Latina Feminism and the Third Wave

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Latina Feminism and The Third Wave Marcela A. Duarte Saavedra University of South Florida Women and Communication April 1, 2013 Word Count: 2,042 Latina Feminism and The Third Wave “She has this fear that if she digs into herself she won’t find anyone” (Anzaldúa 43). This quote from Gloria Anzaldúa sums up quite beautifully the nature of the Latina feminist struggle in the United States of America during the third wave of feminism. After many years of being filtered and masked into the “minority” struggle, the Chicana movement aided other Latina feminists to speak out and make themselves known to the white feminist movement and the rest of the country. I argue that the Latina feminist movement would have been much more beneficial to its advocates if there would have been a push for cohesiveness between different nationalities from the beginning of the movement, namely during the first significant event put on by Latina feminists, the National Hispanic Feminist Conference. In this paper I intend to analyze the first major event in Latina feminism history in the U.S. leading into the third wave of feminism, the first National Hispanic Feminist Conference of 1980, critiquing it and providing insight into its results and what could have been done to maximize the intended outcomes of empowering Latina feminists while giving them a safe space to speak out about identity, politics, class, culture and sexuality. To accomplish this, I will delve into the problems faced by Latina feminists and how they were unique from white feminists and therefore alienated from the greater white feminist movement, then I will describe and analyze the National Hispanic Feminist Conference, and end by critiquing it and providing insight into what could have been done differently to make it more successful. The third wave of feminism can be described as being a push for changing

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