In this article, we attempt to show how the politics of exchange and international solidarity among women’s organizations in Latin America, and Africa, and Asia [1] gave rise to a women’s agenda capable of articulating a distinct political culture — one that set Third World women’s movements apart from North American and European feminism. To do so, we focus primarily on the experience of two organizations that held political significance in their respective regions: the National Union of Algerian Women (UNFA, by its French acronym) and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC).
In both organizations, the international dimension occupied a privileged place, since it was through this dimension that they sought to strengthen their cause within an international context shaped by the Cold War and the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement. As a result, the women’s agenda advanced by these organizations became an important tool within an international contest that sought to draw countries into the orbit of one or the other of the two major blocs. In turn, the joint work carried out by these organizations — together with others from Asia, Africa, and Latin America — made it possible, over the years, to outline a women’s politics that could not necessarily be identified either with Western feminist movements or with Soviet women’s organizations. This was no accident: in the international arena, women’s politics was used as one more tool of the policy of non-alignment pursued by countries such as Algeria and Cuba. Along this path, the building of solidarities among women from countries identified with the Non-Aligned policy allowed for the projection of a distinctive image that would become emblematic in the construction of a Third World political identity.
Already in the earliest internal statutes and in the programs of the first congresses of the UNFA and the FMC, we can trace the debates that began to give rise to an agenda that would distinguish this women’s movement from its Western and Soviet counterparts within the Cold War framework: its commitment to prioritizing anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles on its agenda, its goal of “modernizing” women as a means of “modernizing” their societies, its concern with social questions — such as illiteracy — and with the problems of the peasantry, among others. In this respect, we can read the following diagnosis in a document prepared for the 2nd Congress of the National Union of Algerian Women:
The challenge in this struggle is the same: it is a matter of women being able to translate into fact the principle of equality between the sexes at every level, respecting women’s political, social, and economic rights. The difference lies in the context of this struggle, since it is not the same in developed countries as in those that make up the Third World. If the main obstacle to the advancement of women lies chiefly in certain retrograde social attitudes, then women of the Third World must think through their problems within the broader framework of the underdevelopment affecting their country.[1]
On the other hand, as we have already noted, the “woman question” was taken up by both countries as a diplomatic tool that allowed the newly triumphant revolutions of Cuba and Algeria to establish new solidarities and occupy transnational spaces from which to make their cause known and weave networks. It is therefore not surprising to find, in the various documents produced by these organizations, constant references to the need to create and strengthen ties. While the UNFA document already cited points to the need to participate in international forums to advance the Palestinian cause, to promote Arab and African women as a priority, but also to strengthen relations with women from socialist and Third World countries — since “they share the same concerns as Algerian women” — in the case of the Federation of Cuban Women, the following was likewise affirmed as important:
To strengthen bonds of friendship and solidarity with women’s organizations around the world, and above all with those of Latin America. To increase solidarity among peoples, especially their women, who struggle for economic independence and sovereignty against imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism.[2]
In this new context, it should come as no surprise that the growing participation of women in the revolutionary organizations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia built a new women’s political identity that identified with the struggles of the Third World. In turn, both Algerian and Cuban women contributed to shaping a new feminine political subjectivity, whether through their own experiences during their wars of national liberation, or through the exchange they developed in the decades following their respective revolutionary triumphs.
Transnational Spaces in the Emergence of an Anti-colonial and Anti-imperialist Women’s Movement in Algeria and Cuba
For many years, the history of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) remained largely forgotten. The few references to the Federation’s activism described it as a satellite organization of the Soviet Union, one more space for reproducing communist propaganda within the Cold War context. Recent research, however, has begun to complicate this picture of the WIDF’s role between women’s activism and feminism, particularly in light of the participation of Third World women’s organizations within the Federation.[3]
Founded in 1945, as the independence process accelerated across the colonies of Africa and Asia, the WIDF began receiving an increasing number of requests from Third World women asking for help in making their struggles visible, whether through solidarity campaigns or through its magazine, Women of the Whole World, published in several languages. During the Algerian wWar of iIndependence, for instance, the WIDF gave prominence to the struggle being waged by Algerian women, especially from 1957 onward, during the “Battle of Algiers.” The Federation also promoted the participation of Algerian delegates in various regional and international gatherings and organized campaigns calling on its affiliated organizations to donate clothing and food to Algerian refugees in Tunisia.[4]
By 1960, the WIDF’s discourse had begun a transition in which the themes of peace, disarmament, motherhood, and anti-fascist struggle — typical of the early Cold War period and of a discourse more closely aligned with the USSR — were being reworked in favor of anti-colonial struggle, anti-imperialism, and the legitimacy of wars of national liberation, not without tensions between older and newer members.[5] Yet these same debates were what turned the WIDF into a space where Third World women’s movements found both a discursive synthesis and an agenda. These exchanges within the Federation helped construct an image of the “Third World woman” closer to the figure of the combatant and to the “revolutionary path” toward socialism embodied by both Algerian and Cuban women.
The experiences of Cuban and Algerian women were emblematic in transforming the character of the Federation by the mid-1960s, not least because they knew how to make use of the international platform the WIDF offered them to publicize their cause and then build alliances that would strengthen their governments within the context of Cold War cultural and political confrontation.
Although the Algerian and Cuban revolutions maintained close contact from their earliest days, their women’s movements privileged different regional frames of reference in their own construction: the UNFA privileged the Maghreb and Africa, while the FMC privileged Latin America and the Caribbean. In any case, this strategy did nothing but strengthen the position of each organization within its own region while also amplifying its reach beyond its own continent. In this sense, Mujeres — the FMC’s official publication — acknowledged that the international work carried out by the FMC was key to establishing contacts and political relationships with other Third World women’s organizations, in addition to making the Cuban Revolution known beyond Latin America.[6] For its part, Algeria’s pursuit of a Non-Aligned foreign policy had allowed the country to be identified with the Arab world and the African continent, while also turning it into one of the great symbols of anti-colonial struggle and a capital of national liberation movements worldwide. In this context, the international work carried out by both the UNFA and the FMC became one more tool that their respective governments could use in service of their international strategy.
Along this path, the holding of the First Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966 gave new impetus to the system of women’s solidarities, broadening these women’s political imagination to encompass the struggles of all three continents within an established political program. One of the great achievements of this conference was to establish a communication structure that made it possible to develop, in a very clear and defined way, international solidarity among Third World revolutionary movements. Through posters, magazines, and bulletins, the image of woman — as revolutionary and as mother — became central to political communication. In this way, the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) not only contributed to constructing an image of Third World women (characterized by the figure of the guerrillera and mother), but also included in its publications debates on gender relations within revolutionary movements,[7] thereby contributing to the construction of a Third World women’s movement.
In practice, Vilma Espín was chiefly responsible for promoting the Tricontinental Conference among women’s activism across the three continents.[8] To this end, she made use of the WIDF platform, where she emphasized the importance of these gatherings for uniting the will of national liberation movements. The conference’s agenda, centered on solidarity among peoples struggling against imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism, and on the intensification of “all forms of struggle, including armed struggle, across the three continents,” included among its points the coordination of actions by “workers, students, women, and cultural organizations of the three continents.”[9]
Meeting of women within the framework of the Tricontinental Conference, Havana, 1966. Source: FMC Documentation Center.The Tricontinental Conference was one of the clearest attempts by national liberation movements to establish a space for political unification outside the reach of possible Soviet — or even Chinese — interference. This kind of activity sought to consolidate the political identity of Third World countries amid the tensions generated by the Cold War — clearly identified with the “revolutionary path” to socialism — and led women’s activism within this space to consolidate certain characteristics that women in these organizations would not only articulate but that would become part of an agenda gaining increasing strength.
Along these lines, in its final resolutions, the Tricontinental Conference devoted a special section to women, in which their contribution to the struggle for national liberation was recognized, and in which it recommended encouraging women’s organizations, proposing that they cooperate with the WIDF “with a view to unifying efforts in the struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.”[10] In other words, what legitimated these women’s claim to a place in the political life of their countries was having played a leading role in their respective wars of national liberation. It should therefore come as no surprise that much of this movement not only included men within its political agenda, but also that the figure of the combatant became a preferential marker distinguishing it from other kinds of women’s and feminist movements, as was the case for both Algerian and Cuban women.
The reinforcement of this imaginary had a strong impact on both the UNFA and the FMC. In the Cuban case, for example, during the first Latin American Solidarity Conference (OLAS), held in Havana in 1967, Cuban organizers took advantage of the gathering of Latin American delegations to hold the first “Meeting of Women from Latin American Countries Struggling for National Liberation,” where delegates from different countries were able to exchange experiences on women’s participation in armed struggle. The UNFA, for its part, worked to establish the permanent headquarters of the Conference of African Women (CAW) in Algiers, thereby securing closer contact with delegates from African women’s organizations and better coordinating the solidarity policy that Algeria had been pursuing toward the region’s national liberation movements. In turn, this allowed the CAW to become increasingly active in weaving solidarities with countries fighting for independence and to become one of the main points of reference for articulating relations with women’s organizations in Latin America.
Spaces of Exchange between the UNFA and the FMC: The Press, Transnational Meetings, and Exchange
Both the UNFA and the FMC had their own publications, whose main purpose was to spread among the women of their countries the policies developed by their governments (both general policies and those focused on women) as well as the organization’s activities. In the case of Mujeres, its director for several years, Carolina Aguilar Ayerra, recalls that when they began editing the new magazine they “had to be very careful,” since the traditional women’s magazine Vanidades had built up a reading habit that they did not think could be changed overnight.[11] This observation may explain why, well into the 1970s, Mujeres kept more than half its content devoted to matters perceived as belonging to traditional femininity: fashion, cooking, and childcare sections. By contrast, in its earliest issues, the magazine Al-Djazaïria featured more politicized content that, over the years, gradually gave way to features on fashion, cooking, and entertainment. Reflecting on this comparison, Carolina Aguilar Ayerra noted that, at gatherings held by the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), other national organizations frequently asked them about the FMC’s publication. Among the organizations with which they shared their editorial experience was the UNFA. In that exchange, Carolina recalls, Al-Djazaïria’s editors took note of the idea of producing content more accessible to the magazine’s new readers — a shift that can indeed be traced in the topics the Algerian publication began selecting in its later issues.
Mujeres grew increasingly politicized in step with rising literacy and education rates among Cuban women; Al-Djazaïria, for its part, only began publication in 1970, in both Arabic and French. This delay (bearing in mind that the UNFA was founded around 1963) may also be linked to factors directly related to Algeria’s literacy rate: recall that at the time of independence, illiteracy among the female population stood at 98 percent, while the Arabization of the education system did not begin until the late 1960s. Fatiha Zemmouchi recalls, nonetheless, that Al-Djazaïria was a great success in the country. While the French-language edition was more widely read within Algeria in its first years, the Arabic edition was more sought after by other countries in the region, through embassies or international women’s gatherings.[12] On its first anniversary, Al-Djazaïria took stock positively, noting not only that it had kept its promise to address “topics of concern to Algerian women in all their dimensions: political, economic, social, and cultural,” but also that it addressed “very feminine” matters such as beauty, culinary arts, fashion, childcare, and pedagogy, thereby becoming a magazine of “formation and information.”[13] The UNFA’s and the FMC’s magazines became discursive spaces of solidarity that fostered the construction of a “sisterhood” and a shared identity — whether among women bound to the revolutionary project of their own countries, or among women struggling against imperialism worldwide.[14] The international affairs columns thus became a space of identification that not only brought otherwise distant realities closer together, but also allowed readers to rethink their own experience as part of a larger community, beyond national — but also cultural — borders. The themes chosen to foster greater identification among women of Asia, Africa, and Latin America centered mainly on the experience of armed struggle, a strong anti-imperialist discourse, and the building of a new society in which women played a leading role by participating, alongside men, in every area of “national construction,” aimed at overcoming underdevelopment.
Following this logic, as early as its second issue, Mujeres published, in a central spot, an interview with an Algerian combatant (Algeria had not yet won its independence at the time of this publication), tracing a genealogy readily comparable to that of many Cuban women militants during the insurrectionary period: clandestine militancy, kidnapping and torture, optimism in victory, and a promising future for young women combatants.[15] The identification between Algerian and Cuban guerrilleras was strong in these early years. On the Cuban side, this identification was shaped in part by this kind of reporting, but above all by a highly popular radio drama of the time, “Under the Sun of Algiers,” which had popularized the Algerian women’s struggle. In turn, in another piece devoted to Cuban women, we can see how the magazine Al-Djazaïria used their example as a mirror and a promise of a near future for Algerian women; here we can clearly observe the recurring discursive strategy for constructing that closeness, one that facilitates the sense of belonging to a single community:
Although you are already familiar with the Federation of Cuban Women (…) we still wish to underscore the importance of this visit, grounded in the ties of solidarity and friendship we share with the FMC. This solidarity and friendship have found expression through our shared positions on Palestine and Vietnam (…) [The Cuban woman] is present everywhere, conscious everywhere, active everywhere (…) It is through action, everyday action, that woman can affirm her firm will to take part in building her country. The Cuban woman gathers the laurels she herself sowed (…) As for the Cuban woman, upon whom falls the great responsibility of shaping the New Man that Che spoke of (…) she will know how to fulfill the sacred duties of the revolutionary, wife, mother, and educator of future generations, who must carry forward the ongoing work of the Cuban Revolution.[16]
This quotation clearly captures the internal and external political uses that this kind of feature could serve within women’s activism. On the one hand, it sought to show how women had won a place in the building of the new society thanks to the legitimacy that their participation in the war had conferred upon them. On the other hand, certain roles that reproduced a traditional femininity (such as the role of mother) were retained within a new framework specific to radical nationalism, one that now sought to give this role new meaning from the standpoint of reproducing the new revolutionary society. In this sense, this passage could equally describe either group of women.
Now, the exchanges between the UNFA and the FMC were not purely symbolic, nor was the construction of the Third World women’s movement carried out solely through the political imaginaries expressed at international gatherings or in the columns of a magazine. March 8th proved to be a particularly valuable occasion for these organizations to invite delegations from other countries and to develop solidarity campaigns with women from other geographies, as well as to exchange experiences. On such visits, women’s delegations would typically tour various sites where the host organization worked — cooperatives and training schools — and were even invited to take part in tasks during days of voluntary labor. These were also occasions on which the visiting delegation, besides delivering a speech during the March 8th celebrations, would often be interviewed by the country’s major media outlets, allowing their cause to reach and become popular among broad sectors of the population.
The first UNFA delegation to travel to Cuba did so in 1971,[17] at the FMC’s invitation, for the commemoration of International Women’s Day. On this trip, the Algerian delegates got to know the FMC’s work and organizational structure up close. Although the UNFA acknowledged having known of the FMC’s work for several years already — and had even organized cultural activities about Cuban women using materials sent by the FMC — it also understood this visit as an important step toward closer engagement with the popular and revolutionary movements of Latin America. At its most recent national council, it had already resolved to strengthen relations with women’s organizations in the region, and it regarded this trip as a first stage that would allow for a closer and more dynamic relationship between the two organizations.
On this visit, the Algerian delegates were able to see the editorial offices of Mujeres firsthand — a significant encounter, since the UNFA had only recently begun publishing Al-Djazaïria, and much of the experience the Cuban women had accumulated proved highly useful in improving their own publication, as already noted. They also toured textile and agricultural production units run by women, childcare centers managed by the FMC, and paid a visit to the Confederation of Cuban Workers.[18] The Algerian delegates came away deeply impressed by the FMC’s work, and were able to draw on this experience in shaping several of the policies they subsequently pursued, particularly the organization of days of voluntary labor with young women belonging to the UNFA and the JFLN [National Liberation Front Youth], as well as work with peasant women in rural areas.[19]
Al-Djazaïria editors visit the offices of Mujeres magazine, March 1972.The Algerian women’s visit to Cuba had its counterpart the following year, when the FMC was invited to Algeria, likewise on the occasion of March 8th. There, the Cuban delegation was able to organize meetings with the Conference of African Women (headquartered in Algiers) and to make contact with women from the Palestinian nationalist movement Al-Fatah. On this visit, the Cuban delegation was able to travel across much of the country: they visited the UNFA’s first artisans’ cooperative in Algiers, a self-managed farm in Oran, and several vocational training centers for sewing and embroidery in every region they visited. During a conversation with women working at a craft workshop run by the UNFA, the questions the attendees asked the Cuban visitors offer a glimpse of the shared cosmology then taking shape among the women of these organizations: “What role does woman play in Cuba? What place does religion hold there? How are your technicians trained, both men and women? Do women have the same rights as men? What is the national dress? What is the national music? How long did your war of independence last?”[20] These questions echo the main lines of work pursued by both the UNFA and the FMC, while the curiosity about the Cuban “war of independence” allows us to glimpse how, in the minds of these craftswomen, there existed a connection between the possibility of encounter among women from distant countries and the fact of having been part of a triumphant war of national liberation. In the end, although we cannot say with certainty in what spirit that question was asked, it appears to reflect a certain curiosity that not only mirrors the impact the war had on women and their families, but also functions as a factor that would help explain the answers to all the preceding questions — that is, the legitimacy that women’s participation in the war of national liberation lent to their claim to political, social, and cultural rights. It is also worth noting how, among these craftswomen, we find a concern with professional training, as well as an echo of the major debate of the time surrounding different readings of Islam regarding the status of women. Finally, the interest in “national dress and music” strikes us as significant, insofar as it suggests that, even as we are speaking of women’s movements in which national identity was deeply rooted, this did not stop them from imagining themselves as part of a broader community that included women from other regions who, while different, shared comparable — and thus relatable — experiences.
For its part, in the piece published by Al-Djazaïria on the occasion of this visit, it was noted that this kind of encounter fostered “the cohesion of the revolutionary women’s movement,” achieving, in this instance:,
(…) an expanded understanding of the Front uniting us to the pan-African women’s movement, on the one hand, and to that of Latin America, on the other. The action of our organization at the international level must foster the strengthening of ties of friendship and cooperation with progressive women’s organizations, thereby contributing to anti-imperialist solidarity on a global scale and faithfully reflecting our country’s action on the international stage.[21]
This discourse was thus part of the strategy that the Algerian government had been deepening since 1969, with the holding of the Pan-African Festival, aimed at making Algeria one of the capitals of the Third World alongside Havana.
The year 1974 was a particularly dynamic one for this kind of exchange, since both organizations were committed to the campaign to have the United Nations declare 1975 International Women’s Year. A Cuban delegation took part in the UNFA’s Third Congress, where a change in the organization’s leadership brought the two organizations closer together, since the new secretary-general, Fatiha Bettahar, was already well known to the Cuban delegates, who had met her at the First National Congress of Women of Guinea in 1968. At year’s end, a UNFA delegation led by its new secretary-general in turn took part in the FMC’s Second Congress in Havana, where they were also able to learn about various aspects of the FMC’s work.[22]
In 1976, Vilma Espín paid a further visit to Algiers. There, through the tours she took — as well as through conversations with Fatiha Bettahar — she found that conditions were becoming increasingly difficult for the Algerian women’s movement to deepen its work, even though the government continued to provide the organization with considerable resources for its development. This was due not only to an increasingly conservative stance among part of the political leadership, but also to the departure of key UNFA cadres, whether to take up other positions or to attend to family matters. Even so, the UNFA remained a key organization for the Cuban women, since, on the basis of the trust built between their leaderships, it continued to serve as an essential link for making contact with other organizations on the continent — the Libyan women’s organization, for example, which was being refounded around this time.[23]
Conclusions
In this article, through the trajectories of the FMC and the UNFA, we have sought to show how, across various transnational spaces, publications, and exchange encounters, an identity gradually took shape that brought Third World women together and allowed them to think of themselves as a unity with a defined program. Both the FMC and the UNFA knew how to make use of international encounters to publicize their revolutions and to support various campaigns on behalf of national liberation movements — chiefly those of Vietnam and Palestine — thereby spreading revolutionary ideas among the women of the Third World.
The exchange sustained by both organizations helped shape a shared discourse and practice, one they also shared with other women’s organizations that identified with the tricontinental and Third World project. In this sense, the unifying threads capable of holding these organizations together across the years examined here were, above all: the experience of colonial or neocolonial rule; anti-imperialist struggle; anti-racism; the “revolutionary path” toward full national independence; the figure of the “mother-guerrilla”; the complementarity of struggle alongside men; the subordination of women’s rights to the “national cause”; and the building of concrete bonds of solidarity. As for the practices these organizations developed, voluntary labor, literacy campaigns, the creation of workshops for vocational training, and the establishment of childcare centers to ease women’s burden of care were all tasks that were developed or refined through the mutual political and militant influence that likewise characterized these organizations.
Translated from the Spanish by Souffles.