Violet fists: The case of the Coordinadora de Feminismos del Uruguay

Abstract

In this article I analyze the recent processes of Uruguayan feminist deployment in the 2014-2018 period, based on the study of the Coordinadora de Feminismos del Uruguay (CF), a space for articulation between various feminist groups and activists. Inspired by the criticisms made of the social movement category, in this inquiry I sought to observe a web of feminist networks and practices that politicized different levels of society. My purpose here is to study the way in which the Coordinadora de Feminismos conceives and constructs the struggle, identifying and analyzing the organizational dynamics that it develops, the meanings it produces and the actions it displays in the public space. Simultaneously, I reflect on the horizons of transformation that it is imagining. In this work it was possible to show that the CF displays a novel political nature. Starting from the encounter between women, it rehearses new forms of political construction. It weaves the struggle in an intersectional way, building a “we” that arises from identifying the existence of common pains and the desire to “change everything”. In relation to the actions that it unfolds, I observe that it develops characteristic forms of mobilization, which have systematically put feminisms on the streets. In terms of the Puños violetas: el caso de la coordinadorade feminismos del uruguay111111 senses that it constructs, it creates its own thought loaded with desires for transformation that transcends a project rooted in the state, deploying a “politics of autonomy”. Denouncing the deeper patriarchal structures of this society, the Coordinadora de Feminismos presents the possibility (and the challenge) of creating new ways of doing and being different.