10 - For Our Total Emancipation

Summary

This study examines how Salvadoran women shaped revolutionary praxis, thus challenging prior academic accounts that have situated armed struggle and socialism in opposition to feminism. The Association of Salvadoran Women (AMES), an organization composed of combatants, peasants, and exiles, redefined revolution to mean the overthrow of both capitalism and patriarchy. The sites of feminist praxis included guerrilla territories in El Salvador, refugee camps in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and solidarity networks in Mexico, Nicaragua, and the United States. Within the guerrilla territories, AMES members actively participated in community councils, an experiment in popular democracy, and generated a feminist praxis that linked the exigencies of wartime survival to the long-term liberation of women. At the international level, Salvadoran women collaborated with other radical women from Latin America and the United States in order to push their organizations in more feminist directions. This study is the first detailed analysis of AMES and offers a novel interpretation of the rise of Salvadoran feminism.