COLLECTIVE PERSEGUIDAS- The Ascension of Black Women in the Brazilian Materialist Feminism Movement

COLLECTIVE PERSEGUIDAS

Brazilian black and brown women form a new radfem collective

The Collective Movement Perseguidas is a project directly aligned to radical feminism, founded by non-white Brazilian women and started in the year of 2020. With the proposal of translating videos, texts as well other productions made by important feminists about racial and radical analysis. It also aims to produce authorial content and disseminate the news about marginalised women in Brazil, who are mostly black and indigenous women. By means of social media such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, Perseguidas maintain their focus on the existence and improvement of marginalised and segregated women in society, primarily those existing in Brazilian territory, the black, indigenous and Asian females victims of recurrent racism, in addition to patriarchy.

Initially, the project took place by the collective effort of five non-white women determined to offer translations of videos and texts made by radical feminists from different countries. However, it was noticed an urgent need to prioritize and implement the role of non-white women in radical feminism, given the existence of racism in society and the perpetuation of the segregation of women who don’t fit the Eurocentric standard. Thus, the Collective Movement Perseguidas arise, with the main objective of denouncing the violence and the erasure of black, indigenous and Asian women in the racial context and in the biological reality that oppress them within the patriarchal system, two systems that often walk together. It is essential to raise the voices of these women who, repeatedly, produce and debate feminism and racism and do not receive the visibility and feedback they deserve.

The name Perseguidas (in English, "Persecuted") is an ambiguous pun, that besides expressing a nickname used culturally by many regions in Brazil to refer to the vulva, also refers to the fact that women are hunted throughout history for being born with vulva, vagina, uterus and ovaries. Furthermore, it fits perfectly as a characteristic of radical feminist women who are “cancelled” in violent ways for understanding their oppression and spreading it to other women. Women who, when they are non-white, are questioned in order to be silenced all the time. It is extremely important that, within radical feminism, there is an awareness that these women are being raped by patriarchy and murdered by racism and, in addition, one system helps the other. This awareness cannot be erased and it's everyone's duty to expand and shout for those who can't do it anymore. It's common knowledge that systematic racism falls over to the non-white women's bodies, taking them to the lowest location in the social pyramid.

Contextualising the Brazilian situation, the colonial period took indigenous and African peoples to longs years of slavery. Post-abolition of slavery, these groups didn't have any action to be reinserted in the society, this means, without lands, without any financial aid, etc. So, black and indigenous women were raped and segregated from all social spaces and basic human rights. However, there are strong examples of Brazilian women who have become a symbol of the anti-colonial revolution in Brazil, a constant struggle even today, due to the social ills of that period being strongly present in Brazilian reality. Women like Dandara, Tereza de Benguela and other women indigenous leaders of different peoples fought and must be remembered in history (that often try to erase them), in addition to the fact that there are currently very influential women in literature of today's society that must be considered by history, sociology, and other areas of knowledge, increasing to the radical analysis of race and gender.

The Collective Perseguidas is adamant of the urgency to give attention to the revolutionary existential context of black, indigenous, Latin American and Caribbean women. Because of it, it is extremely necessary we have a day dedicated to those women: July 25th. On this day we can remember how important it is to keep rising up our voices, and our fights, as black and indigenous Brazilian women in a Latin American context. Women like Teresa de Benguela, a quilombola* revolutionary leader and a fighter against the slavery oppression — whose the name is honoured on July 25th in Brazil —,Dandara dos Palmares, an ex-slave who took the leadership of the Quilombo dos Palmares, and, later, committed suicide because she could not turn back to the slavery system, among other feminine icons that could be compared to a lot of radical women on present resists and urges for the need to have their voices to be rise in Latin American society. Thus, the Collective Perseguidas, founded and run by non-white women, inspires and bases itself on the permanent resistance of the black and indigenous women on a racist system which is an ally to the patriarchy system.

In this way, non-white women must unite on an equivalent reality so that retribution and revolution can happen, and so that the black, Latin American and Caribbean women can be remembered not only on July 25th, but they must have to be the dominant voice at the anti-racist and patriarchal front line all over the world, added by other women ethnically non-euro centred. For Perseguidas, there are no other words better intended or absorbed for those women than ‘let's fight!’.

Quilombola*: Quilombo was a place that ex-slaves used to run away and hide from their misters, those places were like a community and the inhabitants were the quilombolas’.