CLAUDIA HERNANDEZ & ANDREA SALAZAR
Chile’s transfeminist movement faces an uncertain future after a decade of achievements, breakthroughs, and creative political strategies. We are living in a time that demands deep reflection in order to avoid caving to the opacity of the present.
Feminist fervor erupted in Chile during what became known as “Feminist May” in 2018. That uprising, led by thousands of university students, grew to include the occupation of over 20 universities across the country and mass demonstrations to publicly condemn the violence and sexual harassment we experience at the hands of authorities, professors, and our male peers.
Since then, feminists have undergone intense processes of politicization and mass mobilization in the context of a broad, creative, and diverse movement. We have forged new paths to reorganize the struggle in the face of the “top-down” shutdown of the 2019 uprising and the double standards of Chilean progressivism.
Today, we are taking stock and talking amongst one another. We come from different organizing experiences in Chile but share common ground rooted in feminist and anti-patriarchal practice.
What follows is our contribution to the transfeminist debates initiated by Verónica Gago from Argentina, Raquel Gutiérrez from Mexico, and Susana Draper from the United States, in a bid to understand and fight the patriarchal counteroffensive.
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