Women's Movement

The Women’s Movement in Brazil Exhibiting courage and determination the women living in the Brazilian community of Gamboa de Baixo located in the city of Salvador, and in the state of Bahia, have accomplished significant changes in their fight for land ownership, clean water, gender and human rights. In the book Black Women Against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil, Keisha-Khan Perry details the victories and sacrifices with passion and with a kindred spirit projecting her sisterhood connection with the residents. Using an ethnographic method of participant observation, Perry immerses herself into the daily struggle that confront the residents in the community. Participating in protests, and physically putting herself at
55). The date was March 20, 1997, and there had been other incidents earlier in the year with one fatality, and one victim left paralyzed, and community activists previously met with city officials to address the danger of women and children crossing the busy Contorno Avenue (p. 55). Expressing the need for traffic signals and a crosswalk to ensure safe passageway across the street, the mayor and his people never responded to their requests. (pgs. 55-56). Contorno Avenue is a main roadway in the city that ostensibly serves as a dividing marker between affluent residents and the working, and lower class neighborhoods below this street, and these incidents of pedestrians being hit by motorist exposed the disdain and minimization of the resident of Gamboa de Baixo (p. 56). Emboldened and outraged by the young girl’s death, women took to the streets and shut it down with a human barricade, which literally shut down the entire city’s traffic, which eventually had to be controlled by riot police as fires were erupted on the main street (p. 56). Perry documents this incident as an example of the beginnings of a movement within the community of Gamboa de Baixo, led by women, which gives a vivid picture of the determination and courage of these