Snapshot

Grassroots Innovators

By Jason Warshof

The law doesn’t always apply to women in rural Brazil. The military dictatorship may have crumbled more than 20 years ago, but many still don’t have birth certificates or equality in the home. Denied basic rights, they also have to battle a culture of systemic violence and repression.

But the women of rural Brazil have been fighting back, organizing their own political movements to demand the most fundamental of human rights. Jeffrey W. Rubin of the College of Arts & Sciences has been a close-up witness to their grassroots campaigns. The history professor has shot hours of videotape chronicling pressure groups and the lives of the women leading them, using their stories to transform the way political activism is taught in America’s schools and colleges.

His connection with the women of Brazil began in 2001, when he traveled to the coastal city of Porto Alegre to conduct research—funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Fulbright Program—on four social movements that were transforming the country’s political landscape.

Joining Rubin on that trip was his teenage daughter Emma Sokoloff–Rubin; although just an observer then, on later trips she was to provide Rubin with unparalleled access to the women’s lives. He says that as a father-daughter team, they were given insights into everyday life he would never have been offered as a solo academic researcher.

One of the most prominent groups Rubin has worked with is the Movement of Rural Women Workers, which has been fighting for social and economic rights for women since its inception in the small southern town of Ibiraiaras in the 1980s. Many of the original members were just teenagers when they started the group.

“Most of them had a fourth- or fifth-grade education,” says Emma, “and yet they had done extraordinary things to change their communities” by helping secure basic rights for women, including pensions, maternity leave, and even simple documentation, such as birth certificates.

Rubin and his daughter returned in the summer of 2004. With a grant from the American Philosophical Society, they spent a month in Ibiraiaras interviewing leaders of the women’s movement, visiting schools, and attending political events and community gatherings.

Returning home with 24 hours of videotaped interviews and reams of notes, they developed a curriculum for middle school and high school students. The four-part course, Music, Land, and Women’s Rights: Citizens Making Change in Brazil and the United States, was aimed at debunking myths about Brazil. Instead of seeing the stereotypes of poverty or romanticized portrayals of Carnival often found in curricula on Latin America, the students “used songs, skits, and the creation of artistic products” to explore the ways in which Brazilians “took action to make change in their societies,” says Rubin.

The curriculum weaves the women’s stories into an account of Brazil’s contemporary history to give students a vibrant, human insight into a democratic movement in action. Students are also encouraged to think about how these stories might relate to the issues and organizations in their own communities.

“My interest,” says Rubin, “is in places where people have come up with innovative solutions that have brought people into the system and thereby strengthened democratic politics.”

Since his visit in 2004 and in between return visits to Brazil, Rubin and his daughter have given BU students a firsthand insight into their collaborative research process in his Modern Latin America and Latin American Social Movements courses. He has shared the message outside the BU community as well, leading workshops for secondary school educators at universities across the United States. During the sessions, teachers engage in hands-on activities from the curriculum and explore how to adapt the course for use in colleges and secondary school classrooms.

According to Rubin, there are many similarities between activists in the United States and Brazil, such as a shared dilemma of whether to protest against or work within the system. And although substantial disparities remain—for a woman in rural Brazil, leaving the house without permission could be a landmark victory—those links have helped Rubin bring back lessons on the difference an individual can make in his or her society. Of the women who first took to the streets of Ibiraiaras as teenagers, one became head of the local health department, while another rose to be the first female president of the farmers’ union.

With support from Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs and the American Philosophical Society, Rubin used a recent sabbatical to expand the curriculum project, continue his work on social movements in Brazil, and co-author a book with his daughter highlighting their distinctive research methods.

He also began a new research project, funded by the Open Society Institute, on the responses of businesspeople in Latin America to progressive socioeconomic and political reform, looking at case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico.

“What people with economic power think and do matters for the future of social reform in Latin America.”

“This is an unexplored area,” Rubin says. “What people with economic power think and do matters in whether or not Latin American societies reform and conditions get better.”

With 11 researchers in 6 cities, Rubin hopes the project—Enduring Reform—will uncover whether the sometimes fledgling democracies of Latin America are prepared to embrace the changes being made on a local level by activists and regional governments. Arguing that “reform that lessens inequality and promotes decent standards of living” is urgently needed on the continent, he warns that the region will either provide a model for other young democracies or become another global focal point for fundamentalism and violence.

“The idea is to see how businesspeople think about, respond to, support, or oppose those reformist efforts. We want to start a discussion about what would make it possible to get the private sector on board, to create energies that make things work in improving people’s lives rather than obstructing promising reform.”

For now, Rubin’s research has ensured that the voices of the women who have used activism to try to shape a democracy are preserved and shared.