Gender, Citizenship and Social Protest: The New Social Movements in Argentina

MARCELO BERGMAN; MÓNICA SZURMUK

The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader

Duke University Press

Lugar: Durham, North Carolina; Año: 2001; p. 383 - 401

X This essay studies the process whereby a murder on the outskirts of an empoverished province in the norht of Argentina gave rise to a social movement that challenged the practices of recently established democratic governments in the region. To do this, we explore the complex relationships between the female body and the construction of the idea of citizenship. We show how the conflation of images of race, gender, and class play out in the construction of resistance embodied in the dead teenager. We argue that this movement was a new phenomenom in Argentina which, following the model of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo set out to claim civil rights and to dramatize this claim by situating it in the violated body. This essay examines the move toward the acquisition of civil rights by members of subaltern groups that characterizes this historical movement in the process of redemocratization in the southern cone.