QCQ# 10 Alone You are Nobody, Together We Float: The Manuela ...

Over a very long lunch on a sunny afternoon,
I sat with Victoria Villanueva, Susana
Galdos, Frescia Carrasco, and Rosa Espinoza.
At 63, Victoria is the General Coordinator of
Movimiento Manuela Ramos and was one of its
founding members. Susana, also an original
member, is the current director of the
ReproSalud project. Frescia joined the Manuelas
18 years ago, when it was still a young group.
Rosa has been a Manuela for 13 years. The
women have shared so much of the history they
describe that they easily pick up and continue
each other’s comments.
HISTORY OF THE
MANUELA RAMOS MOVEMENT
The Early Years: Challenging
Assumptions About Everyday Life
The history of Movimiento Manuela Ramos
echoes the growth of feminist organizations in
many countries. In the late 1970s, Peru was
brimming with hopes of restoring democracy
after ten years of military rule. In the exciting
milieu of a new constitution, elections, and dynamic
workers’ movements, a group of seven
women in Lima began to reconsider their assumptions
about everyday life. These women,
then in their twenties, thirties, and forties, began
meeting each Tuesday. They spoke of their
lives, their dreams, and their frustrations and
found they shared many feelings.
Sensing the extent to which other women
would appreciate the kind of self-awareness they
were acquiring, the group developed a workshop
format that would allow other women the same
opportunity to reflect upon their personal lives.
Reaching out to low-income mothers’ clubs, they
found that, despite class differences, these
women shared similar concerns. Issues of selfesteem,
identity, work, sexuality, and reproductive
health repeatedly surfaced and were often
expressed with great intensity.
By 1980, the group formed a nongovernmental
organization (NGO), hoping to contribute
to a nascent national women’s movement and
believing that low-income women could provide
vital leadership. As a fitting homage to the many
anonymous voices that bubbled up during those
early workshops, the group chose the name
Movimiento Manuela Ramos (the Manuela
Ramos Movement). The name Manuela Ramos
is considered so ordinary and common as to signify
“Everywoman,” somewhat akin to Fulana
in Brazil or Jane Doe in the United States
The Manuelas’ strategy was to train women
community leaders in Lima’s barrios (marginal
urban areas). As Frescia, currently the coordinator
of the Manuelas’ health program, explains,
“We called it training because we never found a
better name, but they were really reflection
workshops.” What they called the “basic course”
was actually quite intensive: almost 40 hours, two
afternoons a week for eight weeks, with three
main themes:
• Identity: sexuality, the body, and male/female
relations;
• Self-worth: women’s rights and history,
emphasizing the “double-shift” (paid work
outside the home plus unpaid labor within
the home) and the fact that most women
have “two bosses”; and
• Organization: teaching women skills they
need to advocate for change.
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