Comments on Kemy Oyarzun’s article

By commemorating Latin American Perspectives’ 50^th Anniversary and recalling its beginnings, Kemy Oyarzún reflects on a history of Marxist, Feminist, dependency theories, and solidarity between North-South, all the while interweaving her scholarly and activist work as well as that of other thinkers-activists, such as Kirkwood, Davies, Anzaldúa, Rubin, into her article. She takes us back to a specific political conjuncture: LAP’s beginnings in the early 1970’s, which coincides with the Chilean military coup that ousted democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973. In doing so, the article is also a brief historical account of Latin America at the height of the Cold War, and most importantly, of the diverse (and diverging) intellectual thought and activism that emerged at this particular moment in the American continent, be it within Marxism, Feminist and Gender thought, indigenous actors, Chicana and Black movements, highlighting identity and cultural politics. We are indebted to those thinkers who pursued their scholarly work, exiled or unable to return to Latin America, as Oyarzún herself (be they Latin Americans or other citizens), sometimes risking their lives at a time where “racial equality” and “feminism” were subversive terms in dictatorial Latin America (and elsewhere).

In this sense, her article is a tribute to the early writers of Latin American Perspectives, be they editors of the journal or thinkers willing “to stick their necks out” by publishing their research on capitalism, imperialism and socialism during the Cold War; and by debating with more “traditional” Marxists, some of whom belittled and accused their female colleagues of “liberalizing” Marxist thought. At the same time, as she recalls the support of a male Marxist professor, she points to one of the most important Marxist legacies to which feminist thought and other theories are indebted to: Marx’s theory of knowledge.

It is against this political backdrop that Oyarzun reflects on her scholarly work: from her activism in exile to her eventual return to Chile (1989) to co-found gender studies programs at the University of Chile, where she has been teaching for over three decades. This tribute to LAP draws on this confluence of diverging thoughts, as many colleagues in the LAP collective “were instrumental in organizing solidarity movements,” in the spirit of political praxis, such as LAGLAS, a movement which included exile groups from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

Through the article, Oyarzún highlights the historical meaning of LAP’s critical role. It is one thing to be a critical writer now, quite another then. And it is through memory as a venue of the theories and social movements of the 1970’s and 1980’s that mark this piece, that she calls on Latin American Perspectives to look to the future for “the path left uncovered.”