Black women weaving resistance

Katherine Chalá Mosquera, Alison Pabón Tadeo, Génesis Anangonó and Lois Nwadiaru discuss International Women's Day from an Afrocentric perspective. They agree on the importance of recognizing and valuing diverse forms of activism and resistance, which are not always reflected in feminist discourse, but which are central to the construction of a more just and equitable world. Photo © Darwin Minda.

Opinion • Génesis Anangonó • April 11, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Although enslavement, colonialism and structural racism shape their history, Black women have never been passive victims. Black and Afro-descendant women have always resisted, whether that is fighting for freedom against slavers or organizing for sexual and reproductive justice to avoid childbirth while enslaved, among many other instances.

Martina Carrillo was one of the first Black women to rise up and resist the living conditions forced upon enslaved people on plantations in Ecuador. In 1778, she fled to Quito, where she delivered a formal denunciation of her mistreatment to the President of the Royal Court of Quito. She protested the lack of food and clothing, housing conditions, and a lack of time with which to tend to her own land.

Fearing that her action would prompt a rebellion among the enslaved, President José Diguja wrote a letter requesting an end to such mistreatment. The administrator of the La Concepción plantation ignored his text and punished Carrillo with extreme cruelty, giving her 400 lashes that tore her chest open. Martina Carrillo's actions marked the beginning of Maroon rebellion in ancestral Afrochoteño lands.

Like Carrillo, Black and Afro-descendant women lead—and continue to lead—struggles and insurgencies in Latin America and the Caribbean. There is a tendency to read them as merely local, but they are important for women in rural territories, in their homes and in the spaces that they inhabit. 

On March 8 at the Contemporary Art Center in Quito, I met with three other Afro-descendant women to discuss the Maroon rebellions and reflect on the legacy of our resistance and its significance in the face of hegemonic feminisms in Ecuador.

Making Black women’s struggles visible

Katherine Chalá Mosquera is an anthropologist and internationalist. She heads the Research Center for African and Afro-American Studies (CEAA) at the Intercultural University of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities in Quito. Chalá defines herself as an Afro-descendant woman and a daughter of the ancestral territory of Valle del Chota, La Concepción y Salinas. 

Working with the Federation of Black Communities and Organizations of Imbabura and Carchi (FECONIC) and the Black Family Research Center (CIFANE) has helped Chalá understand the realities that she inhabits as an Afro-descendant woman who grew up among Afro-descendant women.

Chalá Mosquera points out that their struggles don’t take place in public, educational or activist spaces. "These efforts and mobilizations [of Black women] weren’t marches or they don’t happen in academia. I didn't—and still don't—see them there. I saw them and see them in other spaces, fighting every day, all the time," she said. 

Chalá Mosquera notes that there is a long history of Black and Afro-descendant women’s struggle for equality, but that it is difficult to understand “casa fuera,” which is to say, outside of their communities. Since the time of enslavement, Black and Afro-descendant women have resisted gender, class and racial oppression and fought for freedom and justice. 

International figures such as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Angela Davis have long been considered leaders in the struggle for the Black women’s rights, but the contributions of Black and Afro-descendant women in Ecuador and the region have not always been valued. In many cases, their contributions have been marginalized in a movement dominated by white women.

Hegemonic feminism is rooted in power and operates by denying the fact that women have different lived experiences. It upholds a narrow ideal of “woman” and ignores the intersections of race, class and gender. Hegemonic feminism seeks "equality" and excludes racialized women from the conversation, according to Lois Nwadiaru, a woman who identifies as Black, Afro-Guayaquileña and feminist.

Although there is an acknowledgement that "we are diverse, at the end of the day, the idea is that we’re all women and the same things happen to all of us," said Nwadiaru. "But, no, they don’t. I'm not just a woman. Other things that impact me, too, and we need to talk about it." 

Black and Latin American feminisms challenge hegemonic feminism through diverse theoretical and conceptual frameworks that make it possible to understand how different forms of oppression—race, gender and class—intersect and affect Black and Afro-descendant women in particular ways. Black and Afro-descendant women have advanced a feminism that recognizes these different forms of oppression and seeks to radically transform society.

"There were ongoing battles against patriarchy before the twentieth century, when women's struggles really began to get noticed, but historians haven’t acknowledged many of the struggles that preceded us and that we still live daily,” Alison Pabón Tadeo, an Afro-descendant woman born close to Valle del Chota, La Concepción y Salinas, which is ancestral Afro-Ecuadorian territory. “Just to exist as a Black, Afro-descendant woman is to be in constant struggle; our battle is to survive." 

Resistance for life

Pabón Tadeo explains that Black and Afro-descendant women have led resistance and insurgencies for social transformation and life throughout history. 

For many Black and Afro-descendant women, this resistance represents life, even today, she says. It is a tool for survival in a world of marginalization and oppression.

Our women ancestors were not treated as women and neither are we. In the past, as today, our humanity is still questioned; the realities that hegemonic feminism decries do not intersect with our experiences. We have never been treated as “damsels in distress” who need to be saved. We have never been shielded from the burdens of work or considered "virginal.” 

Dehumanization is constant in the patriarchal system, which is also marked by racism. And this set of oppressions must be properly understood. 

"There is an erroneous understanding of intersectionality that sees it as being about 'yes, let's add woman + Black + impoverished + trans + elderly.' It becomes about adding categories to see who has the most," said Nwadiaru. "Decolonial feminists have challenged this methodological problem in intersectional discourse. We can't think of our identities as a sum of parts, but only as a whole." 

When we talk about oppression, we are not trying to compete. We do it to understand, for example, why being an impoverished and rural mujernegra [Blackwoman] limits access to basic rights and creates situations in which others speak for us.

While hegemonic feminism seeks political participation and to break glass ceilings, Black and Afro-descendant women resist and oppose the colonial violence that still tries to control us. 

We respond with actions organized around caring for our land and territories, working to heal ourselves with ancestral medicine, and keeping alive the memories and struggles of our foremothers who, like Carrillo through her escape, lit the flames of insurgency. 

In a context of dehumanization, it is enormously risky to defy the system, but we do so because we yearn for freedom. We resist in order to transform our realities and turn our insurgencies into a collective rebellion against slavery which, though abolished, has evolved rather than disappeared.

Ancestors like Martina Carrillo remind us of the lengthy history of Black and Afro-descendant women’s struggles for freedom and justice. This leads us to question the present and even gender studies, which has long suggested that the only valid forms of struggle and resistance line up with the mandates of hegemonic feminism.

In this context, the streets, the squares, academia, and March 8 become crucial spaces in which to make differences visible and rethink feminism, or rather, feminisms. 

As the daughters of the African diaspora in the Americas have taught us, when resistance is a constant practice, it is not always necessary to explain its forms or to theorize our existence and lives.