience of battering and humiliation. Estela’s situation also suggests that while domestic violence affects women from all social classes, the possibilities to deal with it are often more restricted for women with fewer economic resources. Despite pervasive perceptions that men always overpower women, Estela realized that she could actually fight against her husband physically in quite effective ways. This realization, which she experienced in a thoroughly embodied way, contributed to building a sense of entitlement about living free from bodily harm and about her worth as a human being. McCaughey (1997, 29) argues that part of what sustains male violence against women is the belief that men have “the physical power with which to carry on around women in ways that barely consider women’s desires. Indeed, the respect with which men approach other men surely has something to do with the sense that there are

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consequences for treating a man disrespectfully.” Studies have shown that the belief in women’s vulnerability and men’s dangerousness shapes both men’s aggression and women’s perception that they can do little to stop violence— other than taking actions that further restrict their movement (e.g., not walking at night, avoiding certain areas of the city, not wearing particular clothing) (Hollander 2001, 2004). Even though Estela was able to keep her husband at bay after she confronted him physically, she recognized her situation was far from ideal for her and her children. Furthermore, she resorted to physical violence in a context in which most other avenues for dealing with gender violence were closed. Through her participation in a poor people’s movement, she gained access to a women’s group and to professional women trained about gender violence, which helped her distance herself from her husband. Many battered women do not have access to this kind of support and are utterly isolated. The movement in which Estela participated was primarily focused on economic demands for the poor, but it started to address gender violence as individual women in the movement found they were not the only ones undergoing such experiences. Several women in this study reached out for outside help or support but were met with disappointing responses: police officers who failed to process charges, friends or family who disbelieved or trivialized their words, and people who advised them to basically accept sexual harassment or other violence. Such reactions accentuated their feelings of confusion, guilt, or frustration. Nani, a supermarket cashier in her early twenties, told me about different experiences with sexual harassment at work and in the streets. Her explanations of these events oscillated between dominant frames that depict such acts as exclusive to deviant men who are “crazy,” “sick,” or “assholes” and a sense that violence against women is a much broader problem, somewhat related to widespread “machismo.” Despite these ambivalences, Nani expressed a deep indignation about some men’s abusive behavior, and she reacted with anger and sometimes with physical force when confronted with such situations: One time, the worst that happened to me, was that I was going to work, I got on the bus and took a seat in the back part, and there was a guy next to me. Do you know what he did? He opened up his pants fly, got his thing out, and he started [masturbating]. I did not see him [at first], but when I saw him, the guy was really excited. So I got the keys and I hit his head. I was so upset, Barbara, I swear! I was disgusted. You know, it is unacceptable that I can’t even go out, that I take the bus, and there’s always an asshole, do you understand? I told my mom, and it seems that these things always happen to me, you know? I assure you that it happens to many women. I know, but you think, “Are people crazy?!” And I was wearing the supermarket clothing [loose-fitting pants and shirt], you know? Sometimes you think, “But what did I do?” On top of that, I then told my boyfriend [about the

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It took courage for Nani to hit the man with the keys in the bus. Sometimes women fear that other people will think they were provoking the men. Nani’s own boyfriend seemed to share the view that women are the ones who precipitate violence (instead of focusing on the perpetrator) when he questioned her about her clothing. Instead of finding clear support from her boyfriend, she was perceived as suspect for her own behavior. Some of the women combined individual resistance strategies with collective organizing, and both contributed to their recoveries. In the case of Guadalupe, it took hard survival work to recover from sexual abuse, to reclaim her sexuality, and to reconstruct herself after also experiencing domestic violence from a lesbian partner. Guadalupe engaged in the task of not only surviving but also thriving, using all the means she found available: reading books on abuse, undergoing psychological therapy, traveling by herself to a quiet place to think about her life, participating in lesbian consciousness-raising groups, learning about feminism, connecting with other women survivors of violence, taking to the streets with women against sexism and lesbophobia, speaking out against violence in political forums, and filing criminal charges and publicly reporting her sexual abusers. Guadalupe often expressed her resistance in embodied ways, both at the individual and at the collective level. Marching with bare breasts during the Pride March celebrating diverse sexualities was part of her process of reclaiming her bodily rights, which had been shattered by violence: “I always go to the Pride March with bare breasts, always [laughs]. It has to do with that, with reclaiming my body. Like saying that it has been with me through everything, and that it has suffered so many things, and that it has been invisible. That’s why going barebreasted during the march has a double meaning: to make my whole self visible, my whole body, my lesbian body, and my body.” In a culture that portrays breasts and constructs female sexuality as created for male desire, Guadalupe’s exposure of her bare breasts, of her lesbian body, was an expression of agency and defiance. She refused to be an object, and she uncovered her breasts not to sexually incite men, but to reclaim her own body as a subject. She expressed that her body has a history and has suffered, but she, as an embodied being, survived. Her marching, exposed, and defiant body was evidence of both her struggle and success. The safety of being surrounded by people who embraced her cause allowed her to deploy embodied resistance in ways that would be difficult to sustain alone or in everyday life. Guadalupe’s resistance also reached the most intimate aspects of her life, of her sexuality, and her perception of her own body. She talked about her body in positive ways: “I like the shape of my body. I like my hips, my breasts, my thighs, my belly, my cunt, my legs, my face, my neck—even though I can’t touch it,

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I like it.” She particularly treasured bodily areas that have given her pleasure (for example, her feet), while at the same time worked to recover or resignify more conflictive bodily zones like her clitoris: Because of sexual abuse, the clitoris “gives me a lot of contradiction, but my feet don’t. They are there; they give me pleasure and they never gave me pain . . . I can have a feet orgasm! [laughs].” Asserting her sexual identity as a lesbian, both in political events and in her daily life, also spoke of her practice of resistance in a society that both discriminates against lesbians and that makes their existence invisible. Women’s individual resistance finds an important sounding board in women’s movement organizing. In Argentina, the awareness of violence against women as a social problem and the legislative changes to address it have mostly been the result of women’s collective organizing and pressures. Since the return of democracy in the 1980s, women concerned with gender violence have created women’s centers and shelters, offered workshops, marched in the streets, challenged court officials, proposed laws, lobbied the government, filed criminal complaints, written informative brochures and handbooks, produced scholarly and policy-oriented research, gathered in conferences and consciousness-raising groups, and organized public campaigns to end violence against women. During my study I participated in numerous events dealing with gender violence that would probably not have happened without the impetus of women’s movement members both in civil society and in the government. I attended workshops in poor neighborhoods, conferences with professionals, and meetings in the context of social movement organizations. In these different venues, women shared personal experiences of violence, questioned myths, and devised concrete strategies, including lobbying for protective laws and creation of shelters, organizing women’s collective confrontation of male batterers in neighborhoods, forming women’s groups to process personal experiences of violence, and staging escraches of abusive men or institutions that directly or indirectly protect perpetrators of violence.16 Women’s movement organizations created both relatively private venues and support services (e.g., counseling, legal aid) and public spaces to address violence against women. For instance, with the understanding that gender violence is not a private problem but a public issue that needs to be exposed and addressed collectively, the Red de Mujeres Solidarias (Network of Women in Solidarity) organized the “No Violence Forum” in a plaza in Buenos Aires. The forum commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on November 25, 2002. Women’s movement organizations and coalitions also exposed violence against women during public protests, such as the 2003 commemoration of International Women’s Day. Similarly, during the day of actions to stop violence against women in 2003, a coalition of feminists and other members of the women’s movement in Buenos Aires also called for a journey of escraches, street blockades, and sit-ins in front of the buildings representing provinces with high-profile cases of violence against women.

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One of the escraches included in the International Women’s Day march in Buenos Aires that I attended was in front of the House of Salta, a government building representing that province. Salta was in the media spotlight because of a sexual abuse scandal. The case involved Simón Hoyos, a lawyer, businessman, and tobacco plantation owner in Salta who was accused of several instances of sexual abuse of girls and women working on his premises—treating them almost as if they were his personal property. The classed and racist connotations of violence in this case were evident in the questions that the police said Hoyos asked, inquiring why they were making “such a fuss because of some chinitas” (Dillon 2003, 18). The term chinitas refers to rural women, often with darker skin and low economic means. The women in the march repudiated these acts and made them visible by plastering photocopies of news articles about the Hoyos case on the street walls and denouncing such violence aloud during the march. The flyers distributed by different women’s organizations during these kinds of protests articulated connections between interpersonal forms of gender violence, such as sexual abuse, battering, and rape, and other social ills they identified as violence, such as poverty, war, class exploitation, barriers to health care access, prostitution, penalization of abortion, and discrimination of lesbians and other women based on their immigrant status or skin color. My experience in different women’s organizing venues was that the process of making these connections and conveying them in written form (e.g., on flyers) is not straightforward. The process involves a great deal of thinking, discussion, exchange of opinions, and often conflict. Yet such conversations are important to raise awareness, to uncover unquestioned assumptions, and to help to better understand and resist violence against women. These efforts are far from over, and every year activists continue to organize and raise awareness of issues that have not received much attention. Many of the scholars and activists who have been working to end violence against women at the local level have expanded their focus to global issues, forming, for example, organizations and public events against the internal and transnational trafficking of women and girls. As of March 2009, under the administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (who has otherwise not supported a number of key feminist demands), activists’ message about gender violence found some echo in the government, as reflected by a National Campaign for Gender Equity and Against Violence. This is the first time the national government has launched a largescale, concerted campaign on this topic, including five ministries, divisions of the United Nations, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies.17 Furthermore, also in March 2009, a national parliament with a sizable representation of women passed law 26485, “Integral Protection to Prevent, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence against Women in the Realms in which they Develop their Interpersonal Relations.”18 This is a comprehensive piece of legislation covering psychological, physical, economic, sexual, and symbolic forms of violence occurring in the home, at work, in the media, in the health sector, and other state

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and civil society institutions. While implementation will be a challenge and the government needs to dedicate many more resources to deal with this social problem, this law is still a powerful signal to society that violence against women is not an individual phenomenon but a serious social problem deeply rooted in major institutions. Women’s organizing constitutes an important effort to break the silence and to question taken-for-granted beliefs that deny the seriousness of gender violence or that justify individual instances of violence. Women’s movement actions have also provided important interpretative tools for understanding violence against women, contributed to shaping new consciousness forms, and offered emotional and practical support to women targets of violence. In the context of the popular movements that emerged in response to the crisis, and women’s active participation in those movements, violence against women has become an important rallying point. It was not just middle-class feminists who marched in the streets to demand the eradication of gender violence, but women from all social sectors, including working-class and poor women.

Conclusion I began this chapter arguing that while analyses of subtle forms of social control and regulation of women’s bodies are certainly important, we still need to pay attention to raw, interpersonal violence against women’s bodies as a central dimension of how systems of social inequality, including women’s subordinated status, are reproduced. Following the lead of other feminists, and based on my own data, I have argued for the blurring of some of the boundaries that distinguish the violence that women are disproportionately likely to experience (e.g., domestic and sexual violence) and other forms of violence more widely considered as serious human rights violations (e.g., illegal state violence). The interpenetration of the language and practices of state terrorism and terrorism in the home in various women’s experiences calls for an awareness of the common elements of such forms of violence, as well as for the more comprehensive understanding of human rights that feminists from around the world have been advocating. Although an analysis that teases out the persistence of patriarchal logics permeating multiple forms of violence in different countries is essential, we must also avoid the trap of universalistic or homogenizing framings. Paying attention to context-specific economic or political developments helps to incorporate important analytical layers to the understanding of violence against women. I showed some of the links, parallels, and interactions between this kind of bodily control and broader social processes in Argentina, such as the last military dictatorship and the economic crisis that erupted in 2001. While I do not argue that these forces have been the cause of much interpersonal gender-based violence, I suggest that violence and resistance are not decontextualized

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phenomena, but very much embedded in the social milieu in which they occur. Therefore, strategies to end this kind of violence cannot be simply exported from one place to another, but need to be sensitive to social context. As broad sectors of Argentine society confront the open wounds of the dictatorship, deal with the ravaging consequences of neoliberal economics, and organize in multiple social movements, discussions of gender violence need to be embedded within these conversations. Attending to context, however, does not mean overlooking how local spaces and experiences are configured in interaction with more than local, even transnational, forces. Looking at the body provides a useful bridge to understanding interpersonal and broader expressions of violence. The body is the place where micro interpersonal relations and wider social structures intersect—the body absorbs or expresses both levels. This is apparent in women’s encounters with violence. Instances of battering or abuse mark a woman’s body in very personal ways, perhaps evoking a particular face, gesture, smell, landscape, or moment. Yet that personal bodily experience also bears the weight of cultural ideologies that represent women as disposable objects, of economic inequalities that limit women’s opportunities to escape violence, of state authorities that refuse to take such violence seriously, and of institutionalized discourses that teach women they cannot make fundamental decisions over their own lives and bodies. Experiences of gender-based violence are thoroughly embodied events. The marks of bodily violence are very tangible, as in the case of wounds, scars, or mutilated skin. They may also become part of the physical internalization of fear or vulnerability, as reflected in women’s gestures and demeanor. Common advice on how women should respond to gender violence tends to emphasize the physical risks of resistance. Yet in some cases such resistance may prevent further bodily harm. Women in this study engaged in varied strategies to stop violence, including but not limited to physical resistance. Some women linked personal experiences of violence to the need to stop structural gendered violence in the long term: through collective organizing. In the following chapter, I focus on women’s bodies as they resist multiple forms of social, political, and economic oppression.

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z Bodies in Protest poner el cuerpo

Throughout this book, I have explored various strategies that women use to cope with, negotiate, and resist unjust conditions. The responses of different women to these social forces were sometimes individual, sometimes collective and more overtly political, and sometimes both. In this chapter, I examine the significance of women’s bodies in social change efforts as well as the role of political activism in the constitution of women’s embodied subjectivity. I consider the following questions: How does the body, and particularly the female body, become a vehicle and agent of resistance? How does women’s political resistance engage and contest hegemonic modes of feminine embodiment? In her article “Protesting Like a Girl,” Wendy Parkins (2000) suggests that feminist theorizing should pay attention not only to the social control of women but also to their political agency.1 She argues that “we cannot think of political agency in abstraction from embodiment” (60). Indeed, political resistance involves, first and foremost, putting the material body in action to affect the course of society. Activists’ bodily performances, capabilities, and vulnerabilities during political protest produce social, cultural, and political effects (De Lucca 1999; Peterson 2001). Wounded bodies, tortured bodies, defiant bodies, bodies that confront repression, bodies that protest in surprising ways, and out-of-place bodies shape both the political landscape and the embodied consciousness of participants. In Argentina, the bodily dimension of political resistance is evoked through a common expression in some activist circles: poner el cuerpo. Literally, this phrase means, “to put the body,” which does not quite translate from Argentine Spanish to English. The notion of poner el cuerpo has some overlaps with “to put the body on the line” and to “give the body,” but, as it will be shown later, it transcends both notions. With respect to political agency, poner el cuerpo means not just to talk, think, or desire, but to be really present and involved; to put the whole (embodied) being into action, to be committed to a social cause, and to 161

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assume the bodily risks, work, and demands of such a commitment. Poner el cuerpo is part of the vocabulary of resistance in Argentina and implies the importance of our material bodies in the transformation of social relations and history. In this chapter, I first offer an overview of activism in neoliberal Argentina. Second, I discuss the relationship between bodies and political resistance—of women’s ways to poner el cuerpo—and the meanings women attached to these actions. Finally, I examine how women draw on, disrupt, and contest hegemonic modes of feminine embodiment through their political actions.

The Nature and Context of Activism during the Crisis An important dimension I highlighted in this text is how the economic crisis triggered rebellion from broad sectors of the population. Hunger, poverty, joblessness, lack of access to health care, and housing insecurity may be described as macro processes, but they are also deeply embodied events, experienced by living human beings in the flesh. Responses to these conditions, including collective political resistance, should also be understood as involving the body. The magnitude of the wave of protest triggered by the worsening social, political, and economic conditions is not insignificant in a country that still lives with the ghosts of abduction, torture, and disappearance of political dissenters and activists. During the dictatorship, politics was violently fought on the bodies of thousands of people, and this specter still “haunts” Argentine society (Gordon 1997), sometimes working as a deterrent to political participation. Beatriz, a woman who had a disappeared relative, is an example of how the politics of death inscribed on the bodies of those who disappeared still survives in the fears of those still alive: “I don’t want any more political participation in my family, even if it is legal. Because in our country there were 30,000 disappeared, and you can’t fight for anything if you are dead. If we are alive, we can continue with what we have. We are alive. Let’s think, analyze. I told my son that the day we go to vote we have to think very well about whom we vote for. We should not try to fight by ourselves. It is not useful. You disappear.” Beatriz was still shaken by the memory of political repression. Although she had high hopes for social change, activism was off-limits for her. How many people in Argentina have also experienced the paralyzing effect of state repression? How many people wonder what may happen to them if they are part of a labor union? If they participate in a demonstration? If they are members of a popular assembly? Or if they challenge the powers that be through other forms of collective organizing? During a workshop I coordinated in Buenos Aires about the impacts of the crisis on women’s lives and bodies (Sutton 2004), memories of the dictatorship arose, and a woman expressed fears similar to those of Beatriz. Yet another woman in the workshop responded that she experienced the opposite effect. The memory of the dictatorship pushed her to be politically active and to encourage her children to do the same. For her, political

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participation, confronting fear, and naming the scars of the dictatorship were essential aspects of the “exercise of resistance.” The massive protests and political organizing occurring in the midst of the crisis suggest that many people, fearful or not, were daring to break the paralysis imposed by memories of terror and by discourses about the inevitability of the path set by neoliberal economics. Beatriz’s narrative implies that she was hoping to bring about social change by casting a vote—the most obvious tool provided by a democratic system. Yet the restoration of electoral democracy in Argentina showed that, without more widespread citizen involvement and monitoring, elected government representatives can still adopt policies that hurt, starve, and exclude the majority of the population. In addition, the existing form of democracy did not protect a number of piqueteros/as and other protesters from being killed or hurt by the police or private security guards during demonstrations. Many of the people who became politically active in the post-December 2001 crisis were demanding a different brand of democracy, a democracy characterized by deep social, economic, and institutional transformations. They aimed to participate not only through the institutional channels already provided by the system, but also by creating alternative organizations and experimenting with participatory democratic methods. Ordinary people’s discontent and efforts to provoke social change played out both in the streets (through protests and demonstrations) and through community activities aiming to create government accountability and foster citizen participation. The numbers of protests during this period was one indicator that politics as usual were no longer possible. According to estimates by the Secretary of Interior Security, published in La Nación (Gallo 2002), between January and mid-August 2002 there were about 12,766 protests around the country, including road blockades, marches, and occupations of public and private buildings. As shown in figure 6.1, the number of road and street blockades in Argentina increased significantly over the years. Although many people started to participate politically for the first time in response to relatively recent events, their actions did not spring out of nowhere. A trajectory of protest and political organizing had long existed in Argentina. Indeed, it was this tradition that the military dictatorship tried to suppress when it came to power in 1976. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, workers, students, and leftist organizations (including some guerrilla groups) were demanding and organizing to create profound changes. While the military aimed to eliminate a whole generation of activists, many survived and shared their experiences, nourishing contemporary movement organizations. This history of militancy is now being recovered through the oral and written testimonies of activists who outlived the dictatorship (e.g., Actis et al. 2001; Calveiro 2005; Diana 1996; Partnoy 1986). I had the opportunity to see aspects of this recovery process in action during my 2003 trip from Buenos Aires to Porto Alegre to participate in the World Social Forum. I spent about twenty

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Figure 6.1. Number of road and street blockades in Argentina, 1997–2002. Source: La Nación (2002b), based on a study by Nueva Mayoría.

hours in a bus full of activists. This bus was shared by people from diverse social movement organizations: human rights, popular assemblies, women’s organizations, piqueteros/as, and others. During this long trip, after several rounds of mate, conversations about political issues (protest strategies, violence and nonviolence, the history of struggle in Argentina, and hopes for the future) emerged quite naturally. Some of these people were veteran activists who alerted the group to the importance of remembering not only the torture, repression, and death that the dictatorship inflicted on dissenters, but also the vitality and force for social change that the pre-dictatorship political organizing represented. One of these veteran activists was a woman who argued that silence about this history of activism blocks new social movements from capitalizing and learning from those experiences. One of the movements that is still influential today, and that developed in response to the dictatorship, is the human rights movement. This movement developed while the military was still in power and family members of the disappeared, particularly mothers, demanded the return of the disappeared alive. Since then, this movement has worked tirelessly to bring repressors to justice, to connect the abducted children of the disappeared with their families of origin, and to raise social consciousness about human rights in Argentina (Bellucci 2000; Fisher 1993; Kaplan 2004). Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose activism continues today (Borland 2006), have also crafted an enduring legacy of protest for women in Argentina. They have influenced activist frames as they politicized motherhood, made organized claims to the state, confronted police and military repression, and shaped human rights agendas. They also denounced the thread running through the political and economic system imposed by the military dictatorship and the neoliberal policies implemented by later constitutional governments, especially during the 1990s. The Mothers have offered practical aid

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and solidarity to worker-run factories, organized popular education workshops, engaged in hunger-strikes to support political prisoners, and are often present in key demonstrations. They embody an activist practice that legitimizes motherhood as a viable source of political involvement. This approach animates other women’s political participation in contemporary Argentina as they struggle for the economic survival of their families or as they protest against gatillo fácil (trigger-happy, excessive police violence) against their children during democracy. Many women whose activism is not driven by maternal politics or who have criticized such frames—for example, various feminists—can still relate to the Mothers and engage with their legacy as champions of human rights causes. Today the human rights movement continues to be active in its demands for truth and justice in relation to state terrorism, but it also has a broader critique that includes issues of social and economic justice and their relationship to democracy. The movement repudiates the repression of activists, continued police abuses, and neoliberal economic policies implemented during the electoral democratic period. During the twenty-second March of Resistance organized by Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo–Founding Line, banners in the plaza signed by organizations of relatives, mothers, grandmothers, and children of the disappeared read: “Then and Now, The Fight Is One: IMF [International Monetary Fund] Out Now” and “Yes to Life, No to FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas].” Members of this movement see a common thread running through the political and economic system the dictatorship imposed and the neoliberal policies implemented by later governments. During the 1990s, the negative effects of the neoliberal model were already being felt. The movement of piqueteros and piqueteras emerged in response to these conditions, which included joblessness, impoverishment, and hunger. This movement of unemployed workers, mostly poor, resorted to the piquete (road and street blockades) as their main tool of political protest. Piqueteros/as blockade roads forming chains with their bodies, sometimes burning tires or other objects, sometimes wearing masks to protect their identity, and sometimes holding sticks for self-defense. As piquetes developed, members organized systems of security, where selected individuals (men or women) monitor that the group is unharmed and that no infiltrators enter their lines. Blockades can last from several hours to several weeks. Long piquetes function as a crisis community of sorts, where some members of the movement camp overnight and where the basic necessities of life need to be sustained communally—for example, organizing ollas populares (communal meals). Among the earliest blockades were those that took place in the mid-1990s in the province of Neuquén because of the privatization of the national oil company. The poverty and the massive lay-offs that followed privatizations and other structural adjustment policies also prompted similar protests in other provinces (Auyero 2003; Lobato and Suriano 2003). More traditional protest strategies, such as strikes, were no longer viable given that movement members

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were unemployed. Blockading roads has been a way for piqueteros and piqueteras to exert pressures on the government by disrupting the circulation of goods, people, and services. According to Lobato and Suriano (2003, 145), “visibility and effectiveness were key to the expansion of the piquete as a pressure factor and as a form of struggle.” During the period of my study in Buenos Aires, marches of piqueteros and piqueteras became a regular part of the urban landscape. Masses of activist bodies, many wearing protester groups’ identifying vests—for example, yellow, light blue, and white—and holding large banners, cut access to bridges and occupied main avenues in Buenos Aires. Demands ranged from state subsidies for the poor, genuine work for the unemployed, government support for community projects, decriminalization of protesters who had been incarcerated or had impending trials, and punishment of police officers who had murdered political protesters (for example, the murders of two piqueteros, Maxi Kosteki and Darío Santillán, during a protest in June 2002). As Di Marco et al. (2003, 177) point out, these protests were only the tip of the iceberg of what piquetero/a organizations were about. Those authors indicate that though there are differences in organizing styles (e.g., more and less hierarchical), ideologies, and ties to political parties among different piquetero/a groups, most of them were engaged in significant community work. They carried out productive projects based on economic solidarity as well as neighborhood improvement activities, such as communal kitchens and vegetable gardens, communal clothing sales, health and education projects, and micro-enterprises (e.g., bakeries, carpentry, and marmalade production). Women were about 65 percent of the members of this movement (Di Marco et al. 2003), and they were also the backbone of many of the community projects and protests mentioned above.2 When I asked Lucía, a piquetera, why she became involved in the movement, she explained that rage about not being able to satisfy her children’s basic bodily needs, like eating, provided the impetus for her participation: Anger prompted me to enter the movement, because of the way we were living, because of not having enough to feed my children. That was it. And the need to find a job, to have something for them [the children]. I’m not saying a good plate of food every day, but that they have something to eat. To get to the day of payment and tell them, “Well, children let’s eat some steaks or an asadito [barbecued meat].” That’s what pushed me to continue in the movement. And the other thing is that I like to fight for what belongs to the people.

Another important movement that developed in the context of the crisis was the movement of neighborhood-based assemblies, many of which were formed during the December 2001 economic collapse and political crisis. Neighbors across Buenos Aires, a large number belonging to the middle class, massively protested the declared state of emergency and the economic measures implemented by the government of then president Fernando de la Rúa. They banged

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cacerolas (pots and pans) in protest. This strategy came to be known as cacerolazo and is still being used in Argentina, notably by members of the Argentine middle class and even the upper classes in the wealthiest parts of Buenos Aires. The bodies of cacerolazo protests—including men and women wearing fashionable clothing and looking fit and healthy—differ from the often worn-out and darkskinned bodies of many piqueteros/as. The cacerolazo bodies visibly announced the middle-class’s investment in economic policies and the adoption of street protest as a viable mechanism to push for diverse social and economic agendas later on. In connection to the cacerolazos and other protests in December 2001, people started to hold collective meetings in plazas, on street corners, and later in neighborhood centers and squatters’ buildings. Assembly members tried to make sense of social and political developments through collective reflection and discussion, and they responded with street protests and community alternatives to the social problems generated or aggravated by the crisis. In mid-2002, about 170 assemblies existed in the city of Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area. Di Marco et al. (2003) report that the numbers of assembly members varied from one assembly to another and over time. At the beginning, hundreds of people participated in these assemblies, but numbers dwindled over time to around twenty or forty people per assembly. There were also interneighborhood assembly meetings, some of which attracted up to two thousand people to Parque Centenario, the park in which they were held. Neighborhood assemblies tried to break down organizational hierarchies, and they held discussions that lasted many hours and that fostered the exchange of ideas between members. In these settings, people also organized community projects and political protests. These fora were opportunities for many individuals who had no previous political exposure to experiment with innovative forms of political participation. The functioning of these assemblies was new even for many seasoned activists. Diana, a middle-class woman with an extensive history of political activism, expressed during our interview that “the assemblies surprised us. We had not even the most minimal idea of how to participate.” The activities of the neighborhood assemblies were multiple and often cultivated solidarity among people of different social backgrounds and movements. Flor, a middle-class interviewee, described the activities of the assembly in which she participated as follows: We do a chorizeada [communal sale of sausages] every Saturday at noon, in that corner. The chorizeada was first started by us, but then, through other people, we became friends with the cartoneros, and we give them a percentage [of the sales]. And another percentage is for the olla. Now they are cooperating with our building space, helping to fix it—people who are unemployed are helping with our space. We have done other things as well. We addressed health issues. We created a small health center, where we worked really hard,

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and we achieved many things there. Then we did a vaccination campaign, for two months . . . About 600 or 700 people were vaccinated. It looks like we were the assembly that vaccinated the most people. We held festivals; we participated in marches with other assemblies; we engaged in discussions with other assemblies; we received piqueteros and organized events with them.

Some of the neighborhood assemblies’ activities took place in abandoned buildings that were turned into assembly headquarters and cultural centers. Similar to Flor’s group, other assemblies’ endeavors included soup kitchens, health projects, cultural events, handicraft fairs, economically productive projects, and protests (Di Marco et al. 2003, 85–86). Another movement that developed in the context of declining economic conditions of neoliberal Argentina was the movement of empresas recuperadas. Due to spiraling economic problems many businesses failed, and owners threatened to shut down their activities and lay off workers, often having previously failed to honor their responsibilities by not paying wages or overtime or withdrawing other workers’ benefits (Basco and Laxalde 2003; Di Marco et al. 2003). Workers would then take over production and other operations and recover the business—and make a living in the process. Susana, who worked in one of these recovered factories, explained how labor conflict at her workplace started because employers failed to meet their responsibilities: Since the year 1998, they did not pay social security, the union contribution, or the health plan, so we had many problems. Between 1997 and 1998 things started to go downhill. There was less work, and they took away all the money they used to give us for production. We had to work more, but they lowered our wages. And we started to earn less and less. First they started giving us 100 pesos each week, then perhaps they would give us 50 or 60 pesos. And it continued to decrease, decrease, and decrease. But we had to work the same. So that’s how dissatisfaction and a sense of rebellion started. Because we were earning less and less, and we worked a lot. And that’s how everything started.

When companies threatened to shut down and lay off employees, workers in many of these companies resisted losing their jobs. They argued that they could run these businesses productively and collectively. In different parts of the country, workers occupied the production floors of businesses that were on the verge of failing or that their owners had abandoned. Workers talked about recovered rather than occupied enterprises in order to assert the legitimacy of their claim and the social value of their actions. Estimates of the number of recovered enterprises in Argentina (e.g., bakeries, supermarkets, garment, and ceramic factories) ranged from 100 to 180 (Basco and Laxalde 2003; Di Marco et al. 2003; Legislatura 2003). One of the projects that gained extensive media attention was the Brukman factory, a garment factory with a majority of female workers. These workers faced violent evictions from the police and waged their

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struggle to retain control of the factory not only in the streets, but also in the courts, the city legislature, and the Ministry of Labor. These obreras sin patrón (workers without a boss), as one of their slogans read, received massive support from other social movements and were targets of violent police repression, including tear-gassing, just a few days before the 2003 presidential election. The sight of mid-age women clad in blue pinafores—against the backdrop of black fences surrounding the factory and police with riot gear guarding the area— became emblematic of working-class women’s struggles during this period. Throughout this book I have pointed out that women participated in multiple struggles, including demanding jobs, food security, health care access, sexual and reproductive rights, and an end to violence against women. Their participation occurred both as members of mixed-gender social movements and as part of the feminist and broader women’s movement. With the crisis and the general climate of protest, many of women’s demands gained momentum. The new law on reproductive and sexual health is one example. Mixed-gender movements also started to pay greater attention to issues that previously seemed exclusive to women, such as abortion and violence against women. Actions by women’s movement organizations (e.g., feminist groups, lesbian groups, and migrant women, working-class, and poor women’s organizations) included marches and other street demonstrations, many of which attracted women from different sectors and organizations. They also organized consciousness-raising meetings and workshops; informative lectures and discussions in neighborhood centers, university classrooms, and government spaces; sexual and reproductive rights campaigns; and subsistence projects (e.g., production and retail of handicrafts). Women from distinct organizations and political orientations supported and networked with women engaged in diverse struggles—for example, feminists’ explicit support of the Brukman workers during street demonstration events or assemblies for abortion rights that included women from different social sectors. Within the women’s movement I witnessed not only instances of solidarity, cross-sector networking, and mutual support, but also all kinds of conflicts. Some of these conflicts may seem relatively minor, but they reveal deeper wedges between women from different groups. For instance, middle-class feminists decried some of the protest song lyrics of women from the popular sectors (e.g., poor, working class) that contained insults that, though directed to politicians, were derogatory to women. That was the case for songs referring to the country’s president as a “son of a bitch,” telling politicians to go to la concha de su madre (literally, his mother’s pussy), and similar gendered insults that were part of some piquetero/a or leftist organizations’ repertoires. Feminists argued that such language was sexist and that the songs emerged in the context of maledominated organizations and settings. On the other hand, women on the piquetera side were reluctant to abandon their songs, feeling that (middle-class) feminists were criticizing them for not being proper enough. Furthermore, those

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were the songs of their movement, formed not only by women, but also by men who were their compañeros and with whom they experienced greater affinity than with some feminists. While for middle-class feminists this conflict was about gender, for poor and working-class women the issue was class. In fact, this conflict around language points to other differences in priorities, strategies, and analyses between women from these groups. A host of conflicts in the women’s movement were between various other groups of women. Some divisions were between autonomous and institutionalized feminists (the latter referring to women in some nongovernmental organizations and government institutions), whom the former saw as sell-outs or as watering down feminist demands. Others were between lesbians, who denounced invisibility and discrimination against them within the movement, and heterosexual women, who avoided addressing compulsory heterosexuality as a problem or who did not want to show any association with lesbianism. I also listened to heated discussions between feminists who considered prostitution as violence and not work (talking about “women in situations of prostitution” instead of “sex workers”) and women who identified themselves as sex workers and considered themselves part of the labor movement. Conflicts also arose between independent feminists and women affiliated with political parties, who the former accused of taking over demonstrations and other activist venues with the slogans and priorities of their parties. Another divisive issue among women in the movement involved the role of men and transgender activists. While some women were open to including them in women’s actions and meetings, others actively opposed this. Tensions around ethnoracial background have been more opaque, often subsumed under other categories such as class, national origin, or emerging in particular instances through marginalized voices, such as those of indigenous women. Other social movements described here also showed patterns of solidarity and fragmentation. Sometimes intra- or intermovement differences were exacerbated by the media, for example, emphasizing distinctions between piquetero/a organizations characterized as duros (tough) and those characterized as dialoguistas (i.e., willing to dialogue/compromise with the government). Divisions have also been historically present within the human rights movement, with parts aligned with the Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and others feeling greater identification with Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo–Founding Line. (Both organizations are composed of mothers of the disappeared, but they differ on a number of issues, so they split into two groups) (Borland 2004; Bouvard 1994). Finally, within the neighborhood assemblies confrontations occurred between those who considered themselves “just neighbors” and those who were part of political parties’ apparatuses. Despite organizational challenges, conflicts, and differences, solidarity and coalitions between different movement organizations was not uncommon.

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Members of different social movements (e.g., neighborhood assemblies, piquetero/a organizations, leftist political parties, women’s organizations) supported Brukman workers both during street protests to reclaim the factory and during cultural and fund-raising events. Neighborhood assemblies collaborated with piquetero/a groups in specific projects and protests. Middle-class feminists with expertise in health care issues, gender violence, or micro-enterprise projects collaborated with piqueteras and other working-class women by sharing their knowledge and skills, at the same time learning from the ideas and realities of marginalized women. Another example of cross movement solidarity was how multiple movement organizations converged to protest the war in Iraq and economic globalization trends such as efforts to advance the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This convergence partly reflected the general negative sentiment of the population toward the government of the United States at that moment and an increasingly critical view of neoliberal economics. These attitudes were probably affected by the perception that the economic problems Argentina was experiencing were directly or indirectly influenced by the U.S. foreign policies. In contrast to the 1990s, when politicians felt free to promote and celebrate the “carnal relations” between Argentina and the United States, during my study the majority of the population expressed opposition to U.S. international policies.3 The protests against the war tended to advance an anti-imperialistic stance, not just a claim for peace. Besides massive street demonstrations, concerts, and other crowded protests, opposition to the war in Iraq was also reflected in smaller protests. An example was the action of a leftist group of young people who took over a McDonalds in a central area of Buenos Aires, posting photos of civilian victims in Iraq and antiwar signs on the windows of this fast food facility. They also burned a U.S. flag and tried to start a dialogue about the war with customers and employees (La Nación 2003a). Although I mostly participated in women’s movement actions, conferences, meetings, and protests, the cross-movement collaboration I have described exposed me to some of the ideas and activities of members of different social movements. Gatherings like the Thematic Social Forum on the Argentine case or the Forum against FTAA attracted members of multiple social movements.4 Film festivals on human rights or on social movements also helped to illuminate the broad spectrum of resistance groups and strategies in Argentina. The National Women’s Meeting in the province of Salta attracted women from all walks of life and political sectors who shared their personal and political experiences and challenges. Many of the protests in which I participated—against state repression, for social and economic justice, against war, for women’s rights, and so on—were instances of cross-movement solidarity. This vibrant political environment was favorable to analyze the connections between bodies and political resistance, and it strongly influenced my decision to pursue this line of study.

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Bodies and Political Activism The role of bodies in political action has been insufficiently examined in social movement theorizing. Yet, even if not explicitly addressed, the body is—as in any other realm of social life (Le Breton 2002; Shilling 2003; Wacquant 2004)— an implicit presence in accounts of political protest. Studies of social movement activism that do make it a point to theorize the role of the body offer important insights on the dynamics of protest (De Lucca 1999; Laware 2004; Parkins 2000; Peterson 2001; Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 2003). In her discussion of militant bodies in Europe, Abby Peterson (2001, 69) eloquently describes how the body is deeply enmeshed in political resistance: In the struggle against existing structures of power the body is the most primary interface of powers of resistance. However the body is more than an interface of the power of resistance, the militant body is a power of resistance. . . . Feelings, emotions, lived and living experiences of oppression and resistance, even bodily secretions such as adrenaline and sweat, are brought directly to bear upon a political struggle. Theirs is the “hot” struggle of passions, far removed from the tepid bodies and deliberating “Cartesian heads” of institutional politics.

Drawing on previous theorizing about the relationship between bodies and political resistance (particularly on Abby Peterson’s work) and applying it to concrete examples of women’s activism in Argentina, the following paragraphs outline five ways in which bodies are embedded in and significant to political protest. The first, and perhaps most obvious, dimension of much activism is that political protest is performed through the body (Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 2003). As in all human behaviors, activists use and deploy their bodies in specific ways to achieve their political goals. Activist practices enlist bodily capabilities and endurance—sometimes even in dangerous actions that “play upon the vulnerability of the body as a tactic for political communication,” such as locking the body to a tree or a building (Peterson 2001, 74). In Argentina, women have engaged in activist practices both along with men and in women-only actions and demonstrations. These embodied practices include carrying signs or flags for long hours; moving fast during graffiti painting or pegatinas (pasting flyers or posters on street walls); playing music, dancing, and chanting; holding sticks for self-defense; forming body chains to blockade roads; confronting the physical violence of police; hunger striking; and banging pots and pans to protest a whole array of social problems. Different social movement cultures, specific movement demands, and activists’ differential locations in the social structure shape these embodied actions. Second, activists often use their bodies as a political “argument” or “text,” as signs that convey political meanings (De Lucca 1999, 10; Peterson 2001, 92). Calling

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attention to their own bodies through various symbols and disruptive tactics, activists construct “compelling images that attract media attention” (De Lucca 1999, 10) as well as the attention of other protesters and onlookers at the scene. Women in Argentina have engaged in a diversity of political actions in which protesting bodies are useful “resources for argumentation and advocacy” (9)— for example, unclothing or clothing the body in particular ways. Guadalupe, a young activist I interviewed, marched bare-breasted during the annual Pride March on sexual diversity to reclaim her bodily freedom and visibility as a lesbian. A group of activist women played drums in front of the cathedral while wearing T-shirts inscribed with two interlaced women’s symbols to publicly reveal what Rich (1980) called “lesbian existence.” Activists’ costumes or flamboyant outfits can be a way to mock and denounce dominant institutions. The purple and glittery nun-like clothing of the lesbian feminist group Caramelitas en Calzas satirized the Catholic Church.5 The white headscarves of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo evoke children’s diapers and affirm the political aspects of motherhood. The blue pinafores of women from the Brukman factory— recovered by workers during the crisis—showed their laborer status. Piqueteras’ colorful vests make visible their organizational affiliation and the massiveness of their movement. Feminists’ purple clothing, migrant women’s typical national attire, and activists’ shirts with political slogans are all markers of identity and demonstrate how the body is not only inscribed by culture but is also a resource for political resistance. Third, the material body characteristics, needs, vulnerabilities, and resiliency cannot be separated from activist practices.6 During protest events, activist bodies may need food or water; may get wet, too cold, or too warm; may need to go to (often unavailable) bathrooms; and may experience physical pain inflicted by state repression. Activist women’s bodies may also be pregnant, nursing, or menstruating, although this is not the case of all women at all times. Sometimes bodily needs are incorporated into political protest (e.g., women nursing babies during demonstrations) or become the protest itself, such as in ollas populares— communal meals prepared during protests to satisfy protesters’ physical needs and/or to expose poor people’s hunger. In the case of women, the bodily risks inherent to political protest, compounded with social perceptions about women’s special fragility and vulnerability (as opposed to men’s perceived strength and resiliency) have been used to exclude or subordinate women’s social movement participation. Women have sometimes played on this perceived fragility in order to make their tactics more effective. Yet many women have historically also demonstrated embodied courage and resiliency in multiple political actions. Fourth, social movement theorists have analyzed emotions as one important factor in social movement emergence, recruitment, maintenance, and outcomes (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001b; Hercus 1999; Jasper 1998; Reger 2004). Emotions that are often present in movements—fear, anger, joy, rage,

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pleasure—are lived in and through the body. Merleau-Ponty (2002) suggested that we really cannot separate emotions from the physical sensations that help to constitute such feelings. Embodied emotions and passions are often expressed in political protests, and they can also help to sustain or undermine movements. In Argentina, footage documenting the demonstrations of December 19 and 20, 2001, show some men’s and women’s bodies expressing visible euphoria as they chanted against the government (perhaps for finally being able to express feelings of disapproval within the protective and encouraging embrace of the crowd). Documentaries also show the outrage reflected in the faces of protesters and other people in downtown Buenos Aires as they witnessed the repressive state apparatus, police on horses almost running over the aged bodies of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and the bloody bodies of ordinary people injured or killed by the police during the demonstrations (e.g., Solanas 2004). Jasper (1998, 418) also observes that emotions are not only rampant in protests, but are also integral to bodily rituals such as dance and songs, which help to create a sense of cohesion among movement members. I experienced and observed the sensuality and pleasure involved in some of the women’s movement activities firsthand—for example, at the 2003 National Feminist Meetings. After a whole day of workshops and sometimes-difficult debates among women with conflicting perspectives, attendees gathered in the evening to listen to a lesbian-feminist band playing songs dear to the movement. The laughter and joy that participants expressed as they sang and moved their bodies to the music’s rhythm speak to the unifying force of this rite and its role in sustaining the movement through celebration and energizing embodied feelings. Finally, numbers of bodies are also important to political resistance. It makes a difference whether there are 200 or 200,000 people protesting in the streets. “Massed bodies” constitute tangible sources of power during protests (Peterson 2001, 82). The social climate in Argentina during 2002–2003 was characterized by mass protests, by the presence of thousands of bodies marching in the streets, blockading roads, banging pots and pans, and persistently demanding social change—actions in which women actively participated. The persuasiveness of massive bodily presence in a march, a piquete, or a cacerolazo makes it harder to downplay the existence of social problems. In fact, the repressive gear of crowdcontrol police officers shows the government’s considerable efforts to contain or suppress the power of massed bodies. During the annual marches that are part of the National Women’s Encuentros, which attract thousands of women from around the country, massed female bodies occupy the streets, claiming the public space and exhibiting a diversity of embodied femininities at the same time that they visibly put forth key demands of the movement. Activists’ bodies convey political ideas, demand changes, and exert pressure. At the same time, activists experience and project images about their own bodily powers and capacities. In the context of sexist political cultures, women’s activist practices may foster different perceptions of what constitutes an activist body

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and a member of the body politic. Such actions can also help create alternative notions of embodied womanhood (Laware 2004; Parkins 2000; Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 2003).

Dimensions of Poner el Cuerpo from Women’s Perspectives In talking about their experiences, hopes, and dreams, a number of women in my study, particularly activists, used the expression poner el cuerpo to describe ways in which they cope with, resist, or struggle to transform oppressive social relations. This expression also appeared in some newspaper articles, feminist listservs, and social movement events. While poner el cuerpo is not an expression or practice that only women engage in, here I focus on women for empirical and theoretical reasons: (1) my data emerges from a study centered on women, and (2) women’s bodies have been socially imbued with meanings such as passivity and submissiveness that are antithetical to political protest, to a political poner el cuerpo. Thus, I am interested in how these notions permeate and are disrupted by women’s words and actions. Evoking the body in relation to political resistance is important in a country still suffering from the open wounds of a time when the body became the epicenter of state repression, a time during which a military regime tortured and disappeared thousands of dissident bodies (Calveiro 2004). Here I explore the connotations of poner el cuerpo for women during another difficult period of Argentine history, one marked by economic crisis, unprecedented poverty, and social unrest. In talking about poner el cuerpo, women unraveled multiple dimensions, including the embodied dimensions of collective protest and daily activist work, coherence between words and (embodied) actions, embodied sacrifice, and embodied risk, courage, and struggle.

Embodied Collective Protest and Daily Activist Work The collectivity and solidarity embedded in an activist understanding of poner el cuerpo involves two different, but interrelated aspects: bodily presence in protests, such as marches, escraches, cacerolazos, and piquetes, and the less spectacular, but important, daily (embodied) work of activism, including attending meetings, organizing events, writing pamphlets, fund-raising, leafleting, providing services, and building community resources (see Bidaseca 2006). Women engage both facets of activism, even though these dimensions are not uniform, but inflected by gender, class, and other axes of difference. For example, with respect to class, women’s participation in communal kitchens has been crucial to poor and working-class movements (e.g., piquetero/as), while it has not been central to the organizing of middle-class feminists whose families’ nutritional needs were met. Regarding gender, studies have documented how in some piquetero/a organizations, women have been more likely than men to be in

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charge of the area of health, sewing shops, or food preparation, and they have sometimes had trouble participating in movement meetings because of additional responsibilities at home (Bidaseca 2006; Cross and Partenio 2005). Furthermore, while there are women leaders within this movement, especially at the level of the barrio, the top authorities have tended to be men (Andújar 2005; Rauber 2002). Both political protest and daily activist work demand intense bodily commitment—something recognized by activists when they talk of activism as poner el cuerpo. Violeta, a lesbian and long-term women’s movement activist, explained: “To me, for example, poner el cuerpo means activism, with everything that this involves: energy, time, dedication, loss of other spaces . . . and poner el cuerpo with a sign in marches; it was a process for me to be able to do it.” Guadalupe, a younger lesbian activist, echoed this view: “Poner el cuerpo means just that, like to put, besides time . . . the bodily experience of that, of going out to the streets, or going to a march, or putting in the work, those things.” Paula, a thirty-year-old factory worker and labor activist, drew linkages between women’s hard embodied work in multiple arenas, including the domestic and social movement spheres: “We [women] are so important, such fighters; we put the lomo [back] in everything.”7 Activists’ narratives also suggested that poner el cuerpo is about togetherness, about engaging other bodies in the project of creating social change, of building power together from the bottom up. From this perspective, poner el cuerpo as a practice of resistance is not a lonely or individual task, but a collective, embodied process that sprouts solidarity and valuable knowledge: As Luz—a young and dedicated activist—proposed, “we go together, we do it together, and we learn.” When activists call on others to poner el cuerpo, they are asking people to take a stand, to act in solidarity, to make an embodied commitment—and in doing so they point out the importance of physical presence, of bodily participation in social change. This is how Luz described it based on her experience as an activist in an organization of mostly working-class and poor women and in a mixedgender political organization: Look, I think that the balance of the nineteenth and twentieth of December [2001 popular uprisings] is this: that we went out to poner el cuerpo. When we say that in Argentina there was a jump in people’s participation . . . it is because many more people started to poner el cuerpo. They started to poner el cuerpo, they started to participate. I believe that our politicians never pusieron [past tense of poner] el cuerpo, never. . . . I believe that the new political leadership should be like this: it should come up very much from the bottom, having broken their backs working, and should continue breaking their backs with the work. I think that’s the turning point. And I very much value that.

Here, poner el cuerpo has the double meaning of participation in mass mobilization and the more hidden daily work of activism. The graphic image of

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backbreaking work again highlights the intense embodied labor involved in collective efforts to change society. According to this view, social transformation is an embodied collective project.

Backing Up Words with Bodies Luz explained her own style of embodiment using the expression poner el cuerpo. She advanced a mode of being in the world in which embodied resistance is part and parcel of what it means to be a woman. Luz talked about poner el cuerpo to indicate that words and ideas are necessary but insufficient in social change struggles. She expected coherence between words and actions: I’m the type to poner el cuerpo, very much to poner el cuerpo. What it is said with the pico [beak/mouth] should be supported with the lomo, and I am more about doing than saying. I’m more about poner el cuerpo, you see? I always say, there are those who say, “This should be done,” “This should be done, blah, blah, blah,” and [then] me and people like me—you could say, from the other group—who don’t say, “This should be done.” We go, and we do it, you see? [laughs]

Besides stressing the contrast between mere saying and embodied doing, the reference to the lomo in the above passage underscores the notion of hard embodied labor. Resistance is not only about great ideas or visions, but also about everyday hard work that requires an investment of bodily resources. There is a gendered component implicit in these views: because of their positions of power in organizations and institutions (as bosses, administrators, and heads of households), men have been traditionally more likely to be able to say “this should be done,” while women have been likely to do the daily embodied work in organizations and families. And much of this work has traditionally been invisible (Bidaseca 2006).8 Luz hints at this gendered (and class) contrast saying that politicians—traditionally economically privileged men—never had to poner el cuerpo. Laudano (2002) argues that usually la palabra (the spoken word), which she associates with power, is less available to women than actions that more clearly involve poner el cuerpo (e.g., road blockades), and that is why it may be more possible for some women, specifically piqueteras, to participate in a road blockade than to speak with authority in movement meetings. While there is certainly power in speech, and while women should not be denied the possibility to discuss and frame decisions within movements, the fact that women have participated in actions like road blockades and occupying public spaces with their bodies is no small feat. These kinds of actions contest gender ideologies that associate women with passivity, submission, and fragility, and have the potential to function as passports to greater authority within movements. Just as women claim their right to decide on reproductive matters based on the fact that pregnancy happens in their bodies, women who put their bodies on the line in

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movement actions should be able to claim greater authority within social movement organizations at least partly based on that bodily commitment. The power of speech and the power generated in more obviously embodied actions need not be mutually exclusive. For example, Luz builds an alternative leadership style that embraces the unity of embodied thinking, saying, and doing, and that challenges sexist assumptions that condemn women to be bodies devoid of thought, decision, or will. Through her activist practices, Luz advances a mode of embodiment as a committed, intelligent, and active woman: “It is as much about being thoughtful, and creative . . . as being able to do things, right?” Luz values women’s embodied activism as a thoughtful praxis and not as the result of the designs of others. In explaining the meaning of poner el cuerpo, she argued against boundaries between those who think or say and those who do: I’m not going to say to someone: “Look, you should do this.” In any case: “Che [hey], let’s go together and do such and such thing” or “Che, it would be great if we could do a workshop [with other women].” We go together, and we do it together, and we learn. And when I do give a task to someone else, when I delegate, I even accompany with my body, right? I’m very much about poner el cuerpo, I’m very much about poner el cuerpo. And I really value that form of leadership.

Luz’s repeated use of the phrase poner el cuerpo is a reminder that activist praxis entails people’s physical capacities, energy, and participation. Yet the way Luz conceptualizes poner el cuerpo suggests an embodied commitment that is thoroughly intertwined with a thought and speaking process. In this sense, poner el cuerpo is not like offering raw matter, akin to an object; it is a kind of commitment that engages all aspects of self.

Embodied Sacrifice Poner el cuerpo has a sacrificial dimension that involves offering bodily resources to serve a specific purpose or cause. In the case of political resistance, this embodied offering may be grounded in need, deep commitment, or a sense of justice. In December 2004, nine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo went on a hunger strike to demand the release of people in jail for political reasons and the decriminalization of activists targeted during the crisis. One of the Mothers, Hebe de Bonafini, referred to the hunger strike as a “really significant effort” that “involves poner el cuerpo.” She highlighted the sacrifice by pointing out that they “are women between 75 to 93 years old” and that the body is “the only thing we have to poner. . . . As long as we breathe we are going to continue to poner el cuerpo” (Bonafini 2004). Here the body appears as the most basic and ordinary thing one can offer (particularly if one does not come from a privileged class), but at the same time this bodily offer constitutes a supreme act because the body is the essential stuff of existence. While this kind of bodily giving is inscribed within the gendered symbols that the Mothers have evoked throughout their activism

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(e.g., motherly sacrifice), at the same time, what Bonafini emphasized in her speech was not only the sacrifice but also their determination and political agency. A woman who survived the dictatorship’s concentration camps also talked about her poner el cuerpo, this time in reference to the act of giving testimonies in post-dictatorship trials against the military: “Ponemos [we put] el cuerpo every time we relive that history, and we testify, and it hurts, but it also does us good” (Actis et al. 2001, 284). Poner el cuerpo, in this passage, points to the physical act of being there, speaking up, and withstanding the painful embodied emotions associated with memories of torture and terror. There is pain and sacrifice associated with giving testimony, but this woman recognizes that poner el cuerpo in that way is both necessary and worthwhile. In other cases, statements about the sacrifice entailed in poner el cuerpo have more negative connotations. Victoria, an impoverished middle-class interviewee, suggests that “there’s a good and a bad poner el cuerpo.” A good poner el cuerpo refers to participation in a project in a “more or less equitable way” with other people, when others also give their bodily resources. A bad poner el cuerpo refers to an unwarranted sacrifice, like poner el cuerpo performing excessive caring tasks for others. Poner el cuerpo is a high level of giving with many things, very deep . . . and, often times, it is a way of losing oneself . . . like losing the boundary of being oneself . . . the body is what carries you, the only instrument to go through life. So to me, poner el cuerpo sounds like it can even be sacrificial.

Roberta, a young woman who organized with other staff and students to improve conditions at her workplace in the public university, exemplified this notion of excessive sacrifice, of getting too involved without paying due attention to her embodied self. She explained that her tendency to poner el cuerpo without measuring costs, always putting other people’s needs first, produced the deterioration of her own body: I see poner el cuerpo that way, that perhaps I don’t take care of myself and I place too much importance on certain things, that perhaps it is OK that I do that, but one shouldn’t neglect oneself. . . . When one uses the phrase poner el cuerpo, I came to the conclusion that I do it in truth. Above all other things, I give a lot of myself. . . . I become involved . . . I see poner el cuerpo that way, I put a lot of myself into the things that I do. . . . I put everything I can in all ways, just as much with my family, with my friends, with my boyfriend, and at work—and I leave myself on the side.

Roberta continues saying that she often used the phrase poner el cuerpo to describe that kind of deep commitment, but “didn’t understand it as really the physical body, but just as an expression. And perhaps once illnesses started to arise—they aren’t serious but they have to do with not taking care of myself— I realize that it really is poner el cuerpo.”

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Women’s political activism in the context of gender inequality can take a particularly heavy toll on the body. Luz knew this from her own experience as a committed activist: Society requires that we do four or five times more [than men] in order to recognize us, and so we do, right? I see myself and hear others saying, “I go to the piquete, but first I clean my house and leave everything tidy.” . . . Now we are the Amazons, you know, the new Amazons of society, but at what cost? We have to work because our husbands are unemployed, go to the piquete because we are also unemployed, work in the communal kitchen, take care of the kids. Gee! We have erupted into political life but at too high a cost. And to some extent, we withstand that and burden our lomos, right? . . . I believe that we demand from our bodies a lot more than men do.

The sacrificial dimension of poner el cuerpo emphasized here resonates with prevailing gender expectations, particularly in the domestic sphere. Women’s embodied sacrifice is further magnified by inequality in the public realm, implied in the idea that women have to do more than men in order to be recognized. Class also plays a role since, for example, the luxury of leaving the kids with a paid babysitter or a domestic service worker is generally not available to piqueteras (while it is more likely possible for middle-class women), so they have to continue their embodied care work in the midst of protest. Many women in Argentina are often in situations of poner el cuerpo in the sense of forced sacrifice, rather than as a “voluntary donation” (Rosenberg 2002, 5). This is the case when they cannot access contraceptives, are pushed to abortions in dangerous conditions, have no choice but heterosexuality, have to prostitute their bodies to survive, starve themselves to comply with dominant beauty standards, and are wounded or killed by sexual or domestic violence. Poner el cuerpo in these cases risks women’s bodily integrity and creates situations in which women fade as subjects. Yet other ways to poner el cuerpo may be empowering for women, and this is tied to women’s political resistance.

Embodied Risk, Courage, and Struggle Poner el cuerpo as political resistance also connotes risk, courage, and struggle. In challenging the status quo, political participation exposes the body to potential jeopardy (De Lucca 1999; Peterson 2001). Guadalupe gave an example of how poner el cuerpo signals the possibility of being harmed, punished, or harassed in the process: “And poner el cuerpo means to go out to paint [graffiti] in the streets, with my cuerpito [little body] running with the police behind me, and with my cuerpito, explaining to the police that we are a group of lesbians that [laughs], I don’t know, those things.” Here, several factors contribute to the risks latent in poner el cuerpo. Guadalupe’s expression “with my cuerpito” underscores the body’s vulnerability. Graffiti painting and lesbian identity indicates a transgression of societal norms, a taking of risks on two levels. And the police

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represent the force of those who sustain the status quo and can harm the bodies of those who transgress. The risks of poner el cuerpo are also intimately related to the general political context and social location of those participating. In the case of stigmatized identities—for example, lesbianism—public visibility during protest events may entail risks beyond the protest situation. Violeta, also a lesbian, explained that being unemployed allowed her greater freedom to “poner el cuerpo with a sign during marches,” because she did not need to worry about negative repercussions in her job. Other lesbians in a consciousness-raising group expressed their fears of family ostracism or job loss—possibilities that made it problematic for them to participate in political protest. Yet other women in the group also pointed out that it was important to assume those risks in order to make lesbian existence visible through their political physical presence and voice. Flor, a middle-class neighborhood assembly activist, also highlighted the risks inherent in poner el cuerpo: “One thing is to go and ask for things at the CGP [neighborhood center run by the city government], two or three people, and another one is poner el cuerpo [by making a fuss at the police station].” In this case there is a contrast between the less threatening action of asking for things at the CGP and the more combative, and therefore risky, poner el cuerpo entailed in confronting the police, an institution capable of inflicting physical harm. Taking risks and facing dangerous situations have been socially constructed as the province of men. However, activist women challenge those ideas through their concrete, embodied resistance and courage. Flor explained that poner el cuerpo means “to struggle, to struggle, and if there is a difficulty . . . confront it and see how to overcome it.” From a political perspective, poner el cuerpo is about embodied resistance, the opposite of remaining uninvolved, being indifferent, or running away. It is confronting what is problematic, difficult, or scary with the whole, embodied self.

Confronting Hegemonic Modes of Feminine Embodiment In order to understand the meanings associated with women’s activist bodies and the embodied strategies of resistance that women in Argentina have engaged, it is necessary to keep in mind the kinds of bodies/embodiment prescribed for women by dominant gender norms. In previous chapters, I emphasized the importance of women’s maternal bodies and narrowly defined (hetero) sexually appealing, visually pleasing female bodies as two dominant modes of feminine embodiment. In what follows, I explore how women draw upon and subvert prescribed forms of embodiment in the process of political protest and activism. Activist groups such as Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo drew on their maternal bodies to lend legitimacy to their struggle to bring back their disappeared children. White kerchiefs on their heads symbolizing diapers represented their

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relationship with their children. The military tried to discredit these women as bad mothers, crazy women who had failed in their fundamental mothering roles by raising “subversives.” Yet speaking on behalf of their children is generally viewed as an appropriate feminine behavior, a perspective that helped the Mothers to maneuver politically at a dangerous time. Feijoó and Nari (1994, 113) suggest that through their activism the Mothers incorporated “a feminine perspective in the world of patriarchal and masculine politics.” Not only their perspective, but also their particular style of embodied protest, disrupted the male dominated political arena while infusing motherhood with a political meaning: “Mothers fought with their own bodies, which they offered as evidence of the existence of the children the regime had ‘disappeared.’ They had birthed those children, and now, in their absence, they had to speak for them and birth them again as words and as ideas . . . the Mothers have used strategies that actually bring their children’s corporeality back. In different demonstrations, the women have used paper silhouettes, masks, paper hands, and human shapes drawn on the pavement to help the public perceive the children’s absence physically” (Bergman and Szurmuk 2001, 390). Furthermore, the Mothers’ style of silent vigils, by which pain and condemnation of injustice is expressed through the body, has also inspired the embodied protest of other women’s groups from the around the world, such as the antimilitaristic network Women in Black, which has made the staging of vigils a central feature of protest (Cockburn 2007). Besides the role of maternal bodies, issues related to properly feminine bodily appearance have also been historically connected to activist politics and repression. Alejandra Oberti (2005) underscores the conflicted embodiments of women in guerrilla organizations in the 1970s as they strived to embody traits associated with masculinity as a condition for successful militancy (e.g., holding guns, subscribing to a military logic), manipulated hyperfemininity for seduction or politically strategic purposes (e.g., wearing miniskirts and makeup to disguise their identities), and struggled to fulfill motherhood demands while also being militants. Some activist women have also played on prevailing norms of beauty and femininity to achieve political goals in contemporary Argentina. For example, the display of female beauty and sexuality has been instrumental in a relatively recent environmental conflict involving multinational corporations’ construction of pulp mills in the margins of the Uruguay River. The project threatened to cause major pollution in the surrounding area, both in Uruguay and Argentina. Evangelina Carrozzo, Greenpeace activist and Queen of Carnival in the nearby city of Gualeguaychú, sneaked into the IV Summit of European, Latin American, and Caribbean heads of state in Austria (2006) with a sign reading “No pulp mill pollution.” What brought media and political attention to this protest was not only the security failure, but also the fact that Carrozzo was just wearing her Carnival outfit—a tiny bikini that revealed her sculpted figure, exposing her buttocks almost completely.

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Contemporary activist embodiments do not occur in a sociohistorical vacuum. They build on a rich legacy of collective actions, which are continually drawn upon, contested, and reconfigured. Performative methods such as escraches, a tool of human rights groups to expose state terrorists, are currently used by feminist groups to denounce rapists. We can also see this kind of “borrowing” in the conversion of slogans from the 1970s, such as “Si Evita viviera sería Montonera” (if Evita lived she would be a Montonera)9 into similar phrases inscribed on the vests of unemployed workers, reading “Si Evita viviera sería Piquetera” (If Evita lived, she would be a piquetera). In that way, the workingclass and poor bodies of piqueteros/as become sites where a history of political contestation—from Evita to the present—is recovered and performed. Claiming Evita, in the body, as one of the piqueteros/as’ own draws attention to the plight and resistance of the poor; suggests an allegiance with combative Peronist currents; and evokes the style of feminine politics that Evita embodied. Many of the women who survived the political repression of the 1970s carry on old and new struggles, bringing their experiences and lessons into current activism and also affecting the latest generations of activist women. Some women bear the marks of political violence on their bodies and psyches from surviving illegal detentions and torture—including sexualized forms, such as rape and electric discharge on genitals—and cope with the disappearance of relatives and comrades. A number of activists in this period were members of feminist associations, had a double-militancy (in leftist, mixed-gender organizations and in feminist groups), and/or became committed to feminism during exile (Grammático 2005). They bring their experience to the contemporary women’s movement, not only as they shape political debates on contraception, abortion, violence, economics, and other timely topics, but as they promote radical social changes with their bodily presence in street protests. Women’s activist forms of embodiment in Argentina have been particularly visible in the recent period partly because of the proliferation of social movements that the crisis prompted. Yet poner el cuerpo, embodying resistance, is precisely what many women have done throughout Argentine history to fight various kinds of injustice. While dominant norms of femininity are still in place and permeate even women’s practices of resistance, women’s massive involvement in social movements also disrupts gendered expectations, including those that play most obviously on women’s bodies. In the midst of crises, many women have advanced alternative modes of feminine embodiment grounded in political struggle and resistance. The statement of Nana, an activist involved in a popular uprising in the poverty-ridden province of Santiago del Estero in the early 1990s (Auyero 2003), suggests a complex relationship between the body, consciousness, and political struggle. Through her political participation, Nana underwent not only a change of consciousness but also a transformation of her bodily appearance and demeanor: “I don’t wear makeup. I can let my gray hair grow. I don’t wear miniskirts anymore. I became a commando woman, a battle woman. I took all

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this very seriously, ever since the sixteenth [of December 1993, the date of the uprising] . . . . To me the sixteenth was the battle that I won” (Auyero 2003, 2). As Nana’s statement implies, poner el cuerpo in political activism can influence the way women see themselves, their assessment of their bodily capacities, and the body image they project to the world. While both men and women have fought to change social conditions, women’s political actions have often been overlooked or made invisible. The use of the generic (masculine) nouns to refer to the struggles of los maestros (men teachers), los piqueteros (men members of the piquetero/a movement), or los trabajadores (men workers) in the Brukman factory neglects the fact that women are the majority or a significant portion of these activists. Nora Cortiñas, a Mother of the Plaza de Mayo, makes a similar point in reference to the disappeared, many of whom were activist women: “Each time I attend an event, I close it asking to remember the 30,000 women and men [disappeared], and I say women and men. I’ve already gotten people’s ears used to it, so that they are clear that it is not “los desaparecidos” [disappeared men, used as a universal category], but “los desaparecidos” [disappeared men] and “las desaparecidas” [disappeared women]; I don’t leave it to the imagination, I leave it in their ears” (Chejter 2002, 151). Literature on women’s movements in Latin America shows that ideological divisions between public and private spheres, and the association of women with the private—the realm of the maternal body, of (hetero) sexuality—have made it difficult to recognize women’s political participation.10 Women were traditionally not supposed to participate in politics (García 1999). To this day, women’s activism may be seen as suspect based on ideas about the proper space for women’s sexualized bodies. For example, Lucía, a piquetera, explained that her sometimes violent husband would try to prevent her political participation with the accusation that she goes “to marches to putear” (to be a puta, a prostitute; to be unfaithful). This perception conflates the female body’s incursion in political life with sexual deviance. Adriana Causa’s work on the unemployed workers movement suggests that deviant motherhood labels can also easily be attached to activist women in the movement. She narrates how during piquetes, annoyed drivers would shout insults to both piqueteros and piqueteras, but in the case of the women “the generalized expression was ‘go take care of your children, lazy [woman]’” (Causa 2008, 29). The activist body is not on the list of appropriate feminine traits, perhaps because an activist body is contradictory to the docile feminine body idealized in Argentina. Sometimes, idealized traits can be turned around and used strategically. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo drew on their feminine maternal bodies—bodies perceived as nonthreatening—to make claims to the state in ways that were not available to other activists, especially during a time in which political activities were banned and thus dangerous (Arditti 1999; Fisher 1993). Their bodies contradicted previous cultural ideas about how activists looked (mostly young,

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male), especially since state propaganda depicted activists as dangerous criminals (Basabe 2003; Feitlowitz 1998; Laudano 1998; Taylor 1997). This image of criminality did not match the sight of maternal bodies peacefully demonstrating in the plaza. Yet the military’s disparaging labels, such as las locas (the crazy women), still highlight the perception that the maternal body does not belong to the public sphere. Many other women in Argentina have engaged in multiple practices of embodied political resistance. They contradict gendered stereotypes by actively participating in mass mobilizations, taking on roles that require bodily strength and courage, and adopting rebellious demeanors in their protests, chants, and slogans. As Nora Cortiñas reminds us, this is part of a longer trajectory, as a sizable number of the people disappeared by the dictatorship were women. Many of them were activists involved in social change projects, some of them in armed organizations. Survivors’ testimonies highlight the bodily risks entailed in political activism during the dictatorship and the sexualized torture endured by the women disappeared. They also show how some of the contradictions activist women encountered were grounded in sexist constructions of the female body both by the military and within leftist groups (Actis et al. 2001; Ciollaro 1999; Diana 1996; García 1999; Oberti 2005). In contemporary Argentina, many women continue to be involved in political practices that require them to poner el cuerpo. Piqueteras resist with their bodies when, alongside men, they blockade roads demanding economic justice. Through their bodily presence in multiple street demonstrations, feminists and other activist women tirelessly remind the population that gender inequality is still a problem in Argentina. Women in neighborhood or community organizations—where they often play key roles—engage in a more subtle form of poner el cuerpo when they approach government authorities to demand food, medical supplies, contraceptives, and community spaces. Women’s active participation in neighborhood assemblies likely had something to do with specific forms of poner el cuerpo, such as the street banging of pots and pans (cacerolas)—objects associated with women’s domestic practices. Women workers from the Brukman factory physically withstood police repression and engaged in hunger strikes (i.e., poner el cuerpo) in order to recover their factory. Women from all walks of life also engage in poner el cuerpo when they perform the daily (embodied) work that keeps their social movements alive. Women’s bodily presence in street demonstrations during women’s movement strategic protests and other political events makes it more difficult to deny that politics is indeed a women’s place. For instance, during a 2002 march commemorating the popular uprising of December 2001, I watched women marching side by side with men and engaging in various kinds of bodily performances that both drew upon and disrupted normative femininity. Women wearing the vests of the piquetera/o movement, some of them with ample bodies, were in charge of the movement security, challenging perceptions of men as physically

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better suited to handle potentially dangerous situations. Other poor and working-class women marched with small children in their arms or in strollers or nursed their babies. While these actions may be seen as reinforcing appropriate maternal embodiment, at the same time they blur public-private divides and diversify images of activist bodies. Women marched in women’s-only groups and on the frontlines of mixed-gender groups, carrying organization flags and showing their status as leaders. A woman apparently belonging to a popular assembly stood on top of a street platform, with an Argentine flag in the background, and performed sexy moves with her pelvis. Although bringing her sexuality to political protest may be seen as only a reinforcement of oversexualized images of women, the combination of her plain-looking clothing, her average body (i.e., not looking like a supermodel, a beauty queen, or a showgirl), and the out-of-placeness of her bodily moves were potentially disruptive. Finally, two women from a leftist organization led not particularly feminine songs (i.e., laced with profanities) from the top of a truck and rallied the crowd with their microphones and hand movements. Clearly they were acting as enraged leaders, not passive bodies. These are just a few examples of women’s diverse embodied practices in many protests that occurred in Argentina during the crisis. Yet this participation is often obscured, for instance, in media that portray members of the piquetera/o movement as dangerous men with masks and sticks, that contact male leaders as social movement spokespeople, or that fail to appropriately cover major women’s protests. The role of women in different political actions is complex and cannot be neatly delineated as resisting or complying with prevailing gender norms. On one hand, physically occupying public spaces and speaking up are acts of transgression by women in a society that in many ways still relegates them to second-class citizenship and that still enforces stereotypes about the purpose of women’s bodies (e.g., procreation, sexual attractiveness). On the other hand, different activist women engage in different kinds of actions even within the same movement organization, and multiple versions of femininity may coexist in the same woman’s body. For instance, Rita, a petite, committed, and outspoken activist, was saving money to enlarge her breasts through cosmetic surgery. Rita belonged to a mixed-gender political organization with an incisive critique of neoliberalism and imperialism, and she was willing to put her body on the line during political protests. Rita can hardly be categorized as submissive. However, her cosmetic surgery plans are consistent with a culture that emphasizes large breasts as important to sexual attractiveness and real womanhood. In order to understand whether women’s embodied practices have a transgressive effect or not, it is important to examine the social context of activism. Women activists may draw on aspects of normative femininity that are important parts of their identities (e.g., maternal embodiment), but in certain political circumstances such images may contest dominant ideas. In a context in which the piquetero movement is depicted in the media as composed by dangerous and

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violent men, the sight of piqueteras marching with babies in strollers helps to create a more complex image both of the movement and of motherhood. Conversely, piqueteras who stand in the frontlines of the piquete, who cover their faces with bandanas and hold sticks, or who adopt security roles can also be disruptive to popular notions that reserve a place of vulnerability for women’s bodies and a place of strength and protector status to men’s bodies. Women’s political participation can also contribute to changing activist women’s perceptions of their own embodied power (Parkins 2000). For instance, sixty-two-year-old Violeta—a woman with a calm bodily demeanor— spoke of overcoming fear and deploying an increasingly assertive body through her repeated participation in protests, including actions to block busy streets: “One of my compañeras, told me afterward, that seeing me the way I am [petite], so tranquilita [calm] with my sign, with the cars driving by and I kept walking. She says, ‘It would have been worth it to videotape,’ and it was very funny. And I grabbed one of the girls’ signs, and I told her, ‘Lend this to me to block [the avenue],’ and I went to the front.” Violeta’s assertive body, despite her nonthreatening appearance, was effective, pleased her fellow protesters, and perhaps surprised bystanders. Her satisfaction hints to the empowering potential of embodied activism as a woman and as a valuable member of her movement. Similarly, Susana, a mid-aged worker also with a peaceful appearance, told the story of her newly discovered power while working in one of the factories that workers took over during the economic collapse. She explained how through her embodied struggle to keep the factory operating she learned things about herself she previously had not suspected. She narrated her close encounter with the police during an eviction attempt. When I asked her whether she physically confronted the police, she responded: Yes, not really, I kept getting closer, no? I was right up against . . . They [protesters] were pushing me, pushing me, and I was standing face to face with the police. And? So then I said, “Look, get out of here or they are going to kill you.” So then, I got one to leave, then another one, because in truth I . . . You mean, [you say that to] the police? [laughs] Right. I was stuck up against this door [points to where the police stood]. And were you ever like that, face to face with the police? No, no, no. And, what? In the moment of fervor, you don’t notice, and later. So that’s why I told you that if years ago someone had said that I would do something like that, I would have said “no.” Imagine! But it is our source of work that we are defending. If we go away from here, we would go home to “cry misery,” so we didn’t want that. That is the force that makes us [do it].

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Susana’s story starts up with some hesitation, mentioning that she was being pushed, and that she was stuck. Yet as the story unfolds she articulates and appropriates her embodied agency (even if backed up by other protesters) by explaining the reasons she engaged in embodied practices of resistance. Her account also underscores a sense of surprise about what she had done, suggesting that women’s embodied resistance in causes they care about may open unimagined possibilities about their bodily capacities and their ways of being. In her account of nineteenth-century suffragists’ struggles in England, Wendy Parkins argues that the example of women’s courageous and dissident practices, “which presented the suffragette body as a speaking, acting, resisting body—allowed other women to reconceptualize their own feminine bodily comportment as the basis of agency not passivity” (2000, 73). Although women’s conditions in Argentina today are very different from those of nineteenthcentury British women, it may also be argued that despite important gains in women’s rights, many gender inequalities in Argentina continue to be related to oppressive notions about women’s bodies and the material enforcement of normative femininity. Women’s activism may be empowering not only in the sense of achieving specific political demands (e.g., shelters for battered women, legalization of abortion, redistribution of wealth, greater representation in government), but also as living, embodied examples that women can do much more than contemporary stereotypes and arrangements suggest. Yet without a framework that inscribes women’s current activism in a larger perspective and that resignifies the meaning of womanhood, women who are discovering their own embodied power may have a hard time identifying it as a woman’s attribute. Women’s activism and courage may be interpreted as manly instead. Diana, a seasoned activist in the feminist, human rights, and labor movements, makes this point by unearthing the history of female activists who can serve as points of reference for the new activists: “Many piqueteras said, ‘We fight like men.’ I would then say, ‘You don’t fight like men, you fight like the women from the tenements of 1907; you fight like the [women] anarchists at the end of the century; you fight like the nurses and telephone workers in 1952. There’s a long string of your grandmothers who fought, and nobody remembered to tell the story.’” The piqueteras’ expression “we fight like men” is an empowered statement in the sense that it claims women’s embodied ability to do things that were thought to be exclusively men’s. However, Diana’s point is that these women do not need to identify their behavior as masculine; they can claim resisting versions of feminine embodiment for women as a group and can gain strength and inspiration from the rich history of women’s activism. Women’s massive presence in social movements can help recover that activist history. According to Diana, “the best thing about being a woman today is women’s political participation as protagonists, which [she’s] sure revolutionizes more than the streets.” Women’s activist poner el cuerpo did not go

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unnoticed—from their actual presence in different public venues to the issues that society now has to address because of women’s voices. In my interviews, both activist and nonactivist women expressed their awareness of, or put their hopes on, women’s active roles in social change. They talked about women being “in struggle,” “marching forward,” having “a lot of garra” (strength), “leading the people,” “pushing, growing, and claiming their space,” and sustaining the movements that bring “hope, resistance, and protest.”

Conclusion This chapter explored the relationship between women’s embodiment and political resistance in Argentina. The intensification of political protest and the feminization of resistance triggered by the crisis offered an extraordinary opportunity to hear women’s stories about the role of their bodies in relation to activism. Bodies need to be taken into account in order to understand political resistance: activist bodies are the vehicles of political protest; they express needs rooted in the body’s materiality, can be deployed as symbols, are the sites of emotions entwined with political action, and convey power when joined with other bodies. By exploring the meanings of women’s political poner el cuerpo in Argentina, I offered a view of how women’s bodies are involved both in broad social changes and in the creation of alternative notions of womanhood. Women’s references to poner el cuerpo show their active awareness of how their bodies operate not only as the carriers of oppressive mandates but also as a liberatory force. Many women have undergone significant transformations in the context of social turmoil, but these shifts do not mean that contradictions instantly disappear. While crises may accelerate social change, many ingrained (gendered) practices still persist. Hegemonic and alternative modes of femininity may coexist in the same body, may be embraced or rejected by different women in the same movement, or may take on distinct meanings depending on the social milieu and organization. Dominant ideologies and material social arrangements in Argentina impose a number of constraints on women’s embodied actions and possibilities. Yet these limitations are neither absolute nor insurmountable. To the brand of poner el cuerpo that gender ideologies demand of women—for example, that they sacrifice their bodies in support of sexist norms or unfair economic arrangements— many women have been responding with different kinds of poner el cuerpo that mean resistance and transformation. In a culture that requires that women offer their bodies as reproductive machines, sexual objects, or commodities, many women in Argentina have shown their capacity to poner el cuerpo in empowering ways (see ATEM 2005). Women’s embodied resistance not only contributed to their own survival and sense of power. As Elina Matoso argues in reference to broader social projects

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and protests, women’s resistance also helps to rebuild the social body: “The body of resistance constructs a social body with a new, mended, sewed up skin. The neighborhood assemblies, the concrete protests, the cacerolazos, [and] the solidarity networks, repair the skin and in that way fortify and give time for the skin to regenerate” (2003, 24). As life in Argentina deteriorated because of economic problems, women’s bodies came to the fore as workers, mothers, volunteers, professionals, activists, community organizers, and in many other capacities. They appeared not only in the form of suffering bodies but also as bodies of resistance and renewal.

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z Conclusion embodiment, glocalities, and resistance

Based primarily on women’s experiential narratives, this book suggests that social policy, economic systems, cultural ideologies, and political resistance are also fleshly matters, and that in order to create more equitable, just, and humane societies, we need to take into account the bodily worlds of marginalized populations. Leading transnational feminist theorist Chandra Mohanty (2003b, 231) argues that an “experiential and analytic anchor in the lives of marginalized communities of women provides the most inclusive paradigm for thinking about social justice” in the age of globalization. In this work, I situated the excluded bodies of women in a Global South country, Argentina, at the center of the analysis. While Argentina has traditionally been relatively affluent compared to other countries in the South, it is still a peripheral nation in the world order and a paradigmatic case of rapid impoverishment associated with neoliberal economic policies. The bodily worlds of women in Argentina, especially the most marginalized, are thus not only important in their own right; they also offer a productive entry point for understanding a host of social relations with global ramifications. As this volume shows, a focus on the varied, distinct, and overlapping embodied experiences of different groups of women in Argentina tell us much about the workings of converging flows of power, including those based on class, gender, race-ethnicity, sexuality, and nation in a globally unequal world. Women’s narratives yielded significant insights on five substantive fields of power inequality that shaped their embodied experiences. Their stories exposed the scars of a globalized neoliberal economic model that treats the bodies of increasing numbers of people as disposable. They also revealed how cultural scripts of femininity and beauty, grounded in a racialized and classed transnational imaginary, inscribe the bodies of diverse women in Argentina. In the field of reproductive politics, women’s experiences with clandestine, illegal, and unsafe abortions show how the social enforcement of motherhood through the 191

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criminalization of abortion undermines women’s bodily self-determination and integrity. Accounts about interpersonal gendered violence were common among the women in this study, highlighting connections between seemingly private events and more overtly political, economic, and social forms of violence. Finally, the context of heightened political protest, and particularly the practices of activist women, helped to illuminate the embodied character of political activism and how different women in Argentina have turned their bodies into sources and vehicles of resistance. The growing field of body studies includes a great deal of feminist literature on key aspects of women’s embodiment in Europe and the United States. What theoretical and empirical insights does a focus on women’s embodiment in Latin American contexts yield? Animated by multidisciplinary feminist theories and by critical perspectives in sociology, I intended to address this question by focusing on the case of Argentina at a historical moment of profound social upheaval. Through the lens of multiple female bodies, this volume explores significant aspects of exclusion and resistance in Argentina at the same time that it extends feminist scholarship on women’s embodied experiences. In the following sections, I first chart the conceptual trajectories that marked my study of women’s bodily worlds, underscoring the importance of politically embedded academic analyses. Then I highlight three substantive directions for scholarly inquiry based on the lessons from this study: the need to situate women’s studies scholarship on the body in the context of glocal political developments; the need to generate more embodied analyses of the economy, including those of neoliberal globalization; and the need to pay greater attention to the bodily dimensions of political resistance.

Studying Women’s Bodily Worlds: Conceptual Trajectories By drawing on intersectional and transnational feminist frameworks, this volume encourages reflection on the specific inequality configurations that occur in Latin America as lived through the body. This is a region in which the contours of embodied class locations are often defined in interaction with neocolonial capitalist processes (e.g., through the effects of structural adjustment or free trade agreements); where state terrorist regimes have tortured dissident bodies making use of cultural repertoires of contempt toward gendered, sexual, and ethnoracial Others; or where the racialization of gendered and classed bodies has been obscured by dominant narratives of mestizaje (e.g., Mexico), racial democracy (e.g., Brazil), or whitened notions of ethnic mixing (e.g., Argentina). As I examined women’s bodily worlds in Argentina, I was interested in tracing the patterns that systems of power formed as they shaped one another. For example, the criminalization of abortion—which may be conceptualized as a form of patriarchal control over women’s bodies—has always had an unequal

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effect on women of different social classes. At the same time, class is racialized, so access to expensive and safe abortion is also implicitly mediated by ethnoracial issues (but the latter is almost never articulated). The fact that poor/brown female bodies are particularly likely to be injured or killed by dangerous abortion procedures exposes the criminalization of abortion as a form of classist, racist, and patriarchal disciplining of the body. Different groups of women experience similar bodily issues in diverse ways, depending on their location in a “matrix of domination” that has specific characteristics in Argentina (Collins 2000, 18). Furthermore, I was attentive to the configurations of domination that emerged through the interaction between the neoliberal crisis and preexisting processes. Thus, continuing with the example of abortion, while its practice was illegal before the crisis, widespread impoverishment in the context of neoliberal restructuring was likely to increase the risks of unsafe abortions for women with diminished economic resources. The intersection of patriarchal law and neoliberal economics made poor women more vulnerable to risky abortions, further magnifying intersecting inequalities. Likewise, domestic and intimate partner violence, which certainly was occurring well before the crisis, acquired particular dimensions in the context of the neoliberal economic collapse. As unemployment shook traditional gender norms and women gained more visibility in the public sphere (e.g., in the labor market and in social movements), conflicts at home flared up, compounding the risks of domestic violence. The dire economic situation also affected the ability of individual women to deal with that type of violence, but also created opportunities for women in various social movements to address the problem collectively. By tuning in to the political events that were unfolding in Argentina, this book also suggests the usefulness of connecting theoretical frameworks developed in the academy with perspectives and experiences expressed on the ground. In this vein, I aimed to provide a politically embedded account of women’s embodied experiences. The particular social, economic, and political climate that surrounded this research prompted me to explore topics that do not figure as a high priority in the body studies literature, such as the manner in which economic policies shape women’s embodiment or the significance of women’s activist bodies as vehicles of political protest. Had I overlooked this context (which would have been hard to do, anyway), my description of women’s bodily experiences in Argentina would have looked very different. Attention to ongoing political developments helped me to build on well-established feminist concerns—for example, cultural beauty standards—by showing how the politics of women’s bodily appearance in Argentina is marked not only by the influence of racialized Western ideals and heteronormative gender expectations, but also by economic conditions in the age of globalization. That is, a politically embedded approach can help to shed light on the context-bound, intersectional workings of power as well as on the extralocal dimensions of corporeality foregrounded by transnational and intersectional feminist frameworks.

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Connecting theory and politics also influenced aspects of my research methods—for example, the incorporation of insights from my participation in the women’s movement. While I had decided to do ethnographic observations about everyday life in Argentina before my research started, as soon as I arrived in Argentina I was swept by a wind of political upheaval and activism in which women’s participation was vital. My research agenda and political convictions blended, bolstering one another. I wanted to be part of the change and not just watch events from the sidelines. At the same time, I never removed my sociological lens. It was in the context of this political milieu that I realized that I had to pay special attention to the experiences and voices of activist women (I was already in the field when I decided that I would form half of the sample of individual interviewees with activists). Through my involvement in the movement, I became especially receptive to thinking about women’s bodies not only as recipients of oppressive forces but as agents actively transforming the world, too. I aimed to explore how a political approach and academic inquiry grounded on the body (the abused, exploited, malnourished, vanished, resisting, combative, resilient body) can be valuable to analyze urgent social problems and to envision alternatives to oppressive social systems. Now, from a theoretical standpoint, a question that emerges from this approach is how do we analyze the bodily groundings of women’s lives and consciousness while also avoiding essentialism (Davis 2007; Witz 2000)?1 Instead of looking at women’s bodies as a way of universalizing similarity, I considered women’s bodies as sites through which women experience both differences and similarities, as dynamic entities that contain, express, and resist social relations. In conceptualizing women’s bodily experiences, I took women’s own narratives and interpretations as departing points. Mindful of Kathy Davis’s (2007, 130) critique of much feminist theorizing on the body—which presents the female body mostly as a “‘cultural text’ . . . , as an assemblage of ‘performances’ . . . and, as ‘imaginary’”—I tried to account for the vulnerability of women’s material bodies (e.g., as targets of interpersonal and structural violence); women’s “more than ‘skin deep’” experiences (e.g., clandestine abortions, illnesses, embodied pain); performative dimensions and resistive capacities (e.g., bodies in protest, enactments of femininity); cultural inscriptions (e.g., as evidenced in beauty rituals); economic dimensions (e.g., the bodily scars of neoliberalism); women’s agency, resourcefulness, and resilience (e.g., survival strategies, embodied solidarity); commonalities and diversity (e.g., by social location); rational and emotional facets (e.g., in the ways they experienced their bodies); and deep political significance (as sites of oppression and vehicles for social change). This volume contributes to a politics of visibility that presents women’s bodies in ways that are different from dominant social portrayals. Argentina has a long history of the invisibility of certain bodies: the bodies of the disappeared by the dictatorship, the bodies of people of color erased from Argentina’s collective consciousness, the bodies of disabled people whose special needs or

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existence are usually not recognized, the bodies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people who are rarely acknowledged or portrayed in positive terms, and the bodies of the poor who are overlooked by neoliberal economic policies. Women in general have been both visible and invisible. On one hand, certain women’s bodies have been hypervisible in sexualized media representations or as props to sell all kinds of products (i.e., visible as objects). On the other hand, women have often been invisible in terms of their own needs, desires, and capacities (i.e., invisible as subjects). Women have been fighting to have their embodied existence recognized on their own terms. One of the guiding threads of this volume has been to make visible the bodies and embodied experiences of women in much of their complexity and diversity.

Living in Glocal Worlds/Bodies Transnational feminist scholarship and activism urges us to understand women’s experiences in glocal perspective. Critical development scholar Yvonne Underhill-Sem (2002, 54) further encourages us to examine “bodies in places, and places in bodies.” This approach requires looking at the interaction between local and transborder social forces that shape and are shaped by human bodies. In that sense, bodies are simultaneously local and global entities. I have analyzed women’s bodily experiences in Argentina with these ideas in mind. In so doing, I highlighted country specific events with implications and commonalities beyond its borders, such as the legacy of a brutal military dictatorship with transnational ties in the seventies and early eighties and a severe economic crisis at the turn of the twentieth century in a democracy marked by the aegis of global neoliberalist expansion. These threads run throughout the chapters in the book, not only because such events branded the Argentine social body in significant ways, but also because their imprint was painfully borne by the individual bodies of many women in Argentina. These kinds of connections reveal how glocal processes are imbricated into human bodies. Analyzing them can help us to extend classic concerns in feminist scholarship, including that produced in affluent nations, which has often elided the voices and experiences from the Global South (Ciriza 2009). For instance, perhaps it is not immediately apparent that the failure of economic policies dictated by powerful international institutions in agreement with elites in the Global South can affect local constructions of embodied femininity. Yet this volume shows how such an adverse economic climate can influence women’s ability and/or desire to perform proper femininity (including beauty rituals) and how moments of crisis may open opportunities for resisting and even combative feminine embodiments. The interplay between local and global levels in the construction of feminine bodies has historical salience in Argentina as a nation whose leaders projected the country almost as a European transplant in Latin America. Nowadays, the high value attached to a white European physical appearance is influenced both

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by the contemporary glorification of Western beauty by local and foreign media and fashion and by an older nation-building history. As described in previous chapters, the nationhood plan of Argentina’s elites involved not only the conscious embrace of Western European culture, but also the adoption of practices that symbolically distanced the nation from the rest of Latin America. This process of distancing played most vividly and concretely on the bodies of “inassimilable” populations (e.g., indigenous, Afro descendents), subjected to discursive and material practices of erasure, including violent actions and more subtle forms of exclusion. For instance, among these more subtle mechanisms have been high-profile events (e.g., beauty pageants) that contribute to defining the nation through the glorification of Western feminine beauty and allegoric representations that exclude Argentina’s indigenous heritage (Belej, Martin, and Silveira 2005). These events illustrate the transnational dimensions of (barely recognized) local racist dynamics and their intersections with gender.2 As carriers of culture and physical procreators of future citizens (Yuval-Davis 1997), women in Argentina, as in other places, bear a particular burden to be suitable representatives of the Argentine nation. While normative femininity ideologies exalt Western European body ideals, these values are “not simply a template mapped onto the country but undergo a translation in their passage to the South American context” (Gunew 2001, 169).3 An aspect of how those cultural expectations get translated have to do with the fact that Argentina has grand dreams, but exhibits a troubling history of political violence and failed economic policies. The notion of Argentine women as the most beautiful in the world is culturally significant and integral to a repertoire of nationalistic themes (a list of things Argentines are allegedly best at) in the face of the country’s actual precarious position in the global system. The phrase “best meat” is sometimes used interchangeably to refer either to Argentine beef or Argentine women, with both expected to be export-quality products. The theme of feminine beauty is intertwined with a number of local and transnational developments in Argentina. In the mid-twentieth century, when the country was developing its productive forces and had an ascendant working class, official pageants for female workers packaged women’s beauty as an integral aspect of Peronist declared goals: dignified work, economic prosperity, and social justice (Lobato 2005b). During the military dictatorship in the 1970s, proper feminine body ideals played a perverse role as part of the torture and “recuperation” of the women held in clandestine detention centers. In the 1980s, the growing commercial media display of women’s sexuality, as an expression of the destape, came to be associated by some with democratic openness. In the neoliberal 1990s, the cult of supermodels, cosmetic surgery, and conspicuous consumption was related to the market-based prosperity the economic restructuring was supposed to bring. In the context of the 2001 economic crisis, normative femininity became especially difficult to achieve, yet it was still important as a condition to access dwindling jobs and other social goods. Social pressures to

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maintain these standards, often conveyed through the media, served to disguise the catastrophic effects of the crisis and implicitly encouraged women to symbolically soothe the nation by putting a good face to bad weather. Women’s movement organizations have tried to raise awareness of the damaging effects of imported Western beauty mandates—for example, by placing Barbie dolls at the center of a 2009 International Women’s Day protest in La Plata, Buenos Aires. Feminist activists encouraged women to bring their “Barbie o simil Tercer Mundista” (Barbie or Third World likeness) to the event to symbolically burn all oppressions (see Malas como las Arañas and Comisión de Género 2009).4 Glocal developments are also reflected in the area of reproductive politics. During years characterized by an international, U.S.-led war on terror in the wake of September 11, 2001, a more quiet “other war” gained strength through policies that directly threatened Global Southern women’s bodily freedom and integrity (International Women’s Health Coalition 2008). The administration of former U.S. president George W. Bush reinstated the global gag rule, with grave implications for women’s reproductive rights around the world. This policy (repealed early in 2009 by the administration of Barack Obama) prevented foreign nongovernmental organizations funded by USAID or by the U.S. Department of State from offering abortion services or informing women about legal abortion options in their countries. Even though in Argentina the criminalization of abortion stood in the way of openly offering most such services in the first place, one could expect that a U.S.-dominated global political environment adverse to women’s reproductive rights was not inconsequential either. According to Brazil-based activist and researcher Sonia Corrêa, “any negotiations conducted with the Bush administration, for example the agreements on trade and resources for development, could hide an ultra-conservative element on abortion and sexuality. Government representatives who go to Washington, or negotiate with Bush emissaries, are bound to hear the following sentence: ‘We will offer resources to fight poverty in your country, if you commit to maintaining the illegality of abortion and promoting sexual abstinence’” (Corrêa 2004, 2). In that type of climate one could easily imagine governments with crumbling economies, such as 2001 Argentina, using economic priorities as an excuse to trample on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. However, the case of Argentina offers an important lesson on how local responses to economic crises with global linkages can set a different path. The widespread social mobilization that followed the Argentine economic collapse in 2001 facilitated renewed women’s activism for the expansion of women’s bodily rights, culminating with a national law in 2002 that required, among other things, state allocation of resources to guarantee a variety of services related to sexual and reproductive health. Even though feminist groups had been pushing this agenda for decades, it was in the context of widespread popular rebellion and generalized demand for broad institutional changes that the claims behind the law gained strength. The devastating effects of the neoliberal crisis could have sent women’s issues to

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the back burner, as happens time and again in many places, yet it was in a dire economic context that it became particularly important to articulate such demands as matters of social justice. And it was under conditions of intense social movement activism demanding “que se vayan todos” (“they must all go”— referring to politicians) that it would become especially difficult for elected officials to completely disregard women’s voices. With the upsurge of activism after December 2001, the demand for the decriminalization of abortion also received increasing support. On May 28, 2005, the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, activists in Argentina launched a national campaign for abortion rights, which gained adherence from a wide range of organizations and individuals.5 While the specific Argentine milieu enabled certain kinds of connections between broad social claims and women’s abortion rights, this approach also seems relevant not only to other Latin American countries where abortion is banned, but also to countries like the United States, where abortion rights are legally recognized but often targeted by right-wing efforts to roll them back. Argentine women’s demands for access to abortion that is “legal, safe, and gratuito” (free of charge) suggests the recognition that legalization alone does not guarantee universal access and that reproductive rights might be more fruitfully addressed as a social justice issue rather than only as an individual choice. Consequently, the campaign has been framing this demand as a matter of human rights. Also important to understand these changes is a history of international commitments adopted by the Argentine state (e.g., the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women [CEDAW]) and dialectically related to feminist mobilization, which helped local activists to advance a framework of women’s bodily rights. According to Petchesky (2005, 303), conferences such as the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICDP) in 1994, and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 contributed to form an international arena with “a new human rights discourse around the body and its needs for security, health, and pleasure.” In Argentina, feminist and women’s organizations active at the national and transnational levels have drawn on these experiences and used the language of documents produced in international forums to raise social awareness and demand changes in the ways the state approaches sexual and reproductive rights and violence against women. Furthermore, pressures for the government to further commit at the international level in defense of women’s rights has been one dimension of women’s local activism. As the cases of groups such as Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have shown since their inception, the ability to access international echelons is crucial when national governments are repressive, indifferent, complicit, or not operant. Even though many of the bodily issues raised by the women’s movement in Argentina are related to local events, movement organizations’ strategies as well

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as the content of political protest are calibrated to transnational realms in several ways: by raising awareness of how transborder forces affect women’s lives (e.g., the Vatican’s influence on local political decisions related to sexuality and procreation, the incidence of international financial institutions in local impoverishment); by pushing the national government to abide by international instruments that protect women’s lives (e.g., one of the latest victories in that regard was the ratification of the Optional Protocol of CEDAW in 2007); by forming networks of solidarity with women from other countries through informal encounters or formal organizations like the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM); and by symbolically connecting with women around the world through intensified activism on dates in which women from various regions rally simultaneously around similar themes—like March 8, International Women’s Day; September 28, Day for the Legalization/Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean; and November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Some of the experiences narrated in this book that link multiple forms of embodied violence—economic, state, cultural, and interpersonal—find echo in international activist dates such as November 25, which has strong resonance in Argentina. The observation of this date, which originated in Latin America in 1981, generates widespread women’s activism across the country, such as marches, petitions, escraches, performances, workshops, and other public events. From its inception, November 25 has symbolically evoked the importance of understanding violence against women in connection to other forms of violence, including state terrorism. At the first Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro, participants chose November 25 to commemorate the day of the brutal murder of three political activists, the Mirabal sisters (Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa—known as “the Butterflies”) by the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1960. Following the feminist lead, in 1999 the United Nations general assembly adopted this date in order to promote international awareness about the problem of violence against women. The annual Sixteen Days of Activism against gender violence, which originated from the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in the United States in 1991, has extended the period of heightened attention to that problem. This initiative, which ties November 25 with December 10 (Human Rights Day), brings to the forefront the global women’s movement rallying cry that women’s rights are human rights. It also helps to expose the “multisided” (Menjívar 2008, 131) forms of violence that converge in diverse women’s lives. Activists from different countries have used this template not only to express solidarity with other women in the world, but also to bring attention to local problems and to the ways in which localized gender violence plays out in relation to more global trends. Although not nearly as widespread as the commemoration of November 25 itself, some women’s organizations in Argentina have adopted the

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Sixteen Days campaign, and through visual and performative strategies they have highlighted how women’s bodies are central targets of many forms of social and interpersonal aggression. As part of the Sixteen Days of Activism campaign in Argentina in 2008, activist women in the province of Córdoba hung large posters from bridges depicting silhouettes of women’s bodies, accompanied by captions such as “Abortion’s illegality kills more than one woman per day” and “The route of soy is the route of trafficking. They are disappearing them [women and girls] so that they will be your putas [bitches, prostitutes].” The first caption implicitly denounces how structural economic inequalities in conjunction with the institutionalized violence of a patriarchal legal system produce the dead bodies of women in clandestine abortions. The second caption refers to two hot-button issues that have received growing public attention in the past few years: the proliferation of soy production for export and the trafficking of women and girls.6 The sign evokes the collusion between patriarchy and the violence of transnational circuits in the age of globalization. It suggests a linkage between the social vulnerability created by a capitalist model that encourages massive production/exports of mono cash crops and human trafficking networks that draw their victims from women marginalized and displaced by neoliberal economic processes. The allusion to disappearance in the text is particularly thick with meaning in a country with a still throbbing history of state terrorism. Activists who have organized against the trafficking of women and girls have poignantly called them the “desaparecidas en democracia” (disappeared in democracy) (Carbajal 2007). From women murdered in democracy using techniques similar to those applied to the people disappeared by the dictatorship, to women who speak of domestic violence in ways that evoke the experience of state terrorism, to women who are disappeared in democracy by trafficking networks, we can see the fluidity of gendered violence in Argentina and how discourses and practices of terror are deployed across seemingly unrelated sites and by a multiplicity of private and state actors operating nationally and transnationally. At the same time, activist women’s presence in the streets, in protest, in defiance, and gaining strength through collective organizing with other women reveal female bodies that cannot simply be categorized as victims of violence but as courageous bodies actively striving to change their conditions.

Bodies in Crisis: Embodying Neoliberal Economics In this book I have argued for an analysis of neoliberal globalization that takes account of human bodies, especially women’s fleshly experiences. Building on Saskia Sassen’s (2000, 503) observations about the feminization of “cross-border circuits” that help sustain the global economy, I would like to underscore the corporeal dimensions of these processes. For it is on women’s bodies—their

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sexuality, physical labor, reproductive capacities, skills, and sacrifice—that much of the globalizing economic apparatus has been set up. Examples of the centrality of women’s bodies for transnational economic trends abound, including multinational corporations’ depletion and control of Third World women’s bodies through sweatshop labor; sexual tourism and trafficking targeting economically vulnerable women; migrant women’s physical work caring for the children and cleaning the households of people in rich countries; the rape of female bodies in wars fueled by transnational capitalist resource extraction; the embodied survival strategies of “structurally adjusted” women; sexual violence against women in national borders open to capital but closed to people; images of beauty that travel around the world fostering the exoticization, devaluation, and commodification of various kinds of female bodies; global cosmetic surgery niches in peripheral countries where women from wealthier areas can modify their appearance at bargain prices; fertility industries that now facilitate the renting of wombs of Global South women by affluent families in the North; and the alleged solutions for global poverty and environmental degradation that have historically relied on campaigns to sterilize poor women in developing countries. The list goes on. In our celebrated interconnected world of boundless cultural exchange and free trade, women’s bodies become natural resources, export products, smuggled goods, cheap commodities, and repositories of violence. In Argentina, the catastrophic results of economic globalization were made flesh in the experiences of ordinary people far removed from the international centers of power that promoted neoliberal doctrines. The specific manner in which women’s bodies lived through the crisis was closely related to their social locations in a political economy characterized by long-standing class, racial, and gender inequalities, which are also permeated by other forms of power differentials. In an economic environment that forced large sectors of the population to stretch themselves to their limits, the bodies of the most marginalized women were especially depleted as they resorted to multiple survival strategies in the face of rising unemployment, underemployment, impoverishment, and cuts in public expenditures. In a political economy of unequally enforced austerity (code for neoliberal reforms), many women quite literally embodied sacrifice, not only because of the structural constraints imposed by the economic model, but also in line with prevailing gender expectations in Argentina and other parts of Latin America. The crisis had a disciplining effect on the social body, particularly on women’s bodies. Women mentioned the gendered ways in which worsening social conditions undermined food intake, work experiences, health care, and even seemingly superfluous practices such as beauty rituals. While women are socially expected to take care of the bodily needs of others—for example, within the family or in the context of feminized jobs—their own bodies are likely to take a back seat, especially in situations of growing economic insecurity. Structural

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economic violence also combined with various forms of patriarchal bodily control, as some men resorted to physical violence to impede women’s community organizing and activism. In talking about the crisis, a number of women in this study revealed experiences of social suffering that tied body and emotions and inundated all areas of life. Some women reported physical fatigue, somatic stress, and embodied pain in relation to their own declining economic conditions and at the sight of the visible difficulties and dire needs experienced by more and more people (e.g., as reflected by the proliferation of scavengers, beggars, and sick and malnourished children). The events described here have significance beyond Argentina, for attention to the bodily implications of the Argentine crisis can offer useful tools to address the effects of related or parallel phenomena in other sites. As the first decade of the twenty-first century ends, the world is witnessing the unraveling of a global economic crisis that has starkly exposed the limitations and vulnerabilities of the capitalist model—a system inherently driven by the maximization of profits and not by human needs. Economic and political commentators often locate the epicenter of this crisis in the insufficient regulation of the U.S. financial sector and the concomitant irresponsible investment and risky lending by banks, mortgage companies, and other financial operators (particularly with respect to the spread of subprime loans in the midst of a housing market bubble). As widely reported in the media, when large numbers of mortgage holders defaulted their loans after the housing boom ended, the negative effects of this trend were felt in the wider financial and credit system and on the rest of the economy more generally. According to Foster and Magdoff (2009), however, these outcomes are symptoms of deeper contradictions within the capitalist system, including the real economy’s tendency toward stagnation and the consequent capitalist quest for profits in the financial system. By 2008 the United States plunged into a severe recession and financial crisis that, given the economy’s transnational ties, threatened to destabilize economies worldwide. Unlike economic crises like the Argentine one in 2001, this global crisis could not just be voyeuristically watched from the sidelines of more privileged countries. This time the crisis came right to the doorsteps of powerful nations, spiraling from their own financial institutions and flawed economic policies. This crisis throws into sharp relief the relationship between disembodied bundled assets/capital flows and real, embodied human beings. In the United States, the crumbling economy has not only undermined Wall Street fortunes, but, as in the case of Argentina’s 2001 crisis, it has harshly hit ordinary citizens. People have lost their homes in the face of massive foreclosures, rising numbers of workers have been declared expendable by companies intent on cutting costs, and there has been reduced access to good nutrition and health care for impoverished families struggling to make ends meet. Furthermore, many of these people have been harmed by the United States’ own implementation of neoliberal policies, as exemplified by the draconian reform of the welfare system in the

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mid-1990s (Mink 1999; Morgen and Gonzales 2008). Political analysts have already pointed out how the economic downturn is likely to exacerbate structural inequalities in U.S. society: Women in the U.S. are playing with the economic deck stacked against them. Taking into account longstanding pay inequities, insidious barriers to employment, record levels of inflation and ever-increasing childcare expenses, women and their families are struggling to keep up and get by. For women who confront the additional barriers of race and class, the obstacles are much greater and the economic straits even worse. (Gould 2008)

While a large proportion of the jobs being lost in this crisis are male-dominated, as Gould (2008) notes, there are important reasons why single mothers, lowincome women, and women of color are at particular risk. Women and their children are disproportionately represented among the poor, which means fewer resources to weather a worsening economy. Significantly for this economic crisis, women of color have been the most likely targets of questionable lending practices. One of the studies cited by Gould explains, “Women are more likely to receive subprime mortgages than men [and] African American and Latino women have the highest rates of subprime lending” (Fishbein and Woodall 2006, 1). As serious as the consequences of this economic turmoil are in the United States, various national and international institutions have also voiced alarm about the global repercussions of this crisis, pointing out the great vulnerability of some forty countries to the ravages of growing poverty. The World Bank (2009, 1) warned that “the spreading global economic crisis is trapping up to 53 million more people in poverty in developing countries and, with child mortality rates set to soar, poses a serious threat to achieving internationally agreed targets to overcome poverty.” Advisors to U.S. president Barack Obama have also identified the global economic crisis as a top security concern. They suggested that mounting economic problems can easily lead to political instability, social turmoil, and violence in the affected areas, threats that may backfire against the United States (Gjelten 2009). In Argentina, after a few years of economic growth, reduction of poverty and unemployment, and a relative degree of stability under the administration of former president Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007), the political and economic outlook was not good as of early 2009. The national government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—already troubled by a damaging confrontation with the agro sector around export taxes, charges of mismeasurement of key economic indicators, and a dropping approval rate—tried to get ready for the aftershocks of the U.S. financial meltdown and a weakening of commodity prices that had bolstered state revenues during the previous years of economic recovery. Among the actions the government adopted, purportedly to shield the population from the global financial crisis, was the nationalization of pension funds privatized

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during the 1990s.7 Fernández de Kirchner’s government also moved to transfer other key sectors of the economy to state control and away from the hands of multinational companies. At times in which governments develop measures to contain financial turmoil and activate the economy, attending to the embodied dimensions of the crisis becomes ever more necessary. While much of the emphasis in this crisis has been on saving banks and other financial entities, bringing macroeconomic policies to the ground, to the place where these policies are most intimately felt is critical. Such an analysis should start by looking at the interaction between economic structures and the embodied needs and experiences of the most vulnerable members of the population—those who do not have much besides their own bodies to count on and who need their bodies to function in order to sustain others. For people who have no bank accounts, no retirement or college funds, no jobs, no homes, no property, no accumulated wealth, and low or null income, an economic crisis does more than undermine their standards of living or sense of security. An economic crisis can directly threaten the most basic fabric of human existence: the body. In the absence of adequate safety nets and social support, the body becomes the frontline, the first and last defense against adverse economic conditions. Social safeguards need to be put in place so that these bodies do not become commodities that can be cheaply sold or resources that can be readily exhausted. This book supports the notion that neoliberal globalization is a fleshly matter as well as a feminist issue.8 Women’s bodies are central to such global economic processes. Women become “economic/al bodies” as they subsidize a system that renders their bodies valueless and relies on their invisible embodied labor and bodily resources. The human costs of many neoliberal market reforms have been intensely somatic, as well as emotional and psychological. The bodies in crisis produced through misguided neoliberal programs are collateral damage that should be prevented, counted, and redressed.

Bodies of Resistance Women in this study told stories about embodied social suffering, but they also exhibited their capacity to survive, resist, and thrive through individual and collective action. Many of the bodies in crisis I encountered through this research were also bodies of resistance. As in the case of embodied pain, political agency also happens through (emerges from) the body. I have described how activists in Argentina use the phrase poner el cuerpo to express that bodies are relevant to political contestation. Poner el cuerpo in counterhegemonic projects includes actions such as giving the body’s resources in support of the daily work of activism, putting the body into play to deliver a political message, and putting the body on the line in risky protest situations. In all cases, it implies placing the body where one’s words are. As a practice of resistance, poner el cuerpo is about

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being fully involved—incorporating activists’ rational bodies, emotional bodies, and even sensual bodies. Poner el cuerpo, then, is about making a statement— with the body—about where one’s political convictions lie and how much one is willing to do in support of a political project. Significantly, poner el cuerpo in political resistance can have effects beyond the immediate demands activists make in protest. As in other social practices, activist engagement itself entails embodied actions and dispositions that may contribute to changing how the body, and life in general, is experienced by activists. Through their many ways of poner el cuerpo, women in Argentina drew on, negotiated, and contested hegemonic modes of feminine embodiment. By engaging in various resistance actions, different women created embodied selves that had the potential to challenge or redefine hegemonic scripts about what it means to be a woman. Through their embodied political protest— performing street theater and music, bringing their babies to protests, demonstrating bare-breasted, physically confronting police, adopting masculine security roles in marches, blockading roads with their bodies, and silently occupying the public space—many women not only defied broad social systems but also modified their own embodied subjectivities and existence. Social movement scholars have analyzed the factors that influence protest tactics, including the level of collective organization of activists, the ideology and cultural meanings attached to activism, the amount of power and resources available to activists, and the character of political opportunities.9 In much of the social movement literature, however, the activist body is treated as a given and is thus not sufficiently addressed as a significant aspect of movement dynamics. Scholarship on social movements that pays attention to the important role of emotions (e.g., Flam and King 2005; Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001a) brings us closer to the “activist body.” For emotions are not only socially constructed and shaped by specific cultural milieus; they are also experiences grounded in the body and performed through the body in movement events. This is significant because—aside from more physically detached tactics such as cyberactivism, letter writing, or petition signing—a multitude of protest tactics are characterized by their sheer physicality. In such cases, activists make a very direct use of their bodies to convey political ideas, evoke emotions in the public and among movement members, and exert tangible challenges to the social structure—for example, relying on their bodies to block access to government buildings or corporate premises (De Lucca 1999; Eyerman 2005; Peterson 2001). Furthermore, particular bodily techniques can produce rifts or foster “affective solidarity” among participants (Juris 2008, 65), deepen or discourage commitment to a cause, elicit varied reactions from the wider public, strengthen “a sense of personal agency” (Foster 2003, 412), and ultimately transform individual movement participants themselves.10 Among the factors that shape the realm of the possible or desirable in terms of movement tactics, as well as the actual contours of protest practices, are the meanings ascribed to and the

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materiality of different kinds of activist bodies. Even when tactics are similar, they may convey distinct meanings and have different effects according to who is enacting them. Taylor and Van Dyke illustrate this point when they contrast the protest by women peace activists in West Marin, California, who spelled out the word peace with their naked bodies in the face of the looming U.S. invasion of Iraq and the previous protest by mostly elderly Nigerian women who used nakedness as a strategy against the multinational oil company operating in their area. The California protest, captured in the relatively protected context of a photo shoot, triggered both negative and positive reactions (and ultimately was more an act of denunciation than a tactic by itself capable of preventing the war in Iraq). The Nigerian women’s protest, which enlisted a culturally embedded shaming ritual, was more effective in meeting the women’s social and economic demands. While diverse groups of protesters share various sets of protest tactics, or what Taylor and Van Dyke (2004, 266) called “tactical repertoires,”11 these practices are expressed through bodies that are gendered, racialized, and marked by age, class, citizenship status, sexual orientation, bodily ability, and culture, among others. The social location that grounds different activist bodies influences the kinds of tactics and emotions expressed, the public reaction to such protests, the effectiveness of the tactics utilized, and the transformative possibilities for activists themselves. The use of nakedness as a protest technique—which I witnessed in the World Social Forum 2003 in Brazil—carries very different connotations and potential consequences for activists when performed by men or women (and by men or women differently located in the social structure). Among others, nakedness evokes ideas about vulnerability, dangerousness, and sexuality attributed to different social groups, and these meanings are very much embedded in racialized, classed, gendered, and colonial histories (Sutton 2007). Likewise, Susan Foster’s (2003) comparison of the bodily techniques deployed by three groups of nonviolent protesters in the United States shows how differences in social privilege and subordination matter to protest choices and possibilities. The African American protesters fighting segregation in the 1960s through lunch counter sit-ins enacted a silent and still (yet determined) physical demeanor that deeply contrasted with prevalent racist ideologies depicting black bodies as “irrational, primitive, intrinsically violent or excessive” (411). AIDS activists from ACT UP in the 1980s had to contend with homophobic ideas about contamination associated with gays. At the same time, the spectacular and sometimes explosive tactics they utilized, embodied by group “die-ins” in central sites, were perhaps facilitated “by the privilege many enjoyed as white and male in other parts of their lives” (407). Finally, the race-, age-, and gender-diverse nonviolent protesters who filled the streets of Seattle in 1999 in opposition to the World Trade Organization exhibited a variety of bodily techniques, such as chanting, wearing costumes, engaging in sit-ins, and doing mobile blockades. Many of these bodies, “in some measure privileged, and

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demonstrating on behalf of others less fortunate . . . enjoyed a freer perambulation through public space, taking advantage . . . of their entitlement as primarily first-world citizens to break up and re-group throughout a first-world city” (411). Much feminist literature has focused on women’s movements organized around bodily issues (e.g., abortion, contraception, sexual rights, health, nutrition, beauty, and so forth), yet fewer works have examined the role of women’s activist bodies as vehicles of political protest. Of course, political resistance can be broadly defined, and such definitions should include women’s nontraditional protest spaces and practices that aim to challenge or result in the disruption of unjust power regimes. Despite their subversive possibilities, few of these practices are seen as political. Important feminist work has focused on women’s and girls’ embodied agency, for example, as reflected in hair style management (Weitz 2001), tomboy embodied practices (Carr 1998), celebration of sensual pleasures in the context of slavery (Camp 2002), empowering use of feminine sexuality and dress (Alexandre 2006), the development of self-defense skills (McCaughey 1997), and many other individual or group practices by which the female body becomes a tool of resistance. However, more research is needed to examine the significance of women’s activist corporeality in spaces of political intervention that have been frequently associated with masculinity, such as the streets, government buildings, corporate quarters, or the informatics world. Examples of such work include some that analyze women’s embodied protest in militarized zones and in response to militarized conflict (e.g., Cockburn 2007; Laware 2004; Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 2003). Women’s breastfeeding activism through public “nurse-ins” in Starbucks (Regales 2005) or in cyberspaces such as Facebook (Marcus 2009) also offer interesting avenues to examine how the female body is utilized to challenge corporate policies. Women in various cultures and geographical areas have been entering or disputing many of the spaces from which they had been implicitly or explicitly excluded. They have used their bodies in creative, risky, and compelling ways, navigating the complex and often loaded meanings attached to female physicality. Often, women have been perceived as being more bound to the body than men, their bodily processes deemed as distasteful, their corporeality sexualized, and their bodies violently disciplined. Thus, we must ask, what are the implications of activist women’s diverse use of their bodies’ materiality, sexuality, strength, emotions, and skills in political protest? How do cultural stereotypes undermine women’s political embodied expression in activist events? How do women manage to deploy their bodies in political protest in ways that subvert existing ideologies? What are the gendered dimensions of different protesters’ enactment of specific bodily techniques? What is at stake for participants choosing some techniques over others? These questions acquire special significance at a time in which people around the world are protesting urgent global problems, many of which affect women in

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particular ways: war and militarism, environmental disaster, child mortality, the spread of HIV/AIDS, religious fundamentalisms, neocolonialism and racism, and global poverty and hunger, among others.12 As scholars and activists talk about the globalization of resistance, it is important to pay attention to women’s embodied contributions to such collective actions. As members of labor unions, health networks, environmental coalitions, indigenous movements, community literacy groups, fair-wage campaigns, food security initiatives, human rights and antiwar organizations, and myriad other local and global justice efforts, women have shared their knowledge, provided emotional support, and put in embodied labor that is not always recognized, even in such progressive movements. Acknowledging this contribution is vital not only as a matter of gender justice but also as a matter of sustenance and continuation of those social movements. When activist bodies burn out and their knowledge is treated as irrelevant, movements and society at large lose out. We need to make visible the embodied character of social injustice created and reinforced through neoliberal globalization as well as to bring into focus the bodies of resistance that offer vision and hope for a more just world.

Notes

chapter 1 — bodies in crisis 1. These and all subsequent quotations extracted from interviews and published materials in the Spanish language are my translations. 2. See, for example, Adair 2002; Collins 2000; Conboy, Medina, and Stanbury 1997; Frigon 2000; Guy-Sheftall 2002; Heidensohn 1985; Katrak 2006; Mullings 1994; Weitz 1998. 3. Harcourt and Escobar give credit to Beasley and Bacchi (2000) for their concept of “social flesh.” 4. “Glocalization” refers to the “interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas” (Ritzer 2007, 13). 5. At that time, my partner, our dog, and I traveled with a Volkswagen camper across the following countries: the United States, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. 6. In terms of age, 22 percent of the interviewees were twenty-one to twenty-nine years old, 22 percent were thirty to thirty-nine years old, 38 percent were forty to forty-nine years old, and 18 percent were fifty to sixty-two years old. With respect to education, 20 percent of interviewees had at least some primary school education, 24 percent had attended or completed secondary school, and 56 percent had at least some postsecondary education, including short-term degrees and longer university careers, and a few graduate studies. Regarding sexual orientation, 90 percent of the women in the sample identified as heterosexual, 8 percent as lesbian, and 2 percent as bisexual. Interviewees engaged in a variety of occupations: 22 percent performed informal economic activities (e.g., prostitution, domestic service, handicraft production, food preparation and retail); 20 percent were unemployed (e.g., homemaker, student, retired, or could not find a job); 16 percent worked in the private sector, excluding teaching (e.g., travel agent, cashier, factory worker); 12 percent had teaching jobs in the public or private sector; 10 percent were small-business entrepreneurs (e.g., gym, mini-mart, beauty salon); 8 percent were professionals who worked independently (e.g., architect, psychologist); 6 percent were employed in the public sector, excluding teaching (e.g., police force, city government); 4 percent worked as coordinators of nonprofit organizations; and 2 percent worked in a recovered enterprise run by workers. About half of the women in

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the study had monthly per capita incomes that were less than 550 pesos (US$183) and the other half exceeded 625 pesos (US$208). Among the second group, the highest income was 4,500 pesos (US$1,500). With regard to religion, 52 percent of the sample comprised Catholic women, 30 percent identified as atheist or agnostic (three of them had been raised Jewish), and 18 percent exhibited a diversity of spiritualities and religions, including indigenous, Buddhist, evangelical, and a more general belief in a higher being. In terms of race-ethnicity, I interviewed women who exhibited a spectrum of skin color hues and other physical characteristics that can function as ethnoracial signifiers. I was curious about how and whether they articulated their identities in ethnoracial terms. When I asked them about their ethnoracial belonging/identity, many of my interviewees were puzzled, reluctant to identify themselves in those terms, or evidenced with their questions and comments that race-ethnicity was not an identity category that made sense to them. For example, Viviana, a middle-class woman, responded, “I, I think I am, I don’t know, Arian [laughs].” Candela, who lived in a shantytown, said, “I never paused to think about it [laughs]. I don’t know, I have no idea. Uhhm, I think that—based on the movies—I’m Latina.” Rosalía, a woman of working-class background, looked at me confused and said, “I have no idea!” Race is more often invoked in Argentina when making derogatory comments than as positive self-identity representations. Furthermore, in Argentina it is not customary to include questions about race-ethnicity in surveys, business forms, or government documents. In response to my question, interviewees generated a broad range of categories. Their answers span constructs of nationality, religion, place, race, ethnicity, and even species: human race, animal race, black, white, Arian, Indoamerican, Spanish, Mestiza, Latina, American, Latin-American, Argentine, Peruvian/Indian/Chola, English/ Italian/Spanish/French/German, Porteña (from Buenos Aires), Criolla, descendent of Arabs and Italians, Jewish descendent, white with Moorish/Jewish/Italian/Spanish/Indian ancestry, descendent of Germans, descendent of Spaniards, descendent of Saxo-Germans, Oriental-Chinese, mate (copper-like skin), Kolla (an indigenous group), and “belonging to everywhere.” Only a few responses were straightforward. For example, Franca, an activist for indigenous rights, immediately said “Kolla.” The same happened with Tania, also an activist, who said “Afro descendent” without hesitation. The variety of categories generated reveals the fluidity and socially constructed nature of race-ethnicity. The puzzled reactions of a number of interviewees also points to historical processes that deemphasized race as an axis of difference in Argentina. 7. I generated the list of words based on my knowledge of feminist scholarship, sociology of the body, and Argentine culture. Interviewees could add words of their own, although they seldom did. The words are exercise, pleasure, aging, disability, health, food, sex, art, menstruation, beauty, sports, harassment, childbirth, work, desire, menopause, youth, law, violence, religion, expression, psychoanalysis, skin color, movement, contraception, ethnicity, race, reproduction, motherhood, femininity, abortion, economic crisis, politics, appearance, class, recreation, sexuality, pregnancy, pain, change (added), guilt (added). 8. This is related to spending formative years in Argentina, living there for a large portion of my life, absorbing significant cultural traits, and keeping strong ties with my family. 9. Argentina’s first constitution was created in 1853 and was last reformed in 1994. Argentina is currently divided into twenty-three provinces plus the site of the national government (the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires) with their own local governments. The national government has three main branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.

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10. The concepts of “civilization” and “barbarism” are associated with the political views of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, one of the major ideologues of nineteenthcentury Argentina (see Sarmiento 1932). 11. The two most important political parties in the twentieth century were the UCR (Unión Cívica Radical, Radical Civic Union)—drawing its support from the middle class—and the PJ (Partido Justicialista, Justicialist Party), also known as the Peronist Party, with its bastion of support among the working class and the poor. Smaller parties have ranged from radical leftist to ultraconservative organizations. The two main parties alternated in power during different periods of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet the constitutional order was broken multiple times by military coups. The economic collapse of 2001 led also to the disintegration of the governing Alianza (a coalition government in which the UCR played a central role). At the time, the UCR lost much of its power and capacity to advance a viable alternative to Peronism. The latest president, elected in 2007, is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a Peronist and the first elected woman president. She followed the presidency of her husband, Néstor Kirchner (elected in 2003), from the same party. 12. Jelin (1996) contrasts urban Argentines’ notions of “individual-family social mobility” (rooted in the project of immigrants who came to Argentina to “make the America” but had strong ties and obligations to their families) with notions of collectivist or community solidarity in other Latin American countries, and with Anglo individualistic notions about the self-made man. 13. An example of the international ties of the dictatorship was the Plan Condor, which linked Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, later on, Ecuador and Peru. This collaboration aimed to “prevent and reverse emerging movements in Latin America” and “carried out combined, illegal, extraterritorial operations using disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial execution to eliminate political enemies” (McSherry 2005, 28). 14. This war was an attempt to rally the population around nationalistic sentiments, militarily asserting sovereignty over the islands, which functioned as a British colony. The war was short-lived (slightly over two months) and Argentina was defeated. 15. The Full Stop Law, the Due Obedience Law, and presidential indults are some of the measures responsible for such impunity. 16. President Raúl Alfonsín (Radical Civic Union) from 1983 to 1989, President Carlos Saúl Menem (Peronism) for two terms from 1989 to 1999, and President Fernando de la Rúa (Alliance for Work, Justice, and Education) from 1999 to 2001, when he resigned. 17. The Alliance was formed by a coalition between the Radical Civic Union and a smaller center-left political party, FREPASO (Frente Para un País Solidario [Front for a Country with Solidarity]). 18. See Hall’s (1986) application of Gramscian notions of common sense to race relations and Guano’s (2003) borrowing of the term to explain race relations in Argentina. 19. According to the 2001 National Census, there are 1,531,940 foreign-born immigrants registered in Argentina: 1,041,117 people emigrated from the Americas (especially bordering countries and Peru; 432,349 people emigrated from Europe; 29,672 came from Asia; and 747 from Oceania (INDEC 2001). 20. According to the results of a 2004–2005 INDEC survey supplementing the 2001 National Census, 600,329 people in Argentina identified themselves as belonging to an indigenous group or as being a first-generation descendents of indigenous peoples (INDEC 2007).

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21. As early as 1895, the National Census suggested that Argentina did not have racebased problems (Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider 2000). 22. See Carrasco 2002; Casaravilla 1999; Cohen and Mera 2005; Courtis 2000; Grimson 2005; Margulis and Urresti 1998; Ratier 1971; Villalpando et al. 2005. 23. Evelyn Steven (1994) coined the concept of Marianismo as the counterpart of Machismo. 24. In this section I draw heavily on the work of Mariano Ben Plotkin (2001) and Jorge Balán (1991), who present useful historical accounts about the influence of psychoanalysis in Argentina. I am indebted to Mónica Szurmuk for encouraging me to pay special attention to the importance of the psy culture in Argentina as an interpretative framework that women might use to understand reality. 25. The richness and diversity of the women’s movement in Argentina is reflected in numerous scholarly and activist accounts (e.g., Arditti 1999; Barrancos 2008; Bellotti 2002; Borland 2004; Carlson 1988; Chejter 1996, 2002; Feijoo and Nari 1994; Fisher 1993, 1999; Lavrin 1995; Masson 2007; Navarro 2001). 26. While some sectors of the women’s movement have built on traditional gender identities to advance their goals (e.g., resorting to motherhood or homemaker status), movement participation has often transformed women’s consciousness and their understanding of these traditional roles (Arditti 1999; Fisher 1993). 27. For example, March 8 is International Women’s Day; March 24 is the anniversary of the 1976 military coup; May 28 is Women’s Health Day; September 28 is the day for the Legalization/Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean; November 25 is the day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. 28. These are neighborhood-based assemblies that emerged as a response to the December 2001 economic and institutional crisis. These assemblies tried to address some of the urgent social problems posed by the crisis through collective discussion, community projects, and protests (Di Marco et al. 2003). 29. The movement of piqueteros and piqueteras is formed by unemployed workers and poor people. The name of the movement derives from the use of the piquete (road or street blockade) as the main protest strategy. This movement emerged during the mid1990s as a response to the massive lay-offs and poverty created by neoliberal policies. Most of these organizations have also created significant productive and solidarity projects within their communities to address their difficult access to food, education, health care, and work. 30. In the context of the economic crisis, workers in different parts of the country occupied failed businesses and factories in an effort to restore production and maintain their source of work. These enterprises are often referred to as recovered factories and are collectively run by workers. 31. The first bartering clubs emerged in Buenos Aires in 1995 out of concern for the environment and impoverishment, and as a way to combat consumerism. These clubs allowed people to exchange goods and services, forming an alternative economy that did not require money. It was estimated that, by 2002, over 4,500 bartering clubs existed in Argentina (Henríquez 2003). In the context of increasing economic problems, however, bartering allowed many people to obtain what they needed without having to pay with money. 32. The comedores brought women together to collectively feed their children, and many of these spaces also became hubs of political organizing. Many of the women in the

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comedores were also recipients of poverty alleviation programs in the form of Conditional Cash Transfers by the state (e.g., Plan Jefas y Jefes de Hogar, Female and Male Heads of Household Plans). The “planes” offered a minimal income (150 pesos/ about US$50 per month), and recipients could fulfill their work conditionality through their engagement in community activities (see Tabbush 2008). 33. Even though the shifting social context, the realignment of political forces, and the conflicts experienced within different movement organizations had resulted in movement fragmentation and decreased participation by the end of my study, many of the people who participated in the period’s social movements had been deeply transformed and also left their marks in the country’s institutions.

chapter 2 — bodily scars of neoliberal globalization 1. See Callard (1998) and Harvey (1998) for a discussion of the relationship between the body and the political economy. 2. See Harvey (2005) for a useful account about the emergence, development, and prospects of neoliberalism. 3. See Basualdo 2006; Birgin 2000b; Dinerstein 2001; Patroni 2002; Svampa 2005; and Teubal 2004. 4. These figures are even more staggering if one compares similar indicators between the early 1970s and after 2000, when the Argentine economy was visibly crumbling (Argumedo and Quintar 2003). For example, while in 1974 the richest 10 percent had an income twelve times greater than the poorest 10 percent, in 2002 the top 10 percent earned thirty times more than the bottom 10 percent (Argumedo and Quintar 2003, 620). 5. Numerous scholars, activists, and public intellectuals have documented the detrimental consequences as well as the opportunities for political resistance and transformation offered by the globalization of the capitalist economic model (Greider 1997; Klein 2002; Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Ross and Trachte 1990), focusing, for example, on the information society and identity (Castells 1997), the environment (Shiva 2005; The Ecologist 1993), women’s lives (Gunewardena and Kingsolver 2007; Naples and Desai 2002; Sassen 2000), workers’ organizing (Louie 2001; Moody 1997), the problem with development (Mittelman and Pasha 1997), and global justice movements (Brecher, Costello, and Smith 2000; della Porta 2007; Denzin and Giardina 2007). 6. See Norgaard (2003) on the connection between embodied emotions and the development of a sociological imagination. 7. Because cardboard gatherers often lack transportation or storage places, they commonly rely on intermediaries who keep part of the profits. Some cardboard gatherers organized cooperatives to gain leverage, to improve their conditions, and to avoid abuses from industries or intermediaries (Reynals 2002). 8. Marcela Lagarde (2001) argues that in patriarchal societies it is expected that each woman “internalize that her body and her life does not belong to her, and that she selfdiscriminates. It is on that body, symbolized as a body-for-others, that the lack of gender rights of women as a group is based.” Di Liscia and Di Liscia (1997) show how this dynamic of bodily self-negation adversely affects women’s health in the Argentine context. 9. Although women are usually in charge of most of the cooking in other occasions, the asado (barbecuing the meat) is typically done by men while women may prepare salads and desserts.

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chapter 3 — beautiful bodies 1. E.g., Arthurs and Grimshaw 1999; Bartky 1990; Bordo 1993b; Brownmiller 1984; Chapkis 1986; Edut 2000; Jeffreys 2005; Weitz 1998. 2. “Criollo” was historically “a flexible ethnic term that Argentines used to describe both the descendents of colonial Spanish settlers, and people of mixed indigenous and European background, or mestizos” (Chamosa 2008, 71). 3. See Lobato (2005b) for an interesting historical analysis of these events. 4. Lobato (2005a, 181) observes that under Peronism “women’s beauty was publicly exhibited to honor work, in open confrontation with the representation developed by radicalized currents of the labor movement where women workers were deformed by work [and in which] the anguished face, the gawky bodies, the flaccid breasts were the result of the daily degradation of the work effort, of exploitation.” 5. E.g., Brumberg 1998; Chapkis 1986; Edut 2000; Jeffreys 2005; Wolf 1992. 6. These were not dates in the common sense of the term, for the women involved did not have any choice whether to go. Their own lives and their families’ were in the hands of the military captors, who were not regular kidnappers but representatives of a formidable and omnipresent state apparatus. 7. Pancho Dotto runs an important modeling agency in Buenos Aires. 8. A combination of factors, including economic forces and cultural pressures to attain beauty standards, explain the expansion of cosmetic operations. According to Carbajal (1999), the oversupply of plastic surgeons meant a substantial drop in prices, making cosmetic surgery more affordable than in the past. Carbajal’s research also suggests that the low remuneration of medical doctors in other specializations, as compared to the profits of cosmetic surgeons, contributed to an increase in the ranks of those specializing in plastic surgery. In addition, while cosmetic surgery advertising used to be prohibited by the main professional association in the field, advertising became more and more common. Finally, Carbajal pointed out that cosmetic surgery was made more accessible to people through the use of credit cards, checks, installments with no interest, and through other savings plans, which also flourished in other areas of the economy in the 1990s. 9. Patients aspiring to undergo cosmetic surgery in public hospitals face long waiting lists and may also have to pay for some supplies (especially if they are expensive, such as breast prosthesis) and/or to provide blood donations in exchange for treatment (Debesa and Galmarini 2004). For the director of plastic surgery of an important public hospital, to be able to provide cosmetic surgery services “almost serves a solidarity purpose, given that today physical care is a necessity” (Debesa and Galmarini 2004). It seems to me that more than an indicator of democratization, the inclusion of free cosmetic surgeries in public hospitals underscores the high premium of a particular kind of bodily appearance in Argentina. 10. ALUBA (Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y la Anorexia) has been one of the most important organizations specialized in eating disorders in Argentina. 11. See Bourdieu (1984) for an in-depth analysis of embodied class distinction and taste as well as their relationship to gender. In Argentina, notions of feminine class distinction that reserve glorified traits to “authentic” elite women are also reflected in historical and contemporary upper- and middle-class criticism of the feminine embodiment of powerful Peronist political figures, such as Eva Perón or current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In both cases, critics’ scrutiny has underscored, among other things, these women’s display of expensive attire (e.g., exclusive designer clothing, accessories, jewels, etc). While the explicit aim of such criticism is to point out a contradiction between these

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women’s stated defense of the poor and their personal display of wealth, a more hidden subtext is the idea that these women are class impostors and therefore should not be wearing what would be otherwise admired in women of elite lineage. After all, Evita’s origin was the working class, so she was not meant to go around dressed like a princess. While Cristina’s background exhibits valued middle-class markings, such as a university education, she could never really belong to the elite, even if she is running the country and has acquired wealth. Handwritten flyers plastered around well-off neighborhoods in the northern part of Buenos Aires in 2008 read: “Cristina K.: Montonera, Mentirosa, y Grasa.” The word Montonera refers to membership in the combative sector of 1970s Peronism (whose members were targeted for disappearance by the military dictatorship) and is intended as an insult in the sign. Mentirosa means liar. And, more to the point of this discussion, grasa is often used as a dismissive term to refer to a person with no “taste,” with no class. No matter how much shopping in Europe, how many Louis Vuitton’s purses she exhibits, the sign suggests that Cristina cannot hide the lack of distinguished class lineage. (Evita used the term grasa in endearing ways to refer to the working class and the poor, calling people in this group “my grasitas”). 12. According to a newspaper article reporting these trends (Himitian 2002), while the approximate cost of breast implants in Argentina was $1,800, in Chile it was $4,500. In Argentina, the price of a mini-lifting was $800, while in Chile a similar operation cost $2,100. A surgical modification of the nose was $600 in Argentina, in contrast to $2,500 in Chile. 13. In the last decade, these injustices—including verbal and physical violence, work and education discrimination, police mistreatment, family shunning, invisibilization, marginalization by friends, unwelcome jokes, and inadequate medical attention—have been increasingly documented and articulated as political demands to change existing policies, institutions, and culture (e.g., Fuskova, Schmid, and Marek 1994; Jones, Libson, and Hiller 2006; Kornblit, Pecheny, and Vujosevich 1998; Maffía 2003; Pecheny, Figari, and Jones 2008). People embodying nonheteronormative sexualities have been collectively organizing to make their existence and claims more visible. One expression of such organizing has been the annual Pride March held in Buenos Aires since 1992. 14. The terms torti, torta, and tortillera are pejorative ways of referring to lesbians when used by people who disapprove of such sexual orientation or identity. Lesbians have appropriated these terms to identify themselves but use them to construct a positive identity.

chapter 4 — more than reproductive uteruses 1. Informative analyses of abortion-related issues in Argentina include the following: Blofield 2006; Checa 2006; Checa and Rosenberg 1996; FDR 1997, 1998; Htun 2003; and Ramos et al. 2001. 2. “Caramelitas en Calzas” literally means “Little Candies in Spandex,” a play on the name of the pious order of nuns Carmelitas Descalzas (Barefoot Carmelites). 3. This maxim was coined by one of nineteenth-century Argentina’s most influential ideologues, Juan Bautista Alberdi, who believed in the necessity of populating the country with the “right” people (white Western Europeans) to assure social and economic progress. These views were reflected in racist policies encouraging white European immigration, while at the same time native populations were being conquered and decimated. 4. On average, women in Argentina have relatively few children, but there are variations between provinces. Argentina’s overall fertility rate is 2.3 (Ministerio de Salud and Organización Panamericana de la Salud 2008).

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5. Law No. 25673 was promulgated on October 30, 2002, to create the National Program of Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation. 6. As many feminist organizations and women argue, if this exception were interpreted broadly—that is, using the World Health Organization definition of health (which includes mental health)—many more cases of abortion would fall under this exception. Yet legal interpretations of this law tend to be restrictive (FDR 1997). 7. There is a certain degree of controversy among legal experts with respect to the interpretation of the second exception, with some people arguing that it applies to all cases of rape and others saying that it only applies to the rape of women with mental disabilities (See Htun 2003). In practice, the interpretation tends to be narrow. 8. It is important to note that reliable information on abortion is difficult to gather because of the clandestine and illegal nature of the procedure. 9. See Borland (1997) for an in-depth analysis of how abortion rights activists and advocates in Buenos Aires have historically framed the issue of abortion. 10. This information is absent for one interviewee with whom I had to finish the interview earlier than expected. I tried to contact her again in her workplace, but she had switched jobs. 11. This is a reference to a real case of a Nicaraguan girl who was raped and got pregnant, but Nicaraguan government authorities and the church opposed her undergoing abortion. This case received considerable media attention in Argentina.

chapter 5 — embattled bodies 1. Individuals enjoying more social power are more likely than the less privileged to be let off the hook when perpetrating violent acts or may be able to frame the event to their advantage. Conversely, while the victimization of more privileged individuals tends to provoke more moral outrage, victims belonging to subordinated groups may be disbelieved or even blamed. Violence against women inflicted by a husband in the privacy of the home has been historically overlooked and trivialized in many places, and not even recognized as a serious social problem until fairly recently (Jones 2000). Hate crimes against gays and lesbians usually do not inspire widespread outrage, and this is partly evidenced by the fact that much of the legislation on hate crimes has not included sexual orientation as a basis for protection (Green, McFalls, and Smith 2001). 2. See Allen (1999) for an analysis of the different kinds of power that feminists have paid attention to, including “power-from-within” (20) “power-over” (22), “power-to” (22), and “power-with” (126). 3. See, for example, CONADEP (1984) and Duhalde (1999). Insightful analyses and testimonies by women about this period of state terrorism include Actis et al. (2001); Calveiro (2004); Ciollaro (1999); Partnoy (1986). 4. Subversive was broadly defined and people who disappeared were men and women from all walks of life suspected of having leftist sympathies. 5. See Elaine Scarry’s (1985) classic book The Body in Pain for a perceptive analysis of the structure of torture and the wedge between the experiences of torturer and tortured in the process. 6. Catherine Lutz (2008) uses a similar term, “living room terrorism,” to describe sexist violence among military couples, who exhibit significantly higher levels of domestic violence than civilian couples. Some of the women whose partners are military men, many deployed to fight the war on terror post 9/11, are among the casualties of the exacerbated violence that war breeds.

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7. It should not be surprising if such ideas survive in the repertoire of an institution like the police and are applied to women. After all, this institution still had members charged with crimes committed during the dictatorship but had never gone to trial. Human rights organizations have established links between past and present police practices—for example, denouncing tortures in police stations during democratic times. 8. These protests often involve calls to implement more punitive measures against certain crimes, lower the age of imprisonment for minors, increase police presence in the streets, and end police corruption. Social inequality, the insecurity of hunger and poverty, or the people who died because of police repression are usually not the themes of such protests. Many of these people seem to want to hold on to their property and privileges without demanding any structural changes that would make life more secure for everyone. 9. As a middle-class individual, I had some exposure to this kind of crime. During my stay in Argentina, two armed burglars entered the house I was living in. I was fortunate that I was not there at the time. Another day, I had to confront two teenage girls who, while I was walking with my aunt, hit her in an attempt to grab her necklace. The same day, late at night, a man tried to break into our house again by forcing open one of the doors. 10. In the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, women’s labor force participation increased from 37 percent to 47 percent between 1991 and 2002 (Wainerman 2005). 11. The case of women in prostitution murdered in the city of Mar del Plata (Carbajal 2002; Palavecino 2002) or the murder of Sandra Cabrera, AMMAR member, in Rosario suggest the vulnerability to police mafias of women engaged in prostitution. 12. One of the places in which this experience was shared was a workshop organized by the Red de Mujeres Solidarias (Network of Women in Solidarity) during the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. 13. For example, reflected in the joke advising women “to relax and enjoy” in case of imminent violation. 14. The 1999 reform to the Penal Code (National Law 25087) constituted a step forward in taking into account the perspective of women’s experiences of sexual violence and in eliminating terminology by which the moral character of the victim (e.g., mujer honesta [virtuous woman]) was crucial to the definition of the crime. Among other things the reform “displaces the idea of [the victim] ‘not being able to exert sufficient resistance’ toward a notion that is closer to the real situation of sexual aggression, of not being able to freely consent. This better reflects the reality of many forms of sexual aggression where there is not necessarily physical force, that leaves marks, but a climate of intimidation, abuse of power or of trust” (Rodríguez and Chejter 1999, 8). 15. A similar pattern already has been documented in the United States (e.g., Collins 2004; Davis 1994). 16. The strategy of escraches was borrowed from human rights organizations formed by children of people disappeared by the dictatorship. They have used this technique to expose and publicly shame dictatorship repressors who walk freely on the streets. The escrache consists of exposing torturers and repressors through graffiti, public speeches, chants, banners, throwing red paint bombs (mimicking blood), and theatrical performances staged close to the homes of these people (see Kaplan 2004). 17. The campaign includes excellent public service announcements that raise awareness about the problem of domestic violence while also suggesting that solidarity among women is an important source of support.

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18. As of February 2009, women were 40.0 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and 38.9 percent of the Senate members (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2009). The “Quota Law” enacted during the 1990s was instrumental to the growth of women’s representation in parliament.

chapter 6 — bodies in protest 1. Much feminist research and theorizing has paid special attention to the female body as a site of oppressive ideologies and social control practices (e.g., Bordo 1993b; Conboy, Medina, and Stanbury 1997; Grosz 1994; Price, and Shildrick 1999; Weitz 1998; Young 1990c). 2. See also Auyero 2003; Basco and Laxalde 2003; Chejter 2002; Di Marco et al. 2003; and RIGC 2003. 3. According to a Gallup Poll (September 2002) with results published in La Nación (2002a), 65 percent of Argentine people thought U.S. international policies negatively affected Argentina. Another Gallup Poll of forty-one countries in January 2003 found that Argentina was the country with the greatest opposition to the war in Iraq—83 percent of Argentine people were opposed to U.S. military actions against Iraq (La Nación 2003c). In the city of Buenos Aires, 92 percent of the population was opposed to the war in Iraq (La Nación 2003b). 4. This forum took place in Buenos Aires on August 22–25, 2002, and was related to the World Social Forums that originated in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a counterpoint to the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 5. Caramelitas en Calzas literally means “Little Candies in Spandex,” but it resembles the name of the order of nuns Carmelitas Descalzas (Barefoot Carmelites). 6. See Turner (2001) on the vulnerability of embodiment and Peterson (2001) on the vulnerability of militant bodies. 7. Lomo evokes an animal’s back, perhaps a beast of burden’s back. 8. See a similar dynamic in Sasson-Levy and Rapoport (2003). 9. The Montoneros formed the leftist and combative branch of Peronism, which took arms during the 1970s. 10. In the last decade, many accounts of women’s movement participation in Latin America were produced, drawing attention to women’s political constraints and opportunities (Fisher 1993; González and Kampwirth 2001; Jaquette 1994; Küppers 1994; Molyneux 2001; Radcliffe and Westwood 1993; Stephen 1997).

chapter 7 — conclusion 1. Essentialist views of the female body ascribe universal traits to women (e.g., vulnerability, caring, emotional instability) based on biological characteristics, particularly their reproductive organs, hormones, or bodily size. Yet while there are commonalities in women’s physicality, women’s bodies are diverse, their experiences are multiple, and they are shaped by the social. 2. While attention to race is not new in the United States, where critical race scholars and antiracist feminists have done extensive work to reveal racism as a central feature of social structure and ideology, relatively little work exists in Argentina on this regard. Further research is needed, particularly from an intersectional feminist perspective. Argentina’s construction of race and ethnicity differ from the U.S. model, yet disturbing experiences of racialization and racism emerged in the narratives of a number of women I interviewed, especially with regard to femininity and bodily appearance (even when

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many of them were not conceptualizing the problem in terms of race or did not identify themselves as racialized persons). These accounts showed the difficulties, as well as the coping and resistance strategies, of women whose bodies did not conform to whiteEuropean ideals. 3. This is a response to Meehan and Katzman’s (2001) interesting analysis of how Argentina’s economic and political dislocations may have a bearing on the prevalence of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia in the country. 4. Activists called for a public burning of Barbies, which like other actions that play with symbolism are potentially double-edged and can lead to interpretations that are the opposite of what organizers may want to convey. From the activists’ perspective, the symbolic burning of Barbie dolls was a way to critique “a stereotype, an imposed model of beauty that objectifies women and promotes practices that exert violence against our bodies, such as cosmetic surgeries or diets that generate eating and psychological disorders leading to the death of thousands of women” (El Día 2009). Yet, as revealed by postings in the Argentina Independent Media Center’s site in response to the event, others saw Barbies as a stand-in for women and therefore interpreted the act as offensive, tasteless, and counterproductive. 5. See information about the campaign for abortion rights at http://www.abortolegal .com.ar/sitio/. 6. The country’s reliance on soy exports came under a bright spotlight at the beginning of the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as she tried to increase agro-export taxes. This triggered a divisive conflict with the agro sector and their allies, including massive protests and blockades. The trafficking of women and girls gained increased visibility through the work of feminist groups, feminist reporters, and even more popular means such as a soap opera called Vidas Robadas (Stolen Lives), which re-creates aspects of a true story. 7. Critics argue that this nationalization move really constitutes a money grab designed to prop up the state finances and help the government service upcoming debt payment that it may have trouble meeting (Barrionuevo 2008; Partlow and Byrnes 2008). 8. See Barker and Feiner (2004) for an accessible analysis of the economy, which advances the argument that globalization is a feminist issue. 9. For a review, see Taylor and Van Dyke (2004). For analyses of how different factors influence protest strategies, see also Epstein (1991), McAdam (2007), Staggenborg (1991), Tarrow (1998), Tilly (2006). 10. The latter is similar to Eve Shapiro’s (2007) finding that individuals’ engagement in embodied group practices, such as drag performances, contributed to gender identity changes in many of the participants. 11. Taylor and Van Dyke (2004, 266) define tactical repertoires “as interactive episodes that link social movement actors to each other as well as to opponents and authorities for the intended purpose of challenging or resisting change in groups, organizations, or societies.” Tactical repertoires entail “contestation, intentionality, and collective identity” (283). This concept builds on Charles Tilly’s (1978, 1995) “repertoires of contention,” which emphasize not only the historically specific and slow-changing nature of protest forms but also how existing sets of activist strategies and performances are transferred to different groups and enacted in new contexts. 12. Some of these problems are captured by the UN Millennium Development Goals.

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Index

abortion, 5–6, 7, 99–100, 106–114; ambivalence about, 111, 113–114; antiabortion advertising and, 100; barriers to access to, 117; Catholic Church and, 10, 109, 123; clandestine, 117–125, 126; class and, 9, 10, 108, 114, 118; contraception and, 100, 109, 122–123; cost of, 121; criminalization of, 97, 103, 117, 125–127; decriminalization of, 100–101, 108–109, 111, 198; doctors and, 123–124, 126; gag rule (U.S.) and, 105, 197; homemade, 118–119; intersectional analysis and, 10, 192–193; legislation about, 103, 216n6; men and, 116; mistreatment by providers of, 120–121; motherhood and, 128; pain of, 119, 122; as personal decision, 108, 109, 115–117; poverty and, 108, 109, 111–112, 114, 116, 193; prevalence of, 103, 107, 114, 120; profits for practitioners of, 125–126; rape and, 109, 113, 216n7; risks of, 108, 110, 119, 120, 126, 200; social inequalities and, 127–128; as social justice issue, 125–127, 198; social movement attention to, 127, 169; societal effects of, 125–127; support network access and, 124–125; violence against women and, 115; women’s bodies and, 128, 192–193. See also contraception; reproductive politics Acker, Joan, 6 activism. See social movement organizing Adair, Vivyan, 40 AIDS, 55, 112, 206 Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 215n3 Alexander, M. Jacqui, 139 Alfonsín, Raúl, 23, 24, 211n16

Alliance for Work, Justice, and Education (party coalition), 24, 211n16, 211n17 ALUBA (Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y la Anorexia), 73, 214n10 AMMAR (Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de la Argentina), 147 Amnesty International, 142 appearance, physical. See beauty; femininity, normative Argentina, 159–160; abortion rates in, 103, 120; appearance of prosperity in, 70; Conquest of the Desert (1880s), 19; constitution of, 210n9; as cosmetic surgery tourist destination, 79–80; democratic government of, 2, 22, 23, 163, 218n18; demonstrations of December 2001 in, 1, 2–3, 163, 174; eating disorders in, 73; economic crisis in (see economic crisis); economic outlook for, 203–204; emigrants from, 19; ethnoracial composition of, 26; European immigration to, 19–20, 25, 215n3; exports from, 20; femininity in, 64–65, 66–67; fertility rate of, 215n4; guerrilla groups in, 22; health system in, 53–54, 57–58, 102; history of, 2–3, 19–25, 36–37, 65; indigenous heritage of, 196; international agreements of, 120, 198; international position of, 39, 191, 196; Iraq war and, 218n3; legislation in (see legislation); military coups in, 211n11; military dictatorship in (see dictatorship, military); National Census of, 26, 211n19; national identity of, 64–65, 67, 83, 86, 196; neoliberal economics in (see economics, neoliberal);

247

248 Argentina (continued) neoliberal globalization and (see globalization, neoliberal); political parties in, 20, 24, 170, 211n11; politics in, 30–31, 70, 103–104, 184–185; population of, 102; psy culture in, 31–33, 99; race and (see race and ethnicity); racism and (see racism); recovered factories in, 168–169, 212n30; reproductive politics and, 102–103; as site of social experimentation, 4, 62; social movement history of, 163–165; state terrorism in (see state terrorism); United States and, 70, 218n3; urban character of, 15; violence against women in, 132–135; war with England, 23; white appearance in, 195–196; women’s police stations in, 144; women’s subordinated status in, 7–8, 65–66, 94 Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), 22 asados (beef barbecues), 51, 213n9 bank accounts, freezing of, 25, 49 bartering clubs, 212n31 beauty: buena presencia and, 72–73; class and, 72, 74–75, 76–77; economic crisis and, 78; employment and, 72–73, 196; health and, 75, 76; intersectional analysis of, 193, 196; media and, 69, 78, 196; men as judges of, 77; neoliberal globalization and, 201; Peronism and, 196, 214n4; poverty and, 44, 72, 76–77; protest tactics and, 219n4; racism and, 7, 9, 82, 84–85; rituals of, 66, 78, 195; standards of, 66–67, 70–71; transnational representations of, 80; value of in women, 46, 71–72; women’s decorative role and, 89; women’s subordination and, 65–66, 94. See also cosmetic surgery; femininity, normative beauty contests, 65, 80, 196 Belej, Cecilia, 80 Belforte, Amelia, 32 Birgin, Haydée, 28 birth. See motherhood bleaching syndrome, 83–84 Blofield, Merike, 104 bodies, 13, 14, 47; bodily memory and, 150; boundaries between, 61; cultural inscription and, 37; economic crisis and, 79–80, 204; embodiment and, 89–90; emotions and, 59, 62, 173–174; essentialism and, 96, 194, 218n1; as evidence of poverty, 41–42; as evidence of violence, 148–149; as glocal geographies, 11, 195; individual vs. social, 190; invisibility

index of certain, 194–195; material needs of, 173; nakedness and, 5, 137, 156, 173, 206; as natural resources, 38–39; neoliberal globalization and, 10–11, 35–36; performances of, 161; power and, 9, 172, 189; protests and, 165–166, 172–173, 189, 205–206; resistance and, 5–6, 204–208; risks to, 48, 185; social justice and, 101, 191; social movement organizing and, 43, 172–174; social suffering and, 11–12, 36, 60, 62, 204; torture of, 183; vs. words, 177–178; of workers, 37–38. See also women’s bodies bodily worlds, 2, 6, 9, 191–192 body studies, 4–6, 10, 11–12, 192 Bonafini, Hebe de, 178–179 Bourgois, Philippe, 136 breastfeeding, 5, 53, 207 Brown, Josefina, 112 Brukman factory, 168–169, 171, 173, 185 Buenos Aires, city of, 1–2, 15, 105; cardboard gathering in, 40–41; civil unions of same-sex couples in, 103; cosmetic surgery in, 71; economic crisis in, 15, 40–43; elitist opposition to Perón in, 21–22; femininity in, 64–65, 66–67; life expectancy in, 35; neighborhood-based assemblies in, 167; police violence in, 174; population of, 20; prostitution in, 48, 147; psy culture in, 31–33; street harassment in, 151; transportation in, 41–42; violence hotlines in, 132 Buenos Aires, province of, 93, 120, 132, 133 Bush, George W., 105, 197 Butler, Judith, 66–67 Callard, Felicity, 38 capitalism, 38, 202. See also globalism, neoliberal Caramelitas en Calzas (music group), 101, 173 Carbajal, Mariana, 71, 214n8 Card, Claudia, 139 cardboard gathering, 40–41, 46, 48–49, 213n7 Carrozzo, Evangelina, 182 cartoneros/as (cardboard gatherers). See cardboard gathering La Casa del Encuentro, 133 Catholic Church, 19; abortion and, 10, 109, 123; appearance expectations of, 68–69; femininity and, 67; influence of, 199; motherhood and, 128; politics and, 30–31, 103–104; reproductive politics and, 103–105, 112–114; reproductive rights and, 97; social movement organizing and, 3; women’s bodies and, 31, 112–114

index Causa, Adriana, 184 Cavallo, Domingo, 24 CEDAW (UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), 29, 198, 199 Census, National, 26, 211n19 Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 199 childbirth. See motherhood children, communal kitchens and, 52–53 Cları´n (newspaper), 78 class: abortion and, 9, 10, 108, 114, 118; beauty and, 72, 74–75, 76–77; bodies and, 9; economic crisis and, 3, 43–46, 61–62; femininity and, 64–65, 66–67, 79–80, 93, 94, 214n11; health care and, 55, 56; interactions between different classes and, 171; intersectional analysis and, 192–193; nutrition and, 45, 59–60; performances of, 75–76; political parties and, 211n11; privilege and, 14, 206–207; psy culture and, 32–33; racism and, 26, 81, 82; sacrifice and, 180; social movement conflicts and, 169–170; social movement focus and, 175; transportation and, 41–42, 78–79; violence against women and, 130, 146, 147, 154, 158; working classes, 22, 65, 108, 114; work patterns and, 47. See also middle classes; poverty clothing, 68–69, 73, 82, 166, 173, 181–182 communal kitchens (comedores), 42, 166, 175, 212n32; food insecurity and, 51–53 communal vegetable gardens, 166 consciousness, 6, 89–90 Consorcio Nacional de Derechos Reproductivos y Sexuales (CONDERS), 102 consumerism, 70 contraception, 99–100, 101; as abortion prevention, 100, 109, 122–123; access to, 7, 97, 114; Catholic Church and, 112–113, 114; failure of, 107; legislation and, 29, 102; motherhood and, 128; poverty and, 44. See also abortion; reproductive politics Convertibility Plan (1991), 24, 36 Córdoba, province of, 200 corralito (bank account freezing), 25, 49 Correa, Difunta, 97 Corrêa, Sonia, 125, 197 Cortiñas, Nora, 184, 185 cosmetic surgery, 7, 76–77, 93–94, 196, 219n4; cost of, 215n12; oversupply of plastic surgeons and, 214n8; prevalence of, 71; racism and, 82; tourist industry

249 and, 79–80, 201; waits for in public hospitals, 214n9. See also beauty; femininity, normative; racism crime, 142–143; hate crime, 216n1; property crime, 143, 144, 217n9 CTERA (Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina), 50 Das, Veena, 12 Davis, Kathy, 194 Day for the Legalization/Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, 199 Day of the Child to Be Born, 103 de la Rúa, Fernando, 24, 25, 36, 166, 211n16 democratic government, 2, 22, 23, 163, 218n18 dictatorship, military, 22–23, 23–24; appearance expectations under, 68–69; currency devaluation under, 2; Dirty War (1976–1983), 8, 23; femininity and, 196; international ties of, 211n13; legacy of, 135–142, 175, 195; neoliberal globalization and, 36; pro-natalism of, 102; psy culture and, 32; social movement organizing and, 163–164. See also disappearance; state terrorism disappearance, 22–23, 194–195, 216n4; allusions to, 200; economic, 43; evidence and, 148; human rights movement and, 164, 170; legacy of state terrorism and, 22–23, 162–163; recuperation process and, 68; struggle against, 181–182; of women, 68, 136, 184, 185. See also state terrorism Disappearing Acts (Taylor), 67 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 131 divorce, 29 doctors, abortion and, 123–124, 126 Doctrine of National Security, U.S., 23 Dominican Republic, dictatorship of, 199 drug consumption, 143 eating disorders, 73, 214n10, 219n3; beauty standards and, 7, 219n4; violence against women and, 131 economic crisis, 24–25, 40–43; bank account freezing and, 25, 49; beauty rituals and, 78; bodies and, 79–80, 204; breastfeeding and, 53; class and, 3, 43–46, 61–62; contributions to, 2–3; denial of, 72; domestic work and, 47; emotions and, 58–61; femininity and, 73–74, 94, 195; food insecurity and, 51–53, 213n4; global, 202, 203; health and, 58; incomes and, 210n6; inflation and, 24, 37;

250 economic crisis (continued) intersectional analysis of, 61–62, 193; middle classes and, 25, 47, 72, 79–80; neoliberal globalization and, 11; opportunities for change and, 62–63; protest of, 162; psy culture and, 32; reproductive politics and, 128; sexual harassment and, 147; social movement organizing and, 3, 15; violence against women and, 142–148, 193; women’s bodies and, 2, 44, 201–202; women’s movements and, 105, 197–198; women’s work and, 47 economics, neoliberal, 24, 191, 201; consumerism and, 70; health care and, 54, 56; human rights movement and, 165; labor movement and, 38; military dictatorships and, 22; opposition to, 43, 164–165, 171; privatization, 30, 36; public sector reduction and, 30; traffic in women and girls and, 200; United States and, 202–203; women and, 28, 30, 46, 49, 97; workers and, 2, 146 education: public, 20, 50, 67; sex, 102, 103, 114 Eisenstein, Zillah, 8, 12, 13, 14 embodiment, researcher’s, 12–15 emigration, 19 emotions, 36, 58–61, 205; bodies and, 59, 62, 173–174; clandestine abortion and, 126 employment, 181; beauty and, 72–73, 196; femininity and, 88, 91; male-dominated occupations and, 93; women and, 28, 30. See also unemployment empresas recuperadas (recovered factories), 168–169, 212n30 Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres. See National Women’s Meetings England, war against, 23 ERP (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, guerrilla group), 22 Escobar, Arturo, 11 escraches (public shaming demonstrations), 15, 157, 158, 183, 217n16 essentialism, 96, 194, 218n1 ethnoracial minorities. See race and ethnicity Europe, 19–20, 25, 192, 215n3 Evita. See Perón, Eva Duarte de Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), 23 Family and Women’s Police Stations, 133, 144 Family Violence line (domestic violence hotline), 132 Farmer, Paul, 11

index Faur, Eleonor, 133 Feijoó, María del Carmen, 182 femininity, normative, 6, 88–89; alternatives to, 90, 92, 188–189; beauty contests and, 65; black women and, 152; class and, 64–65, 66–67, 79–80, 93, 94, 214n11; clothing and, 68–69; economic crisis and, 73–74, 94, 195; employment and, 88, 91; heterosexuality and, 87, 90–91; idealized models of, 70–71, 72; intersectional analysis of, 64–65, 66–67, 94; lesbians and, 87, 90; male-dominated occupations and, 93; motherhood and, 99; national identity and, 67, 196; performances of, 64, 84, 94; poverty and, 44, 76; protest and, 205; racism and, 64–65, 66–67, 80–87, 90, 93, 94; social movement organizing and, 146, 182, 183–184; state terrorism and, 67–69; strategic use of, 75–76, 186–187; violence against women and, 150; women’s bodies and, 94, 131; women’s subordination and, 65–66. See also beauty; cosmetic surgery feminist analyses. See intersectional analyses; transnational feminist analyses feminist scholarship, 131; body studies, 4–6, 10, 11–12, 192; continuum of violence and, 133–134; reproductive rights and, 105; violence against women and, 150; women’s rights and, 101 field methods. See research methods Fiestas de la Vendimia (Grape Harvest Celebration), 80 focus groups, 16, 76–77, 110–114, 134–135, 140 food insecurity, 51–53, 175 Forum against FTAA, 171 Forum for Reproductive Rights, 125 Foster, John Bellamy, 202 Foster, Susan, 206–207 Foucault, Michel, 9, 130–131 FREPASO (Frente Para un País Solidario), 211n17 Front for a Country with Solidarity, 211n17 Frost, Liz, 66 FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), 165, 171 gag rule (U.S.), 105, 197 Garguin, Enrique, 26 gender, 9, 64–65, 175–176, 180; abortion and, 10; action vs. speech and, 177; cardboard gathering and, 48–49; economic crisis and, 61; intersectional analysis and, 36, 192–193; labor and, 8, 47, 48, 50; performances of, 75–76; poverty

index and, 44. See also femininity, normative; men; women gender violence. See violence against women generic masculine, 184 Gente (magazine), 77, 92 Giménez, Beatriz, 32 globalization, neoliberal, 195; bodies and, 10–11, 35–36; breakdown of, 4; disembodied approach of, 38–39; economic crisis and, 11; economic violence and, 8; hegemony of, 9–10; intersectional analysis and, 36; standards of living and, 1; violent crime and, 143; women’s bodies and, 8, 35–36, 39, 61–63, 200–204; workers and, 8, 47–48 glocalism, 11, 195–200, 209n4 Gould, Sara, 203 Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 23, 198 Grape Harvest Celebration (Fiestas de la Vendimia), 80 Greenpeace, 182 Guardian (British newspaper), cosmetic surgery and, 80 harassment, sexual, 13, 133, 151; economic crisis and, 147; femininity and, 87; legal prohibition of, 29; poor women and, 48–49; racism and, 81, 152; resisting, 153; in streets, 155–156; in workplace, 134, 146–147. See also violence against women Harcourt, Wendy, 11 Harguindeguy, Albano (general), 23 Hasanbegovic, Claudia, 67–68, 71 health, 53–58; beauty and, 75, 76; health care, 54–55, 56–57, 57–58, 102; hospitals, 31, 57, 71, 214n9; insurance and, 54, 55; nutrition and, 37, 45, 53, 59–60; obesity and, 74–75; poverty and, 54–55, 76; pregnancy and, 98, 120; psychoanalysis and, 31–33, 59, 99, 212n24; of workers, 37–38, 48, 49–50 heterosexism, violence against women and, 130 heterosexuality, 87, 90–91, 130. See also sexuality Heyzer, Noleen, 97 hospitals, 31, 57, 71, 214n9 Human Rights Day, 199 human rights movement, 164, 165, 170, 198. See also social movement organizing hunger strikes, 178–179 I’ll Help You line (domestic violence hotline), 132 ILO (International Labor Organization), 35 IMF (International Monetary Fund), 24, 35, 36, 165

251 immigrants, 83–84, 85–86; from Europe, 19–20, 25, 215n3 INADI (National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism), 29 indigenous people, 25, 194–195, 211n20; Argentina’s nationhood plan and, 196; beauty standards and, 82; decimation of, 19–20; discrimination against, 26–27; invisibility of, 80; Kollas, 27, 210n6; poverty and, 83. See also race and ethnicity Indriso, Cynthia, 119 inflation, 2, 22, 24, 37 insider/outsider status of researcher, 17–19 Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence against Women, 29 International Conference on Population and Development (1994), 198 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 157, 199 International Day of Action for Women’s Health, 198 International Women’s Day, 157, 158, 199 intersectional analyses, 9–10, 36, 191, 192–193; beauty and, 193, 196; economic crisis and, 61–62, 193; femininity and, 64–65, 66–67, 94; lived experience and, 12; protest tactics and, 206; race and, 218n2; sexual harassment and, 152; violence against women and, 130, 158 interviews, structure of, 16 Iraq, war in, 171, 206, 218n3 Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands), 23 Itkin, Silvia, 72 Jasper, James M., 174 Jelin, Elizabeth, 211n12 juntas, military, 24 Justicialist Party (PJ), 211n11 Katzman, Melanie A., 219n3 Kaufman, Michael, 139 Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de, 158, 203–204, 211n11, 214n11, 219n6 Kirchner, Néstor, 24, 138, 203, 211n11 Kleinman, Arthur, 12 labor, 36; gender and, 8, 47, 48, 50; homemaking, 29; informal, 47, 48; neoliberal economics and, 2, 146; sweatshop, 201; women’s, 39, 46–47, 56, 97, 177; workers’ health and, 37–38, 48, 49–50; workplace harassment and, 134, 146–147

252 labor movement, 20–21, 29, 38, 47–48, 50, 65; May Day and, 65; recovered factories and, 168–169, 212n30 Ladies of the Beneficence Society, 65 language, generic masculine and, 184 Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), 199 Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro, 199 Laudano, Claudia, 177 laws. See legislation legislation, 211n15; abortion and, 103, 216n6; contraception and, 29, 102; rape and, 217n14; violence against women and, 28, 29, 158–159 lesbians, 215n14; domestic violence and, 156–157; femininity and, 87, 90; invisibility of, 9, 195; passing and, 91; Pride March and, 156, 215n13; violence against, 134, 216n1; women’s movements and, 170. See also sexuality Lobato, Mirta Zaida, 65, 166, 214n4 Lock, Margaret, 12 Lorde, Audre, 5 Lutz, Catherine, 216n6 magazines, 77, 92. See also media Magdoff, Fred, 202 March of Resistance, 165 Marianismo, 31 Martin, Ana Laura, 80 Marxism, 23, 37–38, 48 Matoso, Elina, 61, 189–190 McCaughey, Martha, 150, 154–155 media, 173; abortion and, 100, 108; beauty and, 69, 78, 196; cosmetic surgery and, 80; emigration and, 19; as evidence of crisis, 15; femininity and, 67, 92; food insecurity in, 51; portrayal of protests by, 186–187; psy culture and, 31; research methods and, 16; social movement organizing and, 163, 170; violence against women and, 132; women’s sexualized bodies in, 2, 65, 69, 77, 195, 196–197 Meehan, Oscar L., 219n3 men, 116, 145, 146, 170, 177; masculinity and, 77–78, 90. See also gender; violence against women Mendoza, province of, clandestine abortion in, 120 Menem, Carlos Saúl, 24, 36, 70, 103, 211n16 middle classes: abortion and, 108, 114; beauty rituals and, 78; crime and, 143, 144; devalued wages of, 49; economic

index crisis and, 25, 47, 72, 79–80; health insurance and, 55; neighborhood-based assemblies and, 166–167. See also class Ministry of Health, 119 minorities. See race and ethnicity Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 191 Moncarz, Esther, 58, 72 Montoneros (guerrilla group), 22, 218n9 motherhood: avoiding, 98–99; breastfeeding and, 5, 53, 207; Catholic Church and, 128; childbirth and, 6, 7, 45, 58; cultural value of, 96, 97, 110, 127; femininity and, 99; health care and, 56–57; political use of, 184–185; protest and, 181–182; right to, 111; sacrifice and, 96–97, 111; social movement organizing and, 23, 164–165. See also pregnancy; women’s bodies Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 23, 164–165, 184–185; actions of, 178–179; Association of, 170; clothing of, 173, 181–182; Founding Line, 165, 170; Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 23, 198; police violence and, 174; transnational feminist analysis and, 198 Mujeres Públicas, 100 Mundigo, Axel I., 119 murders, 133, 138, 149, 166 La Nación (newspaper), 16, 78, 100; abortion and, 108; social movement organizing and, 163; violence against women and, 132 nakedness, 5, 137, 156, 173, 206 Nari, Marcela María Alejandra, 182 National Campaign for Gender Equity and Against Violence, 158 National Census, 26, 211n19 National Council of Women, 132 National Feminist Meetings, 174 national identity, 64–65, 67, 83, 86, 196 nationalism, reproductive politics and, 104 National Women’s Meetings, 16–17, 34, 58, 104, 105, 106, 171 neighborhood-based assemblies, 166–168, 170, 171, 185, 212n28 neoliberal economics. See economic crisis; economics, neoliberal neoliberal globalization. See globalization, neoliberal Network of Women in Solidarity, 157 Neuquén, province of, 165 newspapers, 16; abortion and, 100, 108; beauty and, 78; cosmetic surgery and, 80; emigration and, 19; food insecurity in, 51; social movement organizing and, 163;

index violence against women and, 132. See also media nutrition, 37, 45, 53, 59–60 Obama, Barack, 203 Oberti, Alejandra, 182 obesity, 74–75 Página 12 (newspaper), 16 pain, physical, 59–61, 122 Panjabi, Kavita, 31 Parkins, Wendy, 161, 188 Partido Justicialista (PJ), 211n11 patriarchy, 90, 130, 150, 192–193 Pedagogies of Crossing (Alexander), 139 pension funds, nationalization of, 203–204 People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP, guerrilla group), 22 Perón, Estela Martínez de, 22 Perón, Eva Duarte de (Evita), 21, 33, 214n11 Perón, Juan Domingo, 21–22 Peronism, 21, 65, 102, 183; beauty and, 196, 214n4 Peronist Party, 211n11 Petchesky, Rosalind, 101, 198 Peterson, Abby, 172 physical appearance. See beauty; femininity, normative piquetero/as, 43, 163, 165–166, 212n29; clothing of, 173; distinctions between, 170; media and, 186–187; neighborhoodbased assemblies and, 171; Peronism and, 183; poner el cuerpo and, 185; power of, 177; protest tactics of, 169–170; reproductive rights and, 106 Plan Condor, 23, 211n13 police: brutality of, 143, 163; confrontations with, 187; crime and, 144; extortion by, 147; harassment by, 40; scandals and, 93; shantytowns and, 154; state terrorism and, 217n7; violence against women and, 140, 148–149; violence of, 165, 166, 168–169, 174; women officers, 93–94 police stations, women’s, 133, 144 political parties, 20, 24, 170, 211n11 politics, 30–31, 70, 103–104, 184–185. See also reproductive politics poner el cuerpo, 175–181, 185, 204–205; as action vs. speech, 177; hard work and, 176; political agency and, 161–162; power and, 189–190; risk-taking and, 180–181; sacrifice and, 178–180 population reduction, 102, 104 poverty, 11, 24, 36–37; abortion and, 108, 109, 111–112, 114, 116, 193; beauty and, 44, 72, 76–77; bodily evidence of, 41–42;

253 cardboard gathering and, 40–41; clandestine abortion risks and, 119, 126; employment and, 73; experiences of, 60–61, 62; femininity and, 44, 76; feminization of, 30; food insecurity and, 51–53, 175; global, 203; harassment and, 40, 48–49; health problems and, 54–55, 76; indigenous people and, 83; invisibility of, 195; nutrition and, 59; rights to have children and, 111; shantytowns and, 42–43, 143, 154; transportation and, 54–55, 147–148; U.S. women and, 203; women’s bodies and, 44. See also class; unemployment power, 10, 135; bodies and, 9, 172, 189; as hard work, 177–178; massed bodies and, 174; neoliberal economics and, 38; social movement organizing and, 189–190; social suffering and, 11–12; violence against women and, 130; violence and, 216n1; women’s bodies and, 5, 8, 187 pregnancy, 6, 13, 14; health and, 98, 120; state terrorism and, 136–137; unplanned, 106–107. See also motherhood; women’s bodies Preusse, Guillermo, 32 Pride March, 156, 215n13 privilege, 14, 206–207 Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization), 22 prostitution. See sex workers protests, 156, 163, 171; bodies and, 172–173, 189; dynamics of, 172; of economic crisis, 162; femininity and, 205; globalization of, 207–208; identifying clothing at, 166; importance of numbers of bodies to, 174; media portrayal of, 186–187; poner el cuerpo and, 175–177; reasons for, 187–188; risks of, 173, 180–181; security for, 165; sexuality and, 186; women’s bodies and, 181–188, 207 protest tactics, 219n4, 219n11; bodies and, 165–166, 205–206; cacerolazos, 167; class and, 169–170; escraches, 15, 157, 158, 183, 217n16; hunger strikes, 178–179; intersectional analysis of, 206; legacy of, 183; privilege and, 206–207; silent vigils, 182 psychoanalysis, 31–33, 59, 99, 212n24 psy culture, 31–33, 99 public education. See education, public public health system. See health pulp mills, opposition to, 182 Quota Law (1991), 29, 218n18

254 Rabinow, Paul, 18 race and ethnicity, 25–26, 86, 210n6, 218n2 (ch. 7); Afro-descendents, 25, 26, 27, 81–82, 196; black women, 81–82, 84–85, 152; chinitas, 158; employment and, 73; ethnic terms and, 214n2; whiteness and, 195–196. See also indigenous people racism, 25–27, 218n2 (ch. 7); beauty standards and, 7, 9, 82, 84–85; bleaching syndrome and, 83–84; bodies and, 9; class and, 26, 81, 82; demeanor and, 82–83; femininity and, 64–65, 66–67, 80–87, 90, 93, 94; immigration and, 215n3; intersectional analysis and, 192–193; invisibility and, 194–195; legislation and, 29; national identity and, 83, 86; sexual harassment and, 81, 152; violence against women and, 130, 158; women’s movements and, 170 Radical Civic Union (UCR), 20 rape, 133, 151; abortion and, 109, 113, 216n7; convictions for, 132–133; escraches and, 183; legal definition of, 29; legislation about, 217n14; pregnancy and, 107; as sexual terrorism, 144–145; as torture, 136, 139; as war weapon, 142, 201. See also violence against women recovered factories, 168–169, 212n30 Red de Mujeres Solidarias (Network of Women in Solidarity), 157 Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (Rabinow), 18 reproductive politics, 100–106; Catholic Church and, 103–105, 112–114; economic crisis and, 128; glocalism and, 197; legislation and, 102–103; nationalist discourses and, 104; neoliberal globalization and, 201; reproductive rights and, 97, 101, 105, 106, 112; women’s movements and, 105–106, 125. See also abortion; contraception research methods, 15–19, 209n6; insider/outsider status and, 17–19; researcher’s embodiment and, 12–15; social movement participation and, 16–17, 194 research subjects, 210n6 Rich, Adrienne, 90 roadblock movement. See piquetero/as Salta, province of, 158 Santiago del Estero, province of, 138, 183 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 211n10 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 136 School of Mechanics of the Navy, 68 School of the Americas, 23, 139

index Seattle, Washington, WTO protests in, 206–207 sex education, 102, 103, 114 sexism, 49, 90, 140–141, 150 sexual harassment. See harassment, sexual sexuality, 6, 101; abuse and, 149; bodies and, 9; deviance and, 93; femininity and, 64–65, 66–67, 87, 94; heterosexuality, 87, 90–91, 130; non-heteronormative, 215n13; protests and, 186; reproductive politics and, 106, 112; women’s movements and, 106, 170. See also lesbians sex workers, 48, 170; abortions and, 116, 119; femininity and, 65; violence and, 147 shantytowns, 42–43, 143, 154. See also communal kitchens Shapiro, Eve, 219n10 shelters, women’s, 157 Silveira, Alina, 80 Sixteen Days of Activism, 199–200 skin color, lightening of, 83–84 Smith, Dorothy, 6 soap operas, 219n6 social class. See class social control, 68–69, 130–131 social justice, 196; abortion rights as, 125–127, 198; bodies and, 101, 191; reproductive politics and, 102. See also human rights movement social mobility, individual-family, 211n12 social movement organizing, 162–171; alternative womanhood and, 174–175; bodies and, 43, 172–174; bodily performances of, 161; against crime, 143; dictatorship and, 22, 163–164; economic crisis and, 3, 15; emotions and, 173–174, 205; femininity and, 146, 182, 183–184; field research and, 16–17; history of, 163–165; human rights movement and, 164, 165, 170, 198; leaders and, 176; media and, 163, 170; motherhood and, 23, 164–165; neighborhood-based assemblies and, 166–168, 170, 171, 185, 212n28; poner el cuerpo and, 204–205; poverty and, 43; power and, 189–190; risks of, 185; scholarship of, 205; solidarity and conflicts within, 169–171, 213n33; state terrorism legacy and, 162–163; violence against women and, 145, 146, 156–159, 169; violence recovery and, 156–157; women and, 1, 62–63, 145–146, 185, 186, 188–189, 194; women’s bodies and, 161; women’s demands and, 169; work of, 175–177. See also labor movement; protests; women’s movements social suffering, 11–12, 36, 60, 62, 204

index sociology, 10, 12 soy production, 200, 219n6 Spain, colonization by, 19 state terrorism, 8; bodily marks of, 183; clandestine abortions compared with, 123; disappearance as tactic of, 22–23, 162–163; economic crisis and, 142; escraches and, 183; fallout from, 138, 139–140; femininity and, 67–69; feminization of subjects and, 136–138; human rights movement and, 165; impunity laws and, 24; police and, 217n7; pregnant women and, 136–137; social movement organizing and, 162–163; survivors of, 183; testimony against, 179; and torture, 8, 136, 139, 179, 183, 185; transnational linkages and, 139; violence against women and, 135–142, 159, 199, 200 structural adjustment. See economics, neoliberal subprime lending, U.S., 203 suffering, social, 11–12, 36, 60, 62, 204 suffragists, English, 188 supermodels, 70–71, 196 Supreme Court of Justice for the Nation, 133 Suriano, Juan, 166 Svampa, Maristella, 39 System of Information and Monitoring of Family Violence Against Women, 132 Taylor, Diana, 67, 136 Taylor, Verta, 206, 219n11 teachers, 50, 68 terrorism. See state terrorism Thematic Social Forum, 171 Thorne, Barrie, 18 Tilly, Charles, 219n11 torture, 8, 136–137, 139, 179, 183, 185 transnational feminist analyses, 9–10, 192–193, 195–196; beauty and, 80, 193; violence against women and, 198, 199–200 transportation, 41–42, 54–55, 78–79, 147–148, 213n7 Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance), 22 Underhill-Sem, Yvonne, 195 unemployment, 24, 37; masculinity and, 77–78; violence against women and, 142, 193 Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), 20, 23, 211n11, 211n17 United Nations Development Fund for Women, 97

255 United Nations Millennium Development Goals, 120 United States, 23, 139, 199; Argentina and, 70, 218n3; body studies and, 192; gag rule of, 105, 197; global economic crisis and, 4, 202–203; negative sentiments toward, 171; race in, 218n2 Uruguay River, pulp mills in, 182 Van Dyke, Nella, 206, 219n11 violence, 7, 8, 143; continuum of, 133–134; hotlines for, 132; murders, 133, 138, 149, 166; by police, 165, 166, 168–169, 174; power and, 216n1; sexual abuse, 90, 149, 158; structural vs. interpersonal, 129–131; in workplace, 134, 146–147 violence against women, 7–8, 132–135, 202; abortions and, 115; battered women and, 154–155; class and, 130, 146, 147, 154, 158; continuum of violence and, 133–134; vs. crime, 144; economic crisis and, 142–148, 193; explanations for, 134–135; as femininity enforcer, 150; intersectional analysis of, 130, 158; invisibility of, 216n1; legislation and, 28, 29, 158–159; lesbians and, 134, 156–157, 216n1; military couples and, 216n6 (ch 5); neoliberal globalization and, 201; police and, 140, 148–149; racism and, 130, 158; sexual assault, 133, 148–149; Sixteen Days of Activism and, 199–200; social context of, 159–160; social movement organizing and, 145, 146, 156–159, 169; state complicity in, 138; state terrorism and, 135–142, 159, 199, 200; statistics on, 132–133; transnational feminist analysis and, 198, 199–200; types of, 129–131; women’s individual resistance to, 153–157, 160; women’s shelters and, 157; as worldwide problem, 139. See also harassment, sexual; rape Virgin Mary, 31, 97 voting, 21, 28, 29, 163 Wainerman, Catalina, 30 war. See England, war against; Iraq, war in welfare system, U.S., 202–203 Western culture, 4, 64–65 women, 1–2; black women, 81–82, 84–85, 152 (see also race and ethnicity); breaking of stereotypes by, 185–186; childbirth and, 6, 7, 45, 58; clothing sizes and, 73; decorative role of, 89; demands of, 169; diets of, 51; disappearance of, 68, 136, 184, 185; dissatisfaction of, 92; employment and, 28, 30; gender expectations and, 180;

256 women (continued) in government, 218n18; health problems and, 55, 56; invisibility of, 184, 195; lack of credibility of, 148–149; in male-dominated occupations, 93–94; narratives of, 191–192, 194; neoliberal economic burden on, 28, 30, 46, 49, 97; nutrition and, 51–53; piquetera/o movement and, 166; poner el cuerpo and, 175–181, 189; poverty and (see poverty); rape and (see rape); rights of, 28, 29, 101; sacrifice and, 179; sexuality and, 6, 101; shelters for, 157; social movement focus and, 175–176; social movement organizing of, 1, 62–63, 145–146, 185, 186, 188–189, 194; subordination of, 4–5, 7–8, 65–66, 94; as teachers, 50; trafficking of, 158, 200, 219n6; in United States, 203; value of beauty of, 46, 71–72; violence and (see violence against women); visibility of in public sphere, 193; voting rights of, 21; white women, 82; womanhood and, 56, 67, 72, 99, 174–175, 188; work of, 39, 46–47, 56, 97, 177 Women in Black, 182 women’s bodies, 7–8, 191; abortion and, 128, 192–193; Catholic Church and, 31, 112–114; commodification of, 69, 77–78; dominant ideologies and, 6, 175, 189, 192–193; economic crisis and, 2, 44, 201–202; essentialism and, 194; exhaustion of, 49; femininity and, 94, 131; invisibility of, 195; maternal bodies, 96–97, 111, 127, 128, 136–137, 181–182, 184–185; motherhood and (see motherhood); neoliberal economics and, 97; neoliberal globalization and, 8, 35–36, 39, 61–63, 200–204; perceived vulnerability of,

index 145, 154–155, 173; poverty and, 44; power and, 5, 8, 187; pregnancy and (see pregnancy); protests and, 181–188, 207; rape and, 107, 151; reproductive politics and, 101, 128; resistance and, 161; sacrifice and, 49, 96–97, 111, 178, 180, 201, 213n8; sexualization of, 2, 65, 69, 77, 81–82, 195, 196–197; subordination and, 4–5, 12; torture of, 136–137, 183; transgressive potential of, 186–187; types of, 5; violence against women and, 148–149, 160. See also bodies women’s movements, 33–34, 184; alternative womanhood and, 212n26; economic crisis and, 105, 197–198; empowerment by, 188; global issues and, 158–159; international activist dates and, 199; legislation and, 102; organizations of, 169; reproductive politics and, 105–106, 125; sexuality and, 106, 170; solidarity and conflicts between, 169–170; transnational feminist analysis and, 198–199; violence against women and, 202. See also protests; social movement organizing working classes, 22, 65, 108, 114. See also class World Bank, 24, 36, 46, 54, 203 World Conference on Human Rights (1993), 198 World Conference on Women (1995), 198 World Health Organization (WHO), 71, 107, 117 World Social Forum (2003), 17, 206 World Trade Organization (WTO), Seattle protests against (1999), 206–207 xenophobia, 83 Young, Iris Marion, 5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BARBARA SUTTON is an assistant professor of women’s studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is also affiliated with the Sociology Department and the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies at the same institution. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oregon and a law degree from the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was born and raised. Her research interests include global gender issues, women’s activism, body politics, and human rights. Her publications include Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization, coedited with Sandra Morgen and Julie Novkov (Rutgers University Press, 2008).