Anger and disillusionment in Argentinian feminism, 2011–2015: an ethnography of feminist activism in Buenos Aires' popular education movements

This essay draws from four years of ethnographic fieldwork with women activists in self-defined Paulo Freirean-based popular education schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Rather than leaning on the traditions of education activism, modeled on Freire’s class-based emancipatory vision, the women in this study sought to turn popular education’s focus toward intersectional oppressions that impacted girls and women in their communities. Through their anger and disillusion with the form Freirean thought had been taken up by social movements, I illustrate how participants were contemplating ways to make room for women’s experiences by pinpointing junctures of racism, sexism, and classism as they impressed upon the lives of people living and learning in precarious conditions.