Gender, citizenship, and the politics of identity

Here, I will focus specifically on the process of identification in two discursive fields bound to grassroots movements. First, with regard to the Comité de Madres y Familiares de Presos, Desaparecidos y Asesinados de El Salvador "Monsenor Romero" (Monsignor Romero Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated of El Salvador - CO-MADRES), I will explore the construction of "motherhood" by those within the movement and contrast it with the way they have been read by outsiders. Second, I will explore the construction of the concept of "indigenous autonomy" within the national movement for indigenous rights in Mexico and its simultaneous endorsement and challenge by indigenous women and their advisers. After discussing these cases, I will draw some comparative conclusions suggesting ways to deal with the contradictory aspects of identity found in women's grassroots organizing. Earlier analyses of women's participation in grassroots movements have relied on dichotomous paradigms such as "feminine" versus "feminist" or a continuum of "practical" versus "strategic" demands. Focusing on the contradictory aspects of identity and the process of identification, I believe we can better get at the complexities and contradictions which emerge in the process of women's collective action rather than resorting to binary categories of explanation. Theoretical analyses of earlier movements as "feminine" or "feminist" have given way to recognition that, beginning in the 1980s, many women's movements in Latin America combined a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to the subordination of women to men.