María Elena Oddone. Conversations with a historical feminist

Abstract

To interview María Elena Oddone is to meet a living figure of historical feminism in Argentina. In 1972, in Buenos Aires, Oddone founded the Movimiento de Liberación Femenina, one of the first feminist organisations in the region, which promoted so-called "consciousness-raising groups" among women and activated a critical discourse through the magazine Persona, which continued into the early 1980s. At a tense frontier for left and right, her feminist organisation maintained links with the Frente de Liberación Homosexual (Homosexual Liberation Front) and the Grupo Política Sexual (Sexual Politics Group). Oddone participated in multiple feminist protests, starting with the critical activation of the oppressed and raising banners against patriarchy, parental rights, abortion, divorce and also denouncing impunity for violence against women and multiple forms of discrimination. She spread feminism through the press in newspapers such as Claudia, La Opinión and La Nación, as well as on different radio and television programmes. During the transition to democracy, Oddone founded the Organización Feminista Argentina (OFA) and the Tribunal de Violencia contra la Mujer. But militant trajectories are never linear or cumulative. Over the years, the feminist enshrined in a monumental photograph on the steps of Congress would reorient her positions and distance herself from the feminists of her context. In 2001 she published her autobiography, "The Passion for Freedom: Memoir of a Feminist". After decades of silence, she shares in this interview some fragments of her journey through feminism.