Seeking Rights from the Left is an original and provocative comparative assessment of eight Pink Tide nations and their engagement with the demands of feminist and queer movements. Elisabeth Jay Friedman has assembled a noteworthy group of distinguished and fresh voices, which outline and analyze the ways the contemporary shift to the left in Latin America has (or has not) addressed gender- and sexuality-based rights. The volume illuminates the paradoxical policies, actions, rhetoric, and relationships among states and social movements in the region from roughly 2000 to 2015. The depth and broad scope of the book make it one of the most comprehensive and innovative publications on the impact of left-leaning governance in Latin America.
The book is divided into a foreword, an introduction, and eight chapters, each analyzing national case studies, followed by an afterword. The introduction, written by Friedman and Constanza Tabbush, is a clear and well-formulated overview of the policy arenas covered in the book and includes a detailed section on the conceptual and methodological framework. Although the volume has a total of 16 contributors, the chapters are seamlessly tied together through a common objective of illuminating the complicated and contradictory impact of the Pink Tide on women and queer communities. The national profiles are organized from most to least successful in implementing progressive policies that challenge the heteropatriarchal societal order. Each chapter provides rich historical context specific to the cultural and geographical location in which the analysis takes place without overwhelming the reader with arduous detail. Furthermore, the contributors engage in a refreshingly approachable writing style that is appealing to academics, students, and activists alike.
Friedman’s volume deepens Latin American studies scholarship by engaging with interdisciplinary methods, concepts, and frameworks that draw from critical development studies, as well as gender and sexuality scholarship. The overarching question that Friedman and the contributors seek to answer is whether left-leaning governance has led to widespread progress in the struggle for gender and sexuality rights in Latin America. The national cases profiled in Seeking Rights from the Left demonstrate that the answer is complex and varied. While the past twenty years have been a period of rapid change for the region, that change has been inconsistent. Ultimately, the relationship between progressive political and conservative religious forces has determined which countries have enjoyed greater transformation and which have suffered “a lost decade” for gender and sexual equality.
Several lessons are to be gleaned from this volume. The first and perhaps most salient is that when analyzed through the lens of gender and sexuality, the ties that bind Pink Tide nations as sharing a common political experience quickly disintegrate. Although poor women undoubtedly achieved noteworthy economic advancement as a result of Pink Tide policies, the positive impact on women and queer populations is much more inconsistent, acute, and often paradoxical. Pink Tide nations largely engaged in a pattern of promoting social programs to improve the status of women only when the objective fit heteropatriarchal norms idealizing a conservative version of the family, avoiding or even reducing rights that challenged those norms, such as abortion and identity recognition. Such aggrandizement of the traditional family as central to the dominant masculine political order is not new to the Pink Tide, but rather a lingering impact of colonialism and, subsequently, neoliberalism.
The second lesson from Friedman’s volume is that while Pink Tide leaders condemned the neoliberal policies and practices popular in the 1980s and 1990s, their administrations retained striking parallels with previous neoliberal systems. They largely continued the legacy of situating policy initiatives in a framework that entrenched women’s traditional roles as mothers and wives, often dubiously characterized as “profamily.” In addition, while espousing civil and human rights, several administrations continued extractivist development practices popularized under neoliberal rule that disproportionately harm women, such as in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. It is undeniable that despite claims of revolution and resource redistribution, neoliberal economic policies, marginalization, and heteropatriarchy continue to pose contemporary political challenges in the region.
A third lesson is the powerful influence of conservative Catholicism on policymaking in Pink Tide nations. While the level of influence the church wields varies between states, it remains a political force that has pushed back the agenda of feminist and queer groups, particularly those objectives that challenge the centrality of the heteropatriarchal family in public policy. Importantly, the book’s contributors aptly situate the role of the Catholic Church in local contexts, as it is not uniform throughout the region. For example, while the church has no direct influence on how the Argentine people vote, the institution enjoyed an advantageously close relationship with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. In contrast, the church penetrated virtually all aspects of political and social life in Ecuador, most notably in Rafael Correa’s persistent choice of conservative family values over constitutional secularism.
A fourth and final lesson is the importance of women’s, feminist, and LGBTI movements, activists, and organizations in securing rights and policy improvements. Seeking Rights from the Left leaves the reader with the unequivocal certainty that any advancements in the rights of women and LGBTI communities were facilitated by the steadfast and constant work of activists. The depiction of how advocates and activists have been able to frame their demands strategically in a way that leads to their implementation into national policy is a welcome glimmer of hope in the grim portrayal of the Pink Tide in this volume.
There is no single factor that leads to institutional change, and the contributors situate each approach in the local historical and cultural context. They each analyze the institutions, political processes, diverse movements, and key actors who have been able to successfully integrate feminist and queer agendas into national policy. It is clear that women have long been the backbone not just of women’s and feminist movements but broader human rights and popular movements. For example, feminists achieved success through femocrats in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, while indigenous women’s groups utilized their uniquely close relationship to Pink Tide leader Evo Morales to advance their agenda in Bolivia.
In Seeking Rights from the Left, Friedman lifts the voices of younger scholars and activists, offering a refreshing and unique perspective on historical and contemporary political challenges in the region. The volume’s critical framework, informed by gender and sexuality studies, provides for a decisive and captivating comparative assessment of the turn to the left in Latin America. It sparks a new inquiry into the impact of politics and feminist and queer social movements in (post)neoliberal Latin America, which will undoubtedly lead to further examination of this underre-searched area of study. Furthermore, it has the potential to speak to activists and advocates in addition to academics, which may lead to continued monitoring and greater impact on the ground.
