‘I take to the streets because you have to listen to me!’ Latin American women protesting in Europe

Abstract

‘A rapist on your path’ is a performance created by Las Tesis in Chile in 2019. The performance spread across the world and was performed by other groups of women in different countries. It is a rare example of a Southern-born protest making its way to Western contexts. This article highlights the role of women of Latin American origin in organising the re-creations of the performance and analyses their activism in two European cities, Helsinki and Brussels. It is argued that performing in the streets was about spreading the message of the performance and an act of solidarity with activists in Chile. The performance also enabled the performing groups to gain visibility and voice and to network with other groups. Performing in the streets was also a way of breaking away from the Western feminism entrenched in institutions and the academia, and to critically assess Western feminist approaches. Feminist protesting on the streets targets patriarchal structures as the root cause of gender-based violence. Spreading Southern perceptions on the streets of European cities challenges understandings of feminism as entrenched in the academy and in institutions and instead, opens feminist debates to all.

Introduction

The dominance of Western feminist perceptions and priorities has long been acknowledged and challenged by feminist academics (Basu, 2004; Mohanty, 1988; Seppälä, 2016). Campaigns and protests are an alternative way of shattering the hegemony of Western feminism and feminist knowledge production. As argued by Seppälä (2016), the increase of women’s activism and feminist resistances in the Global South has attracted the attention in Western academia (p. 14). Yet, Southern protests and campaigns invading and changing feminist praxis in Western contexts are rare (Cohen et al., 2018: 14). In this article, I focus on the example of one Southern-born protest performance, which made its way to Western contexts. My aim is to discuss what ignited this travel and what this encounter generated. I highlight the role of migrant women interpreting the travelling performance, and the performance in turn enabling the migrant women to critically evaluate the limits of feminist processes in their Western locations.

‘A rapist on your path’ is a performance against violence against women. Created in 2019 by Las Tesis, a small artist group from Chile, the performance spread across the world and was re-performed by other groups of women in different countries. The performance is entangled with the current civil society protesting the history of Chilean women. It embraces the struggles of Latin American women against femicide and rape culture, and challenges patriarchal structures and oppression worldwide. It is a strong statement against violence against women, pointing an accusing finger at individual men, the police, and the State as well as patriarchal structures at large. Violence against women and the threat of violence against women overshadows the lives of practically all women and, thus, the struggle is shared by women globally. Therefore, it is not surprising that the performance generated re-creations.

The re-creations of the performance were acts of solidarity with women struggling in Chile, but, at the same time, transplanting a performance originally forged in a violent and pressing situation to safer contexts is not unproblematic. The threat of misunderstanding the message of the performance has been raised by the creators, one of them stating that the performance has been understood as being joyful and peaceful, which it is not. ¹ In addition to plain misunderstandings, the re-creations raise the issue of appropriation and taming of the original message (Berg and Carbin, 2018; Yusupova, 2014). Theories and ideas travelling to other contexts have been discussed by Edward Said (Said, 1983b, 2001). In two essays, he discusses theories or ideas losing their original force and power when transplanted to new contexts. The analysis of travelling theories by Said and examples from feminist research on interpretations and appropriation of protests and campaigns call for cautious analysis of transplanting protests from one context to another.

To address this, I investigated the re-creations of ‘A rapist on your path’ in two Western locations, Helsinki, Finland and Brussels, Belgium. I inhabited both cities at the time, being born in Helsinki and residing in Brussels. In Helsinki, sitting on the steps of the cathedral with my daughter, watching the excited performers getting ready, I felt like a voyerist, regretting my decision not to participate. In Brussels, my status as an expatriate – rather than a migrant – became more concrete to me through attending the performance as following the performance led me and my daughter to visit areas of the city I had been advised to avoid. The politicised and racialised distinction between expats and migrants (Kunz, 2018) has been a constant undertone while writing this article yet falls outside of its scope.

In both cities, the performance was organised several times by a variety of groups. However, two groups emerged as particularly active: Red de Mujeres, Finlandia, and a similar group in Belgium, Sororidad Sin Fronteras. Both groups consist mostly of women of Latin American origin but have been able to bring different groups together in the re-creations of the performance. This aspect changed my original aim of problematising the attempts of Western feminists to reach out in solidarity towards Chilean women. Instead, my attention was turned to the central role of migrant women, particularly those of Latin American origin. The women of Latin American origin taking on an active role in organising the re-creations changed how the travelling performance landed: instead of being planted in unfamiliar soil, the performance was transferred by familiar hands.

My analysis highlights the important role that women of Latin American origin assumed in transplanting the performance in the Western countries and in this way, re-creating a Latin American struggle within European locales. Furthermore, they turned a critical gaze onto feminist struggles and strategising in their new contexts, perceiving feminism as too institutionalised and compartmentalised. This adds to the call for including marginalised voices, a call to diversify and radicalise Western feminist ways of challenging patriarchal structures.

I interviewed four women active in the networks in Brussels and Helsinki, complemented by background interviews with two other groups, which had also participated in re-creating the performance: Solidarity to Chile, Finland, and Progressive Lawyers Network, Belgium. The interviewee from Sororidad Sin Fronteras was a young female from Chile, who had come to Belgium for her studies and stayed to work in an office. She did not have Belgian citizenship and was not certain if Belgium would become her home country. The interviewee from the Progressive Lawyers Network was born in Belgium and had been organising the performance because of the gendered problems of legal procedures concerning migrants she had witnessed in her work. One interviewee from Red de Mujeres, Finlandia, had moved to Finland from Peru and was studying to become a social worker. The other two interviewees from the same group were both artists, interviewee one a poet originally from Peru, and the other an artist from Mexico. Both interviewees were middle-aged and had been living in Finland for more than 10 years. Despite having learnt Finnish and holding Finnish citizenship, they identified themselves as migrant women. This description also applied to the interviewee from Solidarity to Chile, Finland. All interviewees emphasised that the views they shared with me were their own and did not represent the position of the groups they belonged to. Even though the limited number of interviews does not provide a basis for a comprehensive view on the reasons for taking up the performance, the interviewees have everyday expertise in evaluating the voyage of the performance from Latin America to Europe, not least because they have undertaken that journey themselves. Furthermore, with the consent of the interviewees, I shared a draft of the article with the interviewees, opening the possibility for joint discussion. Our discussions were in a mixture of English, Finnish, and Spanish, dotted with laughter and angry screams. While the interviewees reflected on the travel of the performance and the transformation of the message between contexts, they were also very cautious not to generalise Latin American contexts as a monolithic entity. The scope of this article does not do justice to their reflections on the different contexts of feminist struggles in Latin America.

Beyond the interviews, participant observation of protest events in Helsinki and Brussels provides the basis of my work. My positionality is one of a middle-aged, middle-class western political scientist, who believes that genuine change starts from the streets. Although the artistic aspects of the performance are central, my emphasis is on the political message and impact of the performance. Serafini uses the concept of ‘performance actions’ to describe feminist activism incorporating artistic aspects in protests. I align with Serafini’s (2020) definition of performance actions as performances that ‘aim for social transformation and operate in the realm of grassroots politics by intervening in public spaces’ (p. 291). I use ‘performance’ to refer to the original creation, and ‘re-creations’ when the performance is done by groups other than the original creators.

To capture the travels of the performance, I will rely on Edward Said’s theorising of travelling ideas, furthered by Patricia Hill Collins and Sara Salem. This discussion opens the theoretical section below, continuing with post-colonial and intersectional feminist theorising. I will then introduce the original performance and the context in which it was created. The ensuing parts of the article focus on the multiple motives women had for re-creating the performance and the impacts of the performance. Finally, I turn my attention to how the interviewees evaluated the differences between feminist struggles in the contexts they were familiar with.

Theorising travelling performance

Feminist research on campaigns and protests has pointed out misunderstandings and the threat of appropriation when a protest travels from one context to another. Edward Said has reflected on travelling theories on a more abstract level. I base my analysis on feminist theorising of performative protests and campaigns, as well as Said’s insights. However, there is a unique feature in the examples of travelling protest that I am focusing on here: when Las Tesis’ performance travelled to Europe, familiar hands were behind the transplantation, as women of Latin American origin were active in organising the re-creations. Therefore, while travelling and transplanted performances are inherently complicated, I suggest that in this instance, migrant women were uniquely positioned to translate travelling ideas in their new contexts.

Said (1983, 2001) discusses the circulation of ideas and theories in his essay ‘Travelling Theory’, arguing that the movement of ideas to new environments is never unimpeded and calling on us to ask whether an ‘idea or a theory gains or loses in strength, and whether a theory in one historical period and national culture becomes altogether different for another period or situation’ (Said, 1983: 226). Even though Said (1983) warns of ‘taming’ taking place during the travel, he also brings up the possibility of the theory or idea gaining in strength as a result of the travel (p. 226).

Said identifies four stages that any travelling theory or idea goes through. The first stage is the point of origin; in the case of the performance of ‘A rapist at your door’, this is Chile and the wider frame of Latin America. The second stage is the distance traversed. To Said, the question here is: how is the theory or idea is moulded in and by different contexts? In the case of the performance, the travel through space and time is speedy because it is through the Internet from Valparaíso to the rest of the world. The third stage addresses the new context and the conditions confronted by the idea: an alien idea may encounter both acceptance and resistance. The fourth stage identified by Said is the voyage of the idea or theory. Said (1983b) points out that even a fully accommodated idea is transformed to some extent in its new time and place (p. 115). To concretise his thinking, Said compares the attempts of Lucien Goldman and Raymond Williams to adapt the theory of György Lukács. Said suggests that Goldman’s approach became domesticated and distanced, removing the theory from its insurrectionary role. Williams, in contrast, was able to use distance to create a critical approach. I parallel the critical approach of the migrant women to that of Williams. When the migrant women re-created the performance, they addressed the original Latin American context but also turned their critical gaze on the prevalent but insufficiently addressed systemic patriarchy in their new European contexts. More importantly, they described the feminist struggles as being institutionalised and compartmentalised.

Building on Said, Patricia Hill Collins (2015) and Sara Salem (2018) have analysed the travels of the concept of intersectionality. Hill Collins approaches the travels of intersectionality highlighting both possibilities suggested by Said: the travel may have positive impacts but the initial intent may just as well become misrepresented (Hill Collins, 2015: 6–7). Sara Salem (2018) traces a more linear travel of intersectionality from ‘a moment of resistance to intersectionality as a neoliberal approach which erases inequality’ (p. 404). Similarly, feminist research has brought out different ways of taming or appropriating women’s struggles and protests. For instance, Marina Yusupova (2014) has analysed how Russian performance group, Pussy Riot, was perceived very differently in Western countries compared to Russia, concluding that Pussy Riot was ‘a story the West wanted to hear’ (p. 604). While in Western countries Pussy Riot has largely been perceived as a group of courageous rebels, the attitudes among Russians have remained ambiguous. This leads Yusupova to question the limits of cultural translation. She refers to both post-colonial feminist theorising and gender studies as a reminder of the falsity of global sisterhood built on the presumption of the universality of Western values (Yusupova, 2014: 606–608).

Nevertheless, the story of Pussy Riot is a positive example of a feminist protest group outside the Western sphere becoming widely known. Cohen et al. (2018) refer to the current wave of protests but note that many of these protests reify the Global North as the normative site of protest (p. 14). Pussy Riot shares many characteristics with Las Tesis, but they also differ. Both are radical feminist groups situated outside of the Western feminist sphere, using art as a form of protesting. However, Pussy Riot links to Western feminist theorising while Las Tesis determinedly connects with the Latin American context. For example, Pussy Riot has stated that Western feminist scholars were their inspiration, while Las Tesis developed their theoretical views specifically from the work of Latin American feminist Rita Segato.

The fragility of a campaign and the risk of appropriation have been explored by Berg and Carbin in their study on the campaign Hijab outcry. The campaign against racism and hate crimes against Muslim women in Sweden called on non-religious and religious women to wear a hijab in public or to take selfies wearing one in support of Muslim women. The action was taken up by non-Muslim women and, subsequently, accusations of white women taking over the action were raised (Berg and Carbin, 2018: 121–124). For many campaigners, wearing the veil was a gesture to raise awareness of racism against Muslim women. However, as the campaign entered the wider discussion, the veil itself became problematised as a symbol of oppression and a lack of individual freedom of choice, which turned attention to difference instead of normalising the use of veil, which was the original aim of the Muslim women who initiated the protest (Berg and Carbin, 2018: 124–125). However, Berg and Carbin suggest that the campaign also invigorated discussions challenging and re-politicising solidarity. Similarly, in the case of Las Tesis, the enthusiasm of women beyond Latin American contexts indicates a similar re-politicisation of solidarity. Thus, the question is not so much about hijacking the performance for use by Western feminists but rather about translating and transplanting Latin American feminist ways of struggling to other patriarchal contexts.

Said also opens the door to a theory or idea gaining in force and impact as it travels. When Said moves on from Goldman to discuss Williams, he emphasises the importance of distance. However, this time Said highlights the ‘extraordinary virtue to the distance’ (Said, 1983a, 1983b: 240). Explaining his appreciative approach to Williams, Said differentiates between theory and critical consciousness. The latter he defines as

a sort of measuring faculty for locating or situating theory, and this means that theory has to be grasped in the place and the time out of which it emerges as part of that time, working in and for it. (Said, 1983b: 241–242)

Said argues that this critical consciousness enables the evaluation of theory and the limits of any given theory in explaining social phenomena. I would argue that Latin American women based in Europe had ‘awareness of the differences between situations’ (Said, 1983b: 242). This awareness enabled the women of Latin American origin to relate to the pressing situation in which the performance was created, as well as to criticise their new contexts through the performance. At the same time, it was seen as a way of carrying along an awareness of shared structural oppression. Even though the transplanted performance, forged in a pressing and violent situation, might have ended up being tamed and domesticated to fit Western perceptions, the strong involvement of migrant women built a connection between women’s struggles in the two contexts. I suggest that while the performers embraced the struggles of the Latin American women in solidarity, the Latin American migrant women critically assessed patriarchal structures and feminist praxis in both contexts. In addition, they turned the gaze to the situation of migrant women in the seemingly safer and more gender equal contexts.

The travels of the performance ‘Un violador en tu camino’

‘Un violador en tu camino’ (‘A rapist in your path’ was performed by Las Tesis for the first time on 20 November 2019 in Valparaíso and on 25 November in Santiago, Chile (Martin and Shaw, 2021: 2) The performance caught the attention of women in different corners of the world and re-creations were shared via the Internet. The reasons for so many groups of women re-creating the performance have been discussed by Paula Serafini (2020) and Martin and Shaw (2021). Serafini analyses the reasons why the performance spread so widely by exploring the values and processes behind the performance. She explains the appeal of the performance as springing from its visual composition and from being a collective action that sharply denounces violence and takes a prefigurative approach of using art as a political action and activism as a creative practice (Serafini, 2020: 291).

Martin and Shaw raise the examples of the performance spreading to Mexico, Turkey, and India, focusing on both commonalities and local specificities illustrated by the adaptations. As they point out, these cases resemble the original context of Chile by being ‘countries led by men with poor records on tackling gender-based violence’ (Martin and Shaw, 2021: 3). According to Martin and Shaw, the performance challenges populist and conservative attacks on gender theory by taking feminist theories to the streets and making it available to those who may not be familiar with feminist thinking. In addition, Martin and Shaw (2021) discuss the performance against the theoretical background of Rita Segato’s insights on rape culture (pp. 3–4). Rita Segato is an Argentinian Brazilian scholar whose theoretical insights inspired Las Tesis. One of the interviewees for this article also explained the importance of Rita Segato further by referring to Segato uploading her lectures to and making them available to all, both within and outside academia.

Importantly, Martin and Shaw (2021) claim that the performance can be seen as a ‘means of decolonising and de-hierarchising elements of feminist theory and knowledge surrounding rape and violence against women’ (p. 5). The decolonising tenets of the performance lay in the move to the streets which makes the performance more inclusive. It is accessible to all as participants or onlookers, and it is not restricted to places of learning (Martin and Shaw, 2021: 5–7). The women interviewed for this article highlighted the move away from institutions and professional experts more widely and did not only name academia. This is one example of the ways the women broadened the demands made by the performance. As I will discuss next, in the hands of Latin American women living in European countries, the performance grew into criticism of patriarchal structures both in Latin America and in Europe, as well as into criticism of Western feminism.

Transplanting the performance to Western contexts

My focus is on the re-creations by Red de Mujeres, Finlandia and on Sororidad Sin Fronteras, Belgium. Both networks consist mostly of women of Latin American origin. However, they were not the only ones re-creating the performance and often the re-creations were carried out in cooperation with several other groups. Red de Mujeres already existed when the journey of the performance started but Sororidad Sin Fronteras came into being as a result of the performance. To Red de Mujeres and particularly to Sororidad Sin Fronteras, performing on the streets was a catalyst for increasing their voice and visibility as Latin American migrant women and a way of reaching other groups. Looking back and describing the performances brought smiles to the faces of the interviewees. All interviewees described the experience of performing as empowering. As one of them put it, ‘In 2019 when we went to the streets, it was amazing!’ Afterwards, we felt more self-confident. They also described the empowering impact of connecting with other groups: ‘Bolivians arrived with all the banderols; we are the Bolivians here (mimics scream) we are the decolonial feminists! Wow!’ Another woman highlighted the plurality of colours and groups:

I had my Indigenous flag, Italian girls had purple marks on their faces to symbolise their fight, and the women from Latin America had green scarfs because that is the colour of our fight there. It was amazing to see how many ways there is to show the struggles.

Solidarity with Chilean women was a core motivation in organising the performance, and in Belgium, this even led to the formation of the Sororidad Sin Fronteras. As the interviewee put it, referring to the protests in Chile: ‘we all had this desire to express something and to meet in the street’. In Finland, the network Solidarity to Chile was also one of the organisers. The prominence of solidarity was expressed in placing the Chilean performers in the front row in one of the first performances in Helsinki.

Even though solidarity with Chile was the initial impetus, the reasons for taking on the performance were multiple and overlapping. Actually, the power of the performance was found in its adaptability and the multiple layers that entails. ‘The message of the Un violador en tu camino, you can read it in different levels’, explained one interviewee. She continued by explaining that the performance addresses violence against women simultaneously in Latin America and globally:

That is the reason why we, as women, can identify ourselves from different parts of the world – we are tired of nobody paying attention to the way we talk about domestic, systematic violence. I think Las Tesis has found how to make visible the problems that are not only about Latin American women, but also about oppression, about females around the world.

Gendered violence and women’s struggles in Latin America were an inspiring backdrop: ‘They are fighting there, we have to fight here, too’. ‘We realised we wanted to be connected to what is happening in Latin America: the revolution, the activism, the demands in Argentina, in Chile also, Mayo feminista 2018’. Mayo feminista 2018, Feminist May 2018, refers to the wave of feminist mobilisations that took place in Chile between May and June 2018, sometimes considered as the largest ever seen in Chile (Gonzales and Vidal, 2019: 55). This wave of protests and the media visibility it received, as well as the disappearance of female Mexican students had also been a catalyst: ‘We believed that we needed to create connections from here, Finland, to Latin America’. All in all, the interviewees referred more to Latin American campaigns than to the Western #MeToo campaign, for instance. In Finland, the Latin American women had already decided to get together and do something because of the wave of political turbulence in many Latin American countries, and the protests in Chile and the spreading of the performance was only one part of the need to participate. A migrant poet from Peru described the desire to be connected with the struggles in Latin America as a source of inspiration to come together and create a combination of political and artistic activities in Finland. As she put it, ‘When we saw what was happening in Latin America, we got power!’ We said, now we have to connect with that energy, revolutionary energy. And we have to get back our voice, us, migrant women.

In addition to referencing solidarity with the wider struggles in Latin America, the quote above raises another important aspect of bringing migrant women together to gain visibility and voice in their current European contexts. The performances brought together women of diverse identity backgrounds and affiliations. For example, the organisers of the 2020 performance in Helsinki informed me that the performers were Finnish, Latin American, Kurdish, and Italian women. These organisers and the Red de Mujeres turned the performance into a joint venture, widening the network of migrant women in Finland. In Belgium, Sororidad Sin Fronteras consisted of Chilean women in the beginning but other women of Latin American origin as well as non-binary persons started to join. Thus, civil society struggles in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America were a springboard for action and the performance was one way of doing that. Organising the performance brought women together and provided an opportunity to discuss differences and commonalities. This process included building bridges between different groups as well as negotiating differences. One indicator of the sensitivity and critical approach the migrant women took in organising the performance is the attention they paid to the security of participants. As one interviewee explained, undocumented migrants were sheltered either by applying for permission for the performance or by informing everyone that no formal permission for the performance had been granted, so they could decide whether or not to risk participating in the event.

Re-creating the performance in Helsinki and Brussels brought women together to form new alliances and increased the voice and visibility of the participating Latin American women, other migrant groups, and sexual minorities in these contexts. The performance also invigorated discussion about the commonalities and differences between women and their lived experiences. Some of the movements and lyrics are indeed context specific. For instance, in the original performance, women physically take the position required by the police upon being arrest in Chile. This position is an example of the aspects of the performance that are not familiar to all women living in Western contexts. Another difference between the context of Chile, on one hand, and Finland and Belgium, on the other hand, was the presentation of the performance in relation to police forces, claiming ‘And the rapist is you – it’s the cops’. As Martin and Shaw (2021) have pointed out, the lyrics of the performance mimic a Chilean police song ‘Un amigo en tu camino’, targeting police officers who claim to protect women but actually use sexual violence as a means of intimidation (p. 3). Without going deeper into a comparison between policing and police forces in Chile, Finland and Belgium, the attitudes towards the police are different in the two latter countries from those portrayed in the original Chilean performance. ² As one interviewee explained, she had had many experiences of police officers being friendly with her in Finland. Despite personal experiences not necessarily corresponding to the message of the performance, the more vulnerable situation of migrant women was nevertheless highlighted. In particular, the differentiated treatment of migrant women as victims of gender violence was pointed out. For example, migrant women often encounter violence during their travel to their new destinations, which may make it impossible for them to return to their home countries. However, the asylum process does not take such experiences – for example, rape taking place during the process of migrating – into consideration.

To ease the transplanting of the performance to other contexts outside of Chile, the lyrics have sometimes been changed. In response to this, Paula Cometa, one of the creators of the original performance, has said: ‘Haz tu grito, pero ese tipo de cosas desvirtúan todo’/Have your cry, but this kind of actions destroy everything. ³ This strong reaction from Cometa indicates that the creators want to maintain some ownership of their creation, and that they are keenly aware that the performance being taken up by women in Europe raises the question of appropriation. Western feminism has a history of appropriating the experiences of women in other parts of the world, of viewing and treating non-Western women as a monolith (Mohanty, 1988), co-opting their voices (Carter Olson, 2016: 780), or superficially compartmentalising social realities into ‘Western’ or ‘Indigenous’ (Narayan, 2019: 3). The creators of the performance voiced the fear that the performance is taken as joyful and peaceful, which they claim is a lie. Furthermore, appropriation may be based on not understanding, as I initially did, taking the movements to be simply choreographic, and not realising that the movements mimicked the shaming position required from those taken into police custody in Chile. ⁴ ‘Me too’ was an expression used by Tarana Burke to raise awareness of the prevalence of sexual violence in communities in the United States. The hashtag gained visibility in 2017 when increasing numbers of female actors started accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Burke described her reaction upon realising that the phase ‘me too’ had become a fast-spreading hashtag as jarring. She was worried for those opening up on the Internet without any help to process the violence, and also worried that the phrase she had built her work around was being taken away from her. She also went public, pointing out that me too went beyond a hashtag: instead, it was a movement to let young black women in particular to know they were not alone (Burke, 2021).

Even if the performances outside of Chile were intended as acts of solidarity, the unauthorised re-creations carried a risk of downplaying contextual differences and women’s lived experiences between the original and other contexts. None of the organisers in Helsinki and Brussels changed the lyrics and the performance was performed only, or also, in Spanish. However, most of the interviewees did not reject the idea of changing the lyrics while also being aware of Cometa’s reaction. This indicates that for the re-creators the importance of the performance lies in the feelings of empowerment, communality, and visibility, which it invigorates and in the powerful demands against patriarchy and oppression to which it gives expression. Spreading the performance further is also supported by the aim of taking feminist discussions from the academia to the streets, which the interviewees raised as an important aspect for migrant women. In addition to opening feminist discussion and participation beyond academically educated women, this move was seen to diversify feminist discussion more broadly. As one interviewee described, the jump from the academy to the streets should be the goal of feminism.

Branching out

As discussed above, re-creations of the performance have occasionally given rise to the suspicion that the message has been or risked being misunderstood. For instance, the performance has been interpreted as being about joy and pacifism. In contrast, the women I interviewed were perfectly aware of the situation in Chile and concerned about gendered violence in Latin America more widely. As Latin Americans living in Western locations, the interviewees took on a double role. This role led them to express solidarity with women’s struggles in Latin America paired with a critical gaze on the gendered and racialised structures of discrimination in Finland and Belgium. This critical evaluation includes both the situation of the migrant women in these contexts and the gendered power structures and norms impacting women globally. Thus, they were able to practise critical consciousness, locating the performance in the time and space it was created but also responding to it and using it to critique Western contexts (Said, 1983b: 241–242). Evaluating the suitability of the performance for Western contexts was secondary. Instead, the women’s assessment focused on what could be learned from this Southern performance, which had travelled to the West.

Given the specific position of many interviewees as women who had come from Latin American countries and were not located in Western contexts, I asked them to evaluate the differences between the feminist struggles and issues in the different contexts. The image of Western feminists struggling for institutional and legal measures and focusing on specific issues, such as the gender pay gap, was mentioned:

When we talk about the equality, I think around the world, in Sweden, in Norway also here [Finland] it is the same: equality is more about the salaries, for example. Here, equality is more about reflection of the economic issues but there, in Latin America, we are talking about safety, dignity and basic rights. No, it’s not the same. Of course, the difference is that there, in Latin America, we fight for lives; our lives.

On the other hand, a Chilean woman commented: ‘I have seen that there are so many types of violence: sexual violence, abuse of power, in so many different situations. I believe that we all share and feel it’. The interviewees emphasised that femicide, machismo, and rape culture are all present in Western societies as well. What is missing are the words for discussing these issues, such as ‘femicide’: ‘First world countries, you have the money to talk about things and to research things and then, the governments don’t have a word for this particular form of homicide!’. Re-creations of the performance by the migrant women took the term of the femicidio to the streets, pointing out that it was a menace that also tormented Western societies, even if they lacked the term for it. This is one example of how influence of the Southern feminists could change Western feminist praxis.

The interviews also strongly brought out the need to make feminism more open and inclusive by taking it outside of academia and institutions. A Mexican interviewee described the way the discussion is limited to the institutional context in Finland: ‘. . . there are institutions [which] every year give the statistics about how many women are killed here because of domestic violence. That is very important because it is like a taboo, this term here is still a big taboo. But we want to say that we have our own voices, and we want to talk with our own voices. It is very amazing that institutions can represent us, but we also want to represent ourselves.’ This interviewee also raised the issue of the ‘appropriate’ channels for change. Challenging feminism entrenched in academia was one aspect that the performance originally addressed. The interviewees broadened this challenge to also include feminism restricted to institutional actors. The silenced discussion on violence against women and the channels to raise issues being limited to official institutions are intertwined: lacking words and preserving the process of marking out feminist issues for academics and institutional actors is furthered by outright silence, a taboo, as described above. Performing on the streets effectively challenges these taboos.

When asked to evaluate the challenges and the promises in transplanting a performance based on Chilean women’s experiences, the perceptions of the interviewees were largely hopeful. For instance, when I brought up my own ignorance on the meaning entailed in some of the physical movements in the performance and my positionality as a white, Western woman, one interviewee replied:

On a more emotional or relational level we understand what it means to be a group, saying: this has to do with the society, this has to do with the State, this has to do with the police! It’s wrong, and we are all living it! Even from, like you said, this privileged position of a white woman in Western societies.

This perception echoes the view presented by Rita Segato (2025), who has argued that ‘violence against women is not the problem of a particular group in society, but rather the seedbed, hothouse and breeding ground of all other forms of violence and domination’ (p. 133). At the same time, this perspective should be complemented with mutual learning rather than the domination of Western perspectives. As expressed by one interviewee: ‘Of course, at the same time, we continue the solidarity, and we continue learning from Latin America because also in Finland they could learn something from Latin America’.

As described above, in addition to reaching out to the struggles in Latin America, organising the re-creations meant connecting with women worldwide. As one interviewee put it,

We performed ‘Un violador en tu camino’ and it was amazing! Not only in connection to the performance, but also to contextualise that the oppression against women is not only in Latin America, but it is also here in Finland, it is in Ethiopia, it is in Kurdistan, it was some kind of connection to the world . . .!.

Another interviewee condensed these feelings by stating that women have ‘sororidad in pain’ – ‘sisterhood through pain’. Coming together turned the gaze on the shared situation of migrant women in Western contexts. Several interviewees noted that the position of migrant women in Western contexts is distinct, as is the discrimination and violence they face. The interviewees highlighted both everyday problems and structural issues. Organising the performance was a way of challenging stereotypical perceptions of Latin American women in these contexts. We want to change the perception of Latin American women in Finland: ‘We are tired that everybody says “oh, you are happy because you are Latin American, you are good at making food, you are good dancers.” So, we were like [mimics frustrated scream]’.

The activism of Latin American migrant women in Western contexts raises hope for the decolonisation of feminism. As one interviewee described the current situation,

There is something particular that is happening, this way of movement that is Latin America-based, that has a particular approach to feminism that is maybe little bit different from European feminism. I think that is also part of what is happening.

The re-creations of the performance indicate some core issues of this decolonising process, which requires more than just staging protests originating in the global South in global North contexts. Breaking the division between academically educated women and those without an academic background was one point brought out by the interviewees, echoing the slogan ‘feminism is for everybody’. In addition, the interviewees addressed intersectionality more broadly. The use of the concept of intersectionality was criticised: ‘. . . many groups claim that they are intersectional feminists, but some people, they only take the words to fill that empty space’. As the earlier description of how the re-creations were organised shows, the aim was clearly to be inclusive and to address intersectionality concretely. Interviewees pointed out the diversity within Latin American societies, discussing the challenges, but also suggesting that everyday encounters with diversity steers people towards appreciating differences. The performances being organised as inclusive spaces speaks to cross-movement cooperation between feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements. Some interviewees also echoed the distinction between what they described as the individualistic, Western-born #MeToo campaign, referring to the more recent hashtag rather than the original movement, and the strong collective aspect of the performance. Overall, taking the struggle to the streets was seen as a viable, powerful option: all interviewees believed in the effectiveness of protesting on the streets:

I think it [protesting on the streets] makes a difference because of the powerfulness of it. It is really that the victims are no longer victims but actors and not alone but a group. I think that women are the key to change and not the politicians. (Interview 2)

As Seppälä (2016) argues, women’s struggles in the global South have the potential to ‘transform the nature, meaning, and subjects of resistance’ (p. 14). Bringing a performance born of feminist struggles in Chile to Western contexts adds to the call for diversifying feminist knowledge production. Performing enabled migrant women to do just this. ‘When you go to the streets you say what you want. It is like a statement to say: now I take to the streets because you have to listen to me! You don’t want to listen but now, you listen to me!’. Another interviewee suggested what women in Western contexts could learn by listening: ‘The courage. The courage and how brave we can be if we want to get something. The passion, to be creative and to involve the whole community’.

In conclusion: The yield of the performance

The performance ‘Un violador en tu camino’ is a powerful way of raising awareness of violence against women. As the performance travelled from Santiago to Helsinki and Brussels, it also generated outcomes that do not originate from the message of the original performance. Re-creating the performance animated activism among women of Latin American origin living in these European cities. This led to increased cooperation between migrant women, as well as with other groups. In addition, the visibility and voices of the migrant women were enhanced.

Even though a protest performance that travels from the South to the West risks being ‘tamed’ or appropriated, an alternative journey led to the performance landing onto familiar soil, from which the re-creation branched and broadened out. Latin American women re-creating the performance were situated in both Western and Southern contexts simultaneously, reflecting commonalities and differences between women through the performance. They responded with solidarity to the situation in Chile, acknowledging the political turbulence as well as the impact of underlying patriarchal structures. In addition, they turned the gaze to the situation of migrant women in these seemingly safer and more equal contexts (Brussels and Helsinki). As argued, migrant women had ‘awareness of the differences between situations’ (Said, 1983b: 242). This awareness enabled them to relate to the pressing situation in which the performance was created, while also being able to criticise their new contexts through the re-creations. The active role of the women involved and their perceptive analysis of the travels of the performance highlights: first, the role of migrant women as interlocutors and bridge builders of feminist solidarity; and second, the significance of breaking the divide between activist and academic feminisms in order to further decolonise feminist knowledges. Echoing the claim of feminism being for everybody, the women brought feminist struggles out of the institutions and academia onto the streets and squares to be discussed and shared.