Feminist movements in Latin America started at the grassroots level in each of the distinct nation-states. It is false to presume what teh previous author of this page stated: "The Feminist movement in Latin American countries began only in the 1920s after inspirations from outside influences. Because of the necessity of outside influence, feminism took hold only in larger cities where those influences could be heard. Everywhere else in Latin America, the tradition of patriarchy stood strong." Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ... Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America and in Australia as the Roaring Twenties . In Europe it is sometimes refered to as the Golden Twenties. ... Patriarchy (from Greek: patria meaning father and arché meaning rule) is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that...

Feminism in Latin America did not rise because patriarchy lost power, as was also mentioned in the article I'm reediting, but because women in many different parts of Latin America were forced to act. There are many examples of feminist leaders in Latin America. The reason many of us don't know them is because it serves our system not to know them. Also there is a long standing history of undermining the words of women that can back this up.

Luisa Capetillo Domitila Barrios de Chungara Carolina De Jesus Sandino's Daughters Gabriela Mistral Flora Tristan Leonor Villegas de Magnon

so many more....just because a name isn't known, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Rachel Cuomo

 Paulina Luisi was from Uruguay and represented the country in international women's conferences around the world. Berta Lutz, a Brazilian, organized the Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress. 

After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Latin America began to lose its sovereignty to a new era of colonialism. That is, the rise of free capitalism. During this time, Luisa Capetillo, a social anarchist woman coming to age in a time that increasingly assimilated more bodies into its campaign for democracy. In Mi Opinion, Capetillo argues for a complete reconstruction of social and economic values in order for women and workers to attain emancipation. Mi Opinion is a call to restructure hetero-normative relationships, religion, education, and labor laws and overthrow the power of the State. Paulina Luisi was a leader of the feminist movement in the country of Uruguay. ... Berta Maria Júlia Lutz (b. ...

There are so many more women who started at the grassroots level in Latin America. It was not something women looked elsewhere to for example, because in many circumstances in Latin America, "elsewhere" was part of the reason they found themselves in such desparate circumstances.

This Bridge we Call Home" Migdalia Reyes Routledge: New York

Latin American nations have historically held a political and economic Third World vulnerability, leading women to share a common legacy of oppression. The Latin American feminist movement has proposed that while economic dependency, poverty, and colonial relationships with western nations are key to understanding the conditions in which Latin American women live, patriarcha ideologies--such as traditional norms and values about women's social status and economic role, little access to formal political structures and educational resources, unequal division of labor and the exploitative nature of women's work, racism directed primarily at women of color (that is, of Native and African descent Mestizas), and the historical heritage of machismo and Marianismo characterize women's lives. Despite these conditions, women have always organized. For example, organizing in the early 1980s biannual, regionwide Latin American and Carribean feminist Encuentros offered women a vehicle for coming together and becoming politicized, and for developing strategies, to fight against prevailing sexism, racism, economic disparity, neo/colonialism, and political repression. While the organizing efforts focused on heterosexual women's issues, in 1987 lesbian feminist women sponsored the First Latin American and Caribbean Lesbian Feminist Encuentro with the goal of building a lesbian social movement." p. 464

Further Reading

• Jane Jaquette, The Women's Movement in Latin America: Feminism and the Transition to Democracy, Routledge 1989
• Karen Kampwirth, Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Ohio UP 2004
• Asuncion Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay: 1890-1940, University of Nebraska Press 1995
• Asuncion Lavrin, International Feminisms: Latin American Alternatives in: Gender and History 10 (1998), 519–34.
• Nancy Sternbach, Feminism in Latin America : from Bogota to San Bernardo in: SIGNS, Winter 1992, pp.393-434

Acosta Belén, Edna and Christine E. Bose. “U.S. Latina and Latin American Feminisms: Hemispheric Encounters.” Sign: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol. 25, No. 4, Summer 2000, pp.1113-1119.

Alarcon, Norma. “Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism.” Cultural Critique. No. 13, Autum 1989, pp. 57-87.

Alvarez, Sonia E. “Translating the Global: Effects of Transnational Organizing on Local Feminist Discourses and Practices in Latin America.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Vol 1., no. 1, 2000, pp. 29-67.

Alvarez, Sonia E., Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Ericka Beckman, Maylei Blackwell, Norma Stoltz Chincilla, Nathalie Lebon, Marysa Navarro, and Marcelo Ríos Tobar. “Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminisms.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol. 28, no. 2, 2002, pp. 537-579.

Azize-Vargas, Yamila. "The Emergence of Feminism in Puerto Rico, 1870-1930." in Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History. 3rd edition. (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 268-275.

Castellanos, Rosario. Selections from Another Way to Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Curiel, Ochy. “At the 9th Feminist Encounter: Inertia in the Age of Globalization”. Unpublished manuscript translated by Ginetta E.B. Candelario.

Fregoso, Rosa Linda. “Toward a Planetary Civil Society.” meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 1-29.

García, Alma. “The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse.” Gender and Society. Vol. 3, No. 2, June 1989, pp. 217-238.

Kaplan, Temma. “Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory.” Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society. Vol. 28, no. 1, 2002, pp. 179-199.

Reyes, Migdalia. “The Latin American and Caribbean Feminist/Lesbian Encuentros: Crossing the Bridge of Our Diverse Identiteis.” Gloria Anzaldua and Ana Louise Keating, This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 463-470.

Saldivar-Hull, Sonia. “Women Hollering Transfronteriza Feminisms.” Cultural Studies. Vol. 13, no. 2, 1999, pp. 251-262.