In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S This book grew out of a specific question: what happened to the generation of working-class women whose grassroots activism in Catholic base communities fired the Brazilian and Chilean pro-democracy movements? After the democratic transitions and the consequent shift in scholarly attention back to traditional political actors, these women disappeared from official view. One of our goals was certainly to reclaim their stories; our purpose, however, was not simply nostalgic. The conventional wisdom that this generation of women simply “went home” after the transitions did not ring true for either of us. We were also convinced that the new forms of grassroots organization forged in Catholic base communities did not simply vanish after the democratic transitions, leaving no discernible legacy in the women’s lives or— more important for the future “deepening of democracy”—in the social and political fabric of popular neighborhoods. What kind of legacies did these women and their organizations leave? In order to explore the impact of the democratic transitions on grassroots organizations that grew up in and around base Christian communities during the dictatorships, we rely heavily on extensive interviews with women who were active in their base communities during the height of the Brazilian and Chilean social movements. First and foremost, we are deeply grateful to the Brazilian and Chilean women who shared their stories with us for this book. Carol Drogus wishes to thank particularly the women in Brazil who participated in her earlier study in 1986 and who were willing to be reinterviewed and to share their experiences of the intervening years. The willingness of all the interviewees to patiently answer questions in a long and detailed survey, occasionally provoking painful (and sometimes joyful) memories, gives this book a richness and depth that simply could not have been possible without their generosity. We have tried to keep these women’s voices in the forefront throughout this book, recognizing that their experiences, lived through extraordinary and difficult historical moments in their countries, form the core of our research question. The research in Brazil would not have been possible were it not for the efforts of Cecilia Loreto Mariz and Maria das Dores Campos Machado. They helped to plan and translate the interview schedule, provided names of women activists in the Rio area, and organized and coordinated the team who carried out the interviews. That team consisted of two graduate students , Wania Amélia Belchior Mesquita and Sílvia Regina Alves Fernandes, who traveled to the interview sites in Rio and São Paulo and conducted the tape-recorded interviews. We thank them for their intrepid and careful interviewing. Cecilia Loreto Mariz and Maria das Dores Campos Machado also played an important role in bringing key parts of the book to completion. In fact, their analysis of the Brazilian women’s attitudes toward their Pentecostal neighbors forms the basis for Chapter 6, of which they were the primary authors of the Brazilian portions. Their analysis first took the form of a paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association meetings in 2000. In addition, they analyzed the women’s attitudes toward charismatic Catholics. Originally, this analysis was intended for a separate chapter on intra-Catholic cooperation. That chapter never materialized, because there are no comparable Catholic groups in Chile. Their insightful analysis of attitudes toward Charismatics, however, enters into the analysis of women’s reactions to changes in the church that is set out in Chapter 4. A more complete version of their analysis was published as “Progressistas e Catolicas Carismaticas: Uma Analise de Discurso de Mulheres de Comunidades de Base na Atualidade Brasileira,” Praia Vermelha 2, no. 3 (2000): 8–29. Because of their crucial role in formulating the analysis of the women’s attitudes toward competing religious groups, we wish to recognize them as full co-authors of these two chapters. We thank them for their participation in the preparation of these chapters and for their insights into Brazilian religious attitudes, as well as for their work in organizing the interviews themselves. We thank Maxine Lowy for her exceptional energy, devotion, and professionalism in conducting the Chilean interviews. This project obviously became a labor of love for her, and the extraordinary quality of the interviews is a result of her skill and passion. We also thank her for her willingness to read and comment on various drafts throughout the process. Since the completion of the interviews...

Share