Duke University Press Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide

Seeking Rights from the Left offers a unique comparative assessment of left-leaning Latin American governments by examining their engagement with feminist, women's, and LGBT movements and issues. Focusing on the “Pink Tide” in eight national cases—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela—the contributors evaluate how the Left addressed gender- and sexuality-based rights through the state. Most of these governments improved the basic conditions of poor women and their families. Many significantly advanced women's representation in national legislatures. Some legalized same-sex relationships and enabled their citizens to claim their own gender identity. They also opened opportunities for feminist and LGBT movements to press forward their demands. But at the same time, these governments have largely relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power, ignoring or rejecting the more challenging elements of a social agenda and engaging in strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights. Moreover, the comparative examination of such rights arenas reveals that the Left's more general political and economic projects have been profoundly, if at times unintentionally, informed by traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. Contributors: Sonia E. Alvarez, María Constanza Diaz, Rachel Elfenbein, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Niki Johnson, Victoria Keller, Edurne Larracoechea Bohigas, Amy Lind, Marlise Matos, Shawnna Mullenax, Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, Diego Sempol, Constanza Tabbush, Gwynn Thomas, Catalina Trebisacce, Annie Wilkinson  Review " Seeking Rights from the Left is a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on feminist and queer activism, and represents an important and timely contribution to scholarly understandings of the relationship between grassroots identity-based movements and state power."--Baird Campbell "Journal of Latin American Research" (11/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) "One of the strengths of this volume is that each chapter features many different voices-from the elite as well as the marginalized and from both political insiders and outsiders-in order to provide a full and complete picture of a critical period in Latin American history.... Seeking Rights from the Left is an intriguing and thought-provoking volume."--Evan C. Rothera "Social Movement Studies" (6/5/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Seeking Rights from the Left provides a relevant and nuanced overview of the extremely complex and diverse political processes commonly known as the Pink Tide in Latin America, focusing on gender and sexuality issues. . . . The book raises old and new questions about relationships among the left--broadly speaking--and feminist, women's, gay, lesbian, and transgender political demands."--Nayla Luz Vacarezza "Mobilization" (8/1/2019 12:00:00 AM) "As an edited volume, the book is well organized and thematically coherent. . . . 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."--Matthew Ward "Gender & Society" (6/27/2019 12:00:00 AM) "The depth of analysis contained in this collection is remarkable. As the chapters reveal, the quest to secure political rights for women and the LGBT community during the Pink Tide era was full of contradictions and mixed results. However, as Sonia E. Alvarez suggests in her afterword, that is precisely what makes this a valuable contribution to the fields of Latin American Studies, Gender and Sexuality, and Politics: it provides a historical dimension to further understand the vibrant cultural developments of activists who remain committed to defend human rights t