Gender, Race, Poverty and Political Violence

Concerning the literature on social movements in Latin America, during the decades 1960-1980, the grammar of "maternity politicization" or "militant motherhood" occupies a central place, as shown in the studies on the "Madres de la Plaza de Mayo" in Argentina , the "Wives" of El Salvador, "Supermadres" of Peru and Chile. In Brazil there was a significant participation of young women in the popular movements on free transportations (“Movimento Passe Livre) but not specifically of mothers. Restricting the scope of the analysis for mothers in the State of Rio de Janeiro, mothers have been mobilized for a long time. The movement "Mães do Rio” (“Mothers of Rio de Janeiro"), organized mothers because of the murders that had been occurring in which military policemen were accused of killing poor and black boys since the 1980s. Some of the locally organized mothers achieved major national and international visibility, such as the Mothers of Acari, Mothers of Vigário Geral, Mothers of Candelaria, and of Queimados or Nova Iguaçu. Today, these initial movements continue to inspire the mothers of boys who were supposedly victims of institutional violence. Theoretically, the struggle of women would be related to the role of mothers in the private sphere that would spread into the public sphere. Feminist movements strongly criticize this politicization of motherhood, which would eventually reinforce traditional roles of women as manifested by the association women/mothers/care. Such feminist movements claim to differentiate themselves from mere women's movement because their aim is to transform relations of inequality between men and women, moreover the transformation of women’s social identity. Other researchers state that mothers’ activism could produce significant gender changes, as far as they start to question the women's restriction to the domestic space by encouraging their participation in the public space. How to think, then, the political engagement of state violence victims’ mothers? How to understand the participation in the public sphere of black favela dwellers women who had their children aggressed and murdered by state agents? From our theoretical perspective, one cannot think gender regardless of their relationship with class and race, whose interweaving produces a peculiar form of political violence. This is where crosscutting ties show their importance both as a project of knowledge and as a political tool. Angela Davis and Patricia Hill Collins pointed out, from a perspective of black feminism, the historical significance of motherhood for the black woman as a symbol of empowerment and politicization, contradicting the theory of hegemonic feminism on the diminished status of motherhood. In Brazil, a more mixed population makes these assertions difficult to ascertain. This paper analyses the political activism of black women living in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro that came into the public sphere due to their identity of state violence victims’ mothers, seeing how the grammar of gender and race appears in their speech as these women build their identity due to militancy. We present here partial reflections of a study still in progress.