Sustaining Activism: A Brazilian Women's Movement and a Father-Daughter Collaboration

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments Jeff Emma and I have many people to thank, not only for key moments of support, encouragement, and guidance but also for the ongoing conversations that deepened our commitment and brought us to new insights. We are first and foremost indebted to the individuals and families in Ibiraiaras and Sananduva who welcomed us into their homes and meeting halls, responded to our many questions, and shared in our excitement about writing a curriculum and book about the mmtr. We interviewed many more people than are named in these pages, and we are grateful for their patience and tenacity in sharing with us their reflections on the women’s movement and twenty-five years of dramatic social change. Gessi Bonês, Ivone Bonês, Ari Benedetti, Vania Zambone, Izanete Colla, Rosane Dalsoglio , Vera Fracasso, Mônica Marchesini, Elenice Pastore, Neuza Pistore, Marilda Sauthier, Odete Toazza, and those in the women’s pharmacy in Ibiraiaras turned repeatedly to examine the past and its meaning in the present. Their openness to my daughter and me sustained this project from the beginning. Olga Falcetto and Ovidio Waldemar opened their house and hearts to us in Porto Alegre, offering friendship and family life on each of our research trips. We thank Arnildo Perinotto and Rosa Salvallágio Perinotto for making their wonderful hotel in Ibiraiaras into a multipurpose home and office, Neuza Pistore and Dirceu Caumo and their neighbors for their generous hospitality in Sananduva, and Roselí and Beto Becker, Clarissa Becker, Claudia Fonseca, Salete Brum da Silveira and Sandra Bacaltchuk for guiding us and making us feel always welcome in Porto Alegre. Karen Sanchez-Eppler followed this project from the beginning, bringing her wisdom and skill to each draft that Emma and I wrote. Vivienne Bennett, Lacy Crawford, Jill Irvine, Mary Ellen Miller, Pam Petro, Mary Roldán, Mary Jo Salter, Leslie Salzinger, Fred Strebeigh, and Jack Womack read drafts at different stages in our writing, and their keen insights shaped the structure and direction of the book. Evelina Dagnino invited me to the Program on Culture and Politics at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (unicamp) on a Rockefeller Fellowship and insisted that I visit her hometown of Porto Alegre, thus opening the way to all the research that followed. Zander Navarro told me about the innovative organizing of the Movement of Rural Women Workers and suggested, long before Emma and I ever did our first interviews, that I write a book about the mmtr based on 162 acknowledgments profiles of the women who founded it. Alie van der Schaaf generously shared her own excellent work on the women’s movement at the beginning of my research. Cecilia Rodrigues provided expert language instruction. Laura Roush helped us throughout this project by artfully suggesting relevant theorists and reflecting on our insights, so that we could take them further. The first product of Emma and my joint research was our curriculum ‘‘Music, Land, and Women’s Rights: Citizens Making Change in Brazil and the U.S.’’ Tina Yalen, who as my ninth-grade social studies teacher showed me how to learn and teach about the world in unconventional ways, helped us make our materials accessible and useful to teachers. Catherine Harris arranged our first workshop with some of her fellow Teach for America teachers in Miami. The directors and outreach coordinators of the Latin America centers at Harvard, Duke, Yale, Brown, and the University of California, San Diego, sponsored workshops on our curriculum for high school teachers, graduate students, and professors. We thank Merilee Grindle, Maria Regan, Jolie Olcott, Tamera Marko, Julia de la Torre, Gil Joseph, Jean Silk, Elena Serapiglia, Christine Hunefeldt, and Jim Green for arranging workshops; Lara Ramsey and Tom Weiner for inviting us into their classrooms attheSmithCollegeCampusSchool;andGretchenLauiforarrangingtohaveour workshop at the University of California, San Diego, filmed and brainstorming ways of disseminating the curriculum further. Starting with my first trip to Brazil in 1996, colleagues there welcomed me and supported my research on social movements. My deepest thanks go to Sergio Baierle, Anita Brumer, Evelina Dagnino, Claudia Fonseca, Olivia Gomez da Cunha, Claudia de Lima Costa, Zander Navarro, and Sergio Schneider for office space, meals, conversation, and responsiveness to all my questions. Numerous foundations and research institutes have offered generous support for my research in Brazil and writing in the United States: the Rockefeller Foundation , through unicamp; the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers; the...