The Political Performance of Motherhood: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo
During the Argentine dictatorship known as the Dirty War (1976-1983), thousands of people were systematically abducted by the government in order to eliminate all opposition to the regime. These "disappearances," which the dictatorship never admitted to committing, happened across class and age lines, but most of the kidnapped were young students and blue-collar workers. Despite the fact that associations and meetings of any kind were forbidden, a group of housewife mothers decided to protest the disappearance of their children. They began to gather every Thursday afternoon at the same time in the main square in Buenos Aires, Plaza de Mayo, walking alone or in pairs to avoid being arrested for disorderly conduct and wearing white kerchiefs on their heads to be easily identifiable. By showcasing their grief in public, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo turned their motherhood into a performance, and their bodies into political tools, to hold the government accountable. A 1985 Oscar-nominated documentary by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz, named after the group, not only recorded the Madres' performance of their collective identity, but was also instrumental in providing a broader audience for said performance.
Traditionally, motherhood in Latin America is restricted to the realm of the private. Diana Taylor explains that "'public' women [...] are considered prostitutes or madwomen—that is, nonmothers, even antimothers," while "good mothers are invisible," (1) because they stay home with their children. However, the Madres carved for themselves a third position that broke this dichotomy, going on to become "one of the most visible political discourses of resist...
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...y Wheeling speech created nationwide hysteria, and with its impeccable timing just days after the conviction of the State Official Alga Hiss for lying under oath about his association with the communist Soviet as a spy, fueled the fight on communism. (citation) McCarthy war on communism during the “Second Red Scare” did not leave any individual safe from accusations. He attacked government agents, entertainment industry workers, educators, union members, and alienated the left-wing Democrats. McCarthy helped to create the atmosphere of suspicion and panic with his growth in media coverage. McCarthy’s words made for big headlines and the media was quick to cover his stories. This exposure helped facilitate American approval of McCarthy and empowered him to make more accusations on those suspected of subversion. In 1953, McCarthy headed the Government Operations Commit
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Miguel Melendez’s book, “We Took the Streets” provides the reader with an insightful account into the activities of the Young Lords movement established in the latter years of the 1960s and remained active up until the early seventies. The book’s, which is essentially Melendez’s memoir, a recollection of the events, activities, and achievements of the Young Lords. The author effectively presents to the reader a fascinating account of the formation of the Young Lords which was a group of college students from Puerto Rico who came together in a bid to fight for some of the basic rights. As Melendez sums it up, “You either claim your history or lose authority over your future” (Melendez 23). The quote is in itself indicative of the book’s overall
FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]
McCarthy was elected senate after becoming a lawyer in his sate of Wisconsin. During the first few years of his term nothing major really happened until 1950. In a speech to the Women’s club of wheeling in West Virginia he stated that he had a list in his hand of about 205 known members of the communist party working for the United States department. President Harry Truman had signed an executive order that said that all communists or fascists could not obtain a United States government job. The FBI played a big role in the investigation of this list McCarthy contained. McCarthy’s friend j. Edgar Hoover, which was a violent ant-communist in the federal government, could not wait to expose the people McCarthy accused of being communists. McCarthy’s list created a nationwide scar among the people of the United States. Everything McCarthy said was a lie and he had no evidence to show that the people he accused were really communist but, because of the start of the Korean War and the arrest of two American soldiers accused of spying on the Soviet Union American citizen...
The Conscription Act delivered the final straw in the long list of discrepancies, the catalyst that turned that small forest fire into a raging inferno of hate and fear. The white working class (mostly Irish immigrants) were infuriated, they couldn’t understand how they, white, hard-working voters were being punished. The government was forcing them to fight a war they didn’t support and the only way they could avoid it was to pay 300 dollars (a years wages for most), yet they would pay African Americans 1,000 dollars for volunteering. The new federal draft conditions also expanded to include a wider age range of men it would take. “The conscription law targeted men between the ages of 20 and 35, and all unmarried men up to age 45.” Adding to the already high tensions of laborers, since the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation they ...
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Joseph McCarthy followed strict, right-wing republican rules and is considered to this day to be an extremist. Revealing that the communists, who all of America greatly feared, were working so close created a sense of fear. Americans felt uneasy and unsafe at the thought of the enemy working in their government. Part of McCarthy’s plan was to use the fears and feelings of peril to create an outright war against the communists. He w...
Selena’s death sent “shockwaves” across the Latin community as well as the English-language. Tens of thousands went to her funeral to pay their respect to her and her family. After her death, Selena’s first English album, “Dreaming of You”, was released and became a huge hit. They made a movie of her biography in 1997, starring Jennifer Lopez as Selena and James Edward Olmos as her father. Thousands of people visit her grave, Mirador de la Flor, in Corpus Christi, near the Selena Museum dedicated to her life, fame, and career. Even today, she’s still considered “La Reina de Tejano” and her legacy still lives on.
As much as men are working, so are women, but ultimately they do not face the same obstacles. For example, “Even if one subscribes to a solely economic theory of oppression, how can one ignore that over half of the world's workers are female who suffer discrimination not only in the workplace, but also at home and in all the areas sex-related abuse” (Moraga 98). This gives readers a point of view in which women are marginalized in the work place, at home, and other areas alike. Here Moraga gives historical accounts of Chicana feminists and how they used their experiences to give speeches and create theories that would be of relevance. More so, Moraga states how the U.S. passes new bills that secretly oppress the poor and people of color, which their community falls under, and more specifically, women. For instance, “The form their misogyny takes is the dissolution of government-assisted abortions for the poor, bills to limit teenage girls’ right to birth control ... These backward political moves hurt all women, but most especially the poor and "colored." (Moraga 101). This creates women to feel powerless when it comes to control one’s body and leads them to be oppressed politically. This places the government to act as a protagonist, and the style of writing Moraga places them in, shines more light to the bad they can do, especially to women of color. Moraga uses the words, “backward moves”
The idea that a woman’s job is to be a wife and mother is old-fashioned, but not completely out of style. Though these roles require a great deal of talent, resilience, patience, love, and strength, to name a few, they are often underestimated or depicted as simple. Especially in modern times, many women in the United States who stay home to raise a family are viewed as anti-feminists, whereas women in Latin America are not criticized for similar actions. In recent decades, more Latin American women have started to break the mold, daring to be both sexy, and successful in the workforce, while remaining pillars of domestic life.
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