Abstract
In the edited volume, Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide, editor Elisabeth Jay Friedman brings together a diverse set of scholars and activists to examine the complex mixture of feminist and LGBTQ progression, stagnation, and regression ushered in by the so-called Pink Tide (left-leaning) governments that came to power throughout Latin America in the early part of the twenty-first century. Based on eight case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela, the contributing authors collectively demonstrate that the Left turn these countries took created demonstrable positives for women and the LGBTQ community, such as improved working conditions, increases in female representation in government, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. At the same time, however, these achievements were not evenly distributed throughout Latin America. And even in countries where gains occurred, they were often tempered by contradictory forces.
Even as Pink Tide governments ushered in progressive change in policy arenas like social welfare, political representation, and violence against women, they also frequently embraced anti-women’s and LGBTQ rights discourses and practices. The authors amply demonstrate that while the Pink Tide was transformative in a number of respects, these transformations were not uniform, and they often failed to fully embrace feminist and LGBTQ agendas. The challenge that this volume takes up, then, is in describing and explaining these contradictory elements of Latin America’s turn to the left and the variable outcomes that occurred across nations. In so doing, the authors make a strong case for just how fundamental gender and sexuality have been to the social and political reimagining of leftist Latin American nations.
The ultimate influence of Leftist politics and the degree to which nations embraced progressive agendas around gender and sexuality hinged crucially on at least two important factors highlighted in the volume. First, and perhaps most unsurprisingly, influence depended on the objective level of state institutionalization—notably the degree to which executive power was held in check. Second, it turned on the “complex, and sometimes contradictory, relationships among governments, left-leaning parties, femocrats, feminist and women’s movements LGBT movements and opponents as well as proponents of gender and sexual rights” (3). It is in centering heretofore ignored social movements and state agencies, highlighting their complex alliances, and examining their conflicts with conservative forces that the volume makes perhaps its most vital contribution. It asks us to move the analysis beyond the narrow confines of the state, encouraging us instead to examine the consequences of interactions between the state and the civil sphere, as well as the consequences of conflict and compromise within the civil sphere. The effectiveness of this approach is illustrated neatly in chapter one, which documents how feminist and LGBTIQ movements in Uruguay, along with often overlooked government institutions like the national women’s agency and various antidiscrimination institutes, mobilized effectively for a panoply of progressive policies related to, for instance, same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
As an edited volume, the book is well organized and thematically coherent, with each chapter providing unique theoretical and empirical contributions to what is an overall clear and significant thesis—that the Latin American Pink Tide simultaneously succeeded and failed in embracing transformative feminist and LGBTQ agendas because of the varied institutional contexts in which these national social transformations took place. The volume should appeal to a wide range of scholars, including those working in areas pertaining to globalization, comparative politics and historical methods, sexuality and gender, social movements, and, of course, the Latin American Pink Tide. Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not point out how well-crafted this volume’s introduction is. Typically, in edited volumes, these are rather superficial summaries of each chapter with a nod to the general theme cohering them. However, the introduction written by Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Constanza Tabbush should be carefully read and reread. Here the authors provide a wonderfully written exposition of the volume’s conceptual and methodological framework and the research questions animating not just its own empirical chapters but the broader field as well. As such, I recommend it (and the rest of the volume) to anyone teaching relevant graduate seminars.
