Morena fetishism and left mourning*
Dear friends,
In their recent article 'Solidarity or Coloniality in the Feminist Foreign Policy Knowledge Market? Lessons from Mexico', Mexican feminist scholars Daniela Philipson Garcia and Ana Velasco Ugalde recount the passage through Anglo and European international networks of the feminist foreign policy (FFP) announced by Mexico in 2019. Countries that adopt an FFP ostensibly commit to conduct foreign relations on feminist principles, prioritising gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and considering these principles as central to achieving peace and security.
Grounded in Mexican feminist civil society, Philipson and Velasco write against the widespread praise for Mexico by Global North organisations, for becoming "the first Global South nation" to adopt an FFP, following Sweden, Canada and France. As they observe, "the addition of a Global South nation to the FFP club not only created the optics of a an inclusive FFP ecosystem, but also legitimized a group of predominantly liberal, white-led organizations from the Global North at a critical time when white, liberal feminism is under scrutiny for reproducing colonial and racist structures." As such, "the contradictions inherent in Mexico’s FFP and its deeply flawed design and implementation would not matter to them as long as the FFP optics looked good."
The magnification of a Global South political project by Global North feminists - particularly, perhaps, as a Mexican story passing through the thick lens of US liberal feminism - was a familiar set of moves to me. Nearly twenty (!) years ago I researched and wrote my PhD thesis on the topic of North-South solidarity, focussed on solidarity efforts by global justice movement activists in Australia, the US, UK and Western Europe in relation to social movements in Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico (specifically: Mujeres Creando, Movimento Sem Terra and the Zapatistas). I interviewed activists from Global North civil society organisations/collectives and representatives of the social movements in each place about how they live with, negotiate, and benefit from the geopolitical relations of power embedded in their relationships of solidarity.