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

morning, but I wasn’t here. She will be back later
today. We still don’t know what will happen.
By the end of the 1980s, the movement was
growing more visible, both through its services
and by participating in public protests. Still, the
Manuelas were often ridiculed or marginalized
by critics. Victoria reflects back on that time:
We talked about gender relations and that
made men nervous. And at that time most people
had a naive and caricatured view of feminism.
They characterized us as divorced women, hating
men, not caring about the family. The funny
thing was that we were almost all married women
raising our own small children!
The Policy Stage
As happens with many dynamic NGOs, the
Manuela Ramos Movement began to evolve as
it recognized that its ability to effect change by
providing services was constrained by the social
structure and laws in Peru. The legal program,
which had been providing assistance to women
suffering domestic violence, now began organizing
protest marches. I observed one such march
in the slum of Villa El Salvador in the early 1990s.
Close to 1,000 women—a solid majority of the
female residents not at work—marched. Bands
played! Stilt-walkers were transformed into 30foot-high
marionettes! Virtually the entire town-
ship was either in the march or watching it.
Surely, there wasn’t a household in Villa El Salvador
that lacked for conversation that evening.
Subsequently, the legal program began working
with judges and the police and helped promote
legislation to expand women’s legal protection
and recourse against physical and sexual abuse.
Soon the health program was moving along
a similar trajectory. Susi Chavez, the midwife
who ran the Manuelas’ clinics both in Pamplona
Alta and at their urban headquarters, recalls this
stage vividly. One day, a new invasion had appeared
in the Pamplona Alta area. Word came
to Susi that one of the squatters, a woman, was
feverish and bleeding vaginally. Apparently, the
woman had just had an illegal abortion but refused
to give up the little plot upon which she
was squatting for fear of losing it. Eventually,
with Susi’s support, the woman got antibiotics
and was able to seek further medical help.
As the Manuelas met woman after woman
seeking abortions, they became leading advocates
for increased awareness of abortion as a
public health problem in Peru. Abortion is illegal
in Peru in all instances, except when the
mother’s life is proven to be in danger. Police
have sometimes been posted at emergency
wards to ensure that physicians report all women
with suspicious miscarriages. Because the
Manuelas had always worked openly and within
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