There is something extremely important
in this condition which is shared with
women in other cultures and vis à vis different
issues. For instance, and in a very different
register, women emerged as a specific
type of political actor during the brutal dictatorships
of the 1970s and 1980s in several
countries of Latin America. It was precisely
their condition as mothers and wives which
gave them the clarity and the courage to
demand justice and to demand bread and to
do so confronting armed soldiers and policemen.
Mothers in the barrios of Santiago
during Pinochet’s dictatorship, the mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the
mothers regularly demonstrating in front of
the major prisons in El Salvador during the
civil war – all were driven to political action
by their despair at the loss of children and
husbands and the struggle to provide food in
their homes.