What strategies have Latin American women used to establish as strong political voice despite bias.
To successfully write a paper addressing any of these three prompts, you will need to draw upon various course materials relevant to the question you select.
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Guide Lines
-Papers should be 4 pages or approximately 1200 words long.
-12 point, Times New Roman font.
-1 inch margins at the top, bottom, and sides of the pages.
-Include page numbers on all pages (it does not matter where).
-Double space the text. Do not leave extra space between paragraphs (in Word, go -to format and paragraph and set spacing after paragraph to zero)
-Include your name, date, and class in the upper corner of the first page, single -spaced.
-Citations should be in Chicago style (Links to an external site.), using footnotes and a bibliography at the end.
ANSWER
Strategies Used by Latin American Women to Establish a Strong Political Voice despite Bias
Women have not always received the same opportunities that men do historically and globally. However, this has not stopped them from achieving great things and contributing a lot to the same societies they live in. Names that come to mind instantly as such as Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein’s Monster, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) in ancient England when publishers could not believe that women could come up with their own ideas in the form of literal work. Rosa Parks, 1955, the American activist that lead the civil rights movement that boycotted the Montgomery bus to protest segregation. These are just a few women who have cemented their place in history with actions that forever contributed to their prospective fields. Unfortunately, the world is not always ready to receive women’s historic heroes. Today great achievers like J.K. Rowling still have to use initials to mask their genders for their work to be received without prejudice. These ideas are not any different in Latin America. This essay will establish crucial roles that women in Latin America have played alongside male counterparts and sometimes, alone, to change the world into what it is now and to establish a strong political voice despite prevalent bias.
Between the years 1976 and 1983 in Argentina during the dictatorship of President Estela Barnes de Carlotto, a lot of children were stolen and illegally adopted, and their mother suddenly ‘disappeared.’ In 1977, Argentine women came together to found the Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo which basically translates to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in English. The aim of this organization was to locate the kidnapped children, match them to the biological families, and return them. In most cases, the children without their paternal and maternal parents were going back to their grandparents, and hence the organization was named. The grandmothers, aware of the complicated task in front of them of matching kids who were now young adults to their grandmothers, turned to science. The monumental contribution of this association was the commitment of these women to retrieve these children and bring them back home. Some of the children who were kidnapped now had families of their own but lacked the essential component in life, described by psychology as fundamental, which is the relationship between a person and his or her society. At the same time, a brilliant scientist in the United States, Mary-Claire King, was working on a biological formula in genetics that proved similarities in genes between two people related biologically, in this case, a grandmother and a granddaughter or a grandson[1]. The association of grandmothers held protests marching in the streets of Argentina, which was a risky endeavor owing to the fact that at that time, the country was ruled through fear and silence, where people could disappear overnight, and no one would be held liable. These women were resilient, informed, persistent, endearing, and courageous and established a strong political voice despite the odds that piled against them.
In Mexico, there is a common term, ‘soldaderas,’ which refers to the women who served in the military during the Mexican Revolution both for the federal and rebel armies. The duties of these women were to gather food, promote social cohesion, and tend to the wounded. Historians indicate that were the women not present during these long train rides to battle, the Mexican Revolution would not have happened as the men would have preferred to abandon the course and to be back at home with their own families[2]. Essentially, the mere presence of the soldaderas in these military missions was a driving force of keeping the armies fighting in the war. Additionally, some of these women also served in combat and achieved some rank in the military, such as commanding officers[3]. One such woman was Nellie Campobello, who documented the events of the Mexican revolution in her literal works. She used oral history and memory to write the violence she observed in the war, which brought about names of legends and humanized casualties of the war. The reason Nellie stood out is that she took the unique perspective that brought to light the vital contributions of Mexican women to the war effort. Male authors focused on battle politics and strategy while Nellie captured in her books, Cartucho and My Mother’s Hands, the psychology of that history often forgets as well as the trauma left behind on children and their mothers[4]. Revolutions are often a tragic thing for those with limited resources and power, and those are the ones history often forgets.
Race and skin color has been a source of prejudice historically and continues to be a problem in today’s society. In the Brazil city of Sao Paulo, a young woman documented such incidences where she was shunned for her dark skin, which was unlike the other light-skin and white Brazilians. Her name was Carolina Maria de Jesus, and having seen the unkindness of humankind in the society she lived in, she still got herself through school and documented her life in the slums of Sao Paulo. She was fearless in her belief and committed to her agendas, which more often than not alienated her which made her a monumental figure in the lives of many rural Brazilians who moved to the cities to look for better survival opportunities with the rise of the Brazilian industrialization. She persisted in being referred to as a ‘monkey,’ a mean word referred to the dark-skinned Brazilians at the time, but her work eventually led to the establishment of university programs designed to research Latin American history in the United States[5]. While it is obvious that oppression from an outside political power such as a colonialist or racism against an entire race is fatal, Carolina went beyond that and addressed the evils against people of the same society with a variation in skin tone and rural origination.
To conclude, this essay has established crucial roles that women in Latin America played alongside male counterparts and sometimes, alone, to change the world into what it is now and to establish a strong political voice despite prevalent bias. The essay has covered the contributions of the Argentine grandmothers towards finding the nations stolen children, the contribution of Mexican women during the revolutionary war effort, including the outstanding character of Nellie Campobello, and finally the contributions of Carolina Maria de Jesus in her literal works designed to reveal the oppression and prejudice of Brazilians against their own. These contributions are all vibrant in their own historic ways and have eventually led us to the world as we understand it and know it today.
Bibliography
De Jesus, Carolina Maria, Robert M. Levine, and José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. The unedited diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Rutgers University Press, 1999.
PBS Learning Media. The Storm that Swept Mexico: Revolutionary Women. Retrieved on 9th December 2020 from https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/1ebef8f4-b382-47cf-8b50-a7814cb0a619/the-storm-that-swept-mexico-revolutionary-women/support-materials/
Youtube.com. Institucional Abuelas 2016: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Retrieved on 9th December 2020 from https://youtu.be/VPUO6IvZ5mk
[1] Institucional Abuelas 2016: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo
[2] PBS Learning Media. The Storm that Swept Mexico: Revolutionary Women. Retrieved on 9th December 2020 from https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/1ebef8f4-b382-47cf-8b50-a7814cb0a619/the-storm-that-swept-mexico-revolutionary-women/support-materials/
[3] The Storm that Swept Mexico: Revolutionary Women
[4] The Storm that Swept Mexico: Revolutionary Women
[5] De Jesus, Carolina Maria, Robert M. Levine, and José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. The unedited diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Rutgers University Press, 1999.
