Women & Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba

The revolutionary movements that emerged frequently in Latin America over the past century promoted goals that included overturning dictatorships, confronting economic inequalities, and creating what Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara called the "new man." but in fact, many of the "new men" who participated in these movements were not men. Thousands of them were women. This book aims to show why a full understanding of revolutions needs to take account of gender. Karen Kampwirth writes here about the women who joined the revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the Mexican state of Chiapas, about how they became guerrillas, and how that experience of revolutionaries adds a new dimension to the study7 of revolution, which has focused mainly on explaining how states are overthrown.

Karen Kampwirth is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program at Knox College. She is coeditor ofRadical Women in Latin America (Penn State, 2001).