Transnational Latina Feminism in Toronto, Canada, 1970s–2000s: Treading the New Avenues

Latin American women have a long history of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist political engagement, expanding into feminist praxis with diverse women’s movements across Latin America. Following connections with the Chicana cannon and establishing connections with other racialized grassroots groups in Canada, a particular Latina feminist subjectivity emerged that complicates Canadian feminism and challenges dominant narratives of Latin American political activities. Canadian feminist historiographies regularly engage in processes of erasure that inscribes Whiteness and imperialism into the Canadian landscape. In this context, Latin American women’s agency, experience, and lives have tended to disappear—along with other racialized women—from Canadian consciousness and literature, relegating them to the perpetual and exclusive role of victims. In this dissertation, four historical junctures have been selected that illustrate the transnational praxis of Latin American women’s feminist subjectivities in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. These key moments showcase complex political debates, including the political crisis in Latin America, the imposition of neo-liberal policies, political repression, and exile. Diasporic Latin American women from the 1970s to the early 2000s developed organizations that responded to the political exigencies of the times, maintaining transnational connections with women’s and feminist movements in Latin America while also creating new spaces in Canada, ultimately evolving a unique diasporic Latina feminist subjectivity. These junctures are: (1) the solidarity movement of the 1970s to the 1990s, focusing on two women’s organizations; (2) the formation of the Latin American Coalition to End Violence against Women and Children (LACEV) in the 1990s; (3) the organization of the First Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Encounter in 1995; and (4) the foundation of MUJER in 2003. These four examples are neither linear nor lacking in controversy. This study is based on a mixed methodology that includes interviews with leading activists, document analysis, and personal experience. Throughout their historical journeys, Latin American women contributed not only to the processes of democratization in their countries of origin but also to Toronto’s feminist political milieu, providing a vital contribution and translating into invaluable organizations that continue to support Latin American women’s agencies and political praxis.

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