REFLEXIVITY IN MOBILIZATION: GENDER AND MEMORY AS CULTURAL FEATURES OF WOMEN'S MOBILIZATION IN VIEQUES, 1999-2003

*† This article explores the significance of reflexivity as a cultural process in social movements. It examines the roles that gender and memory played in mobilizing women in the antimilitary movement in Vieques, Puerto Rico, between 1999-2003. In particular, the analysis focuses on the articulations and actions undertaken by the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses. While some emerging research stresses the novelty of women’s participation in the latest effort to remove the U.S. Navy from this island, none have operationalized the event in a theoretical context and highlighted key nuances. This article engages literatures on the significance of gender in the mobilization process as well as the cultural nature of remembrance and its significance in the meaning-making process for collective actors. It does so through an examination of the mobilization of women in the antimilitary movement. Furthermore it argues for the acknowledgement of reflexivity in the examination of claims articulation for mobilization. In the spring of 1999 the resistance movement in Vieques, Puerto Rico against the use of the island by the U.S. Navy as missile target training grounds reemerged. The Vieques movement has spanned sixty years (Barreto 2001; McCaffrey 2002; Melendez 1989; Mullenneaux 2000), but observers noted the presence of women as a novel feature of this latest protest wave (McCaffrey 2008). The novelty was not that they were women, but that they became the movement’s leaders and most active voices, defining and steering its direction. To date, their participation and accomplishments have not been assessed within the broader context of the movement’s history and mobilization processes. It is with this oversight in mind that I analyze the mobilization of women in the latest protest wave of the Vieques antimilitary movement (1999-2003) and their impact upon the processes of mobilization on the island. This article analyzes the work of the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses (hereafter, Alianza) and the role played by gender through reflexivity in the group’s engagement. I draw on the debates over the significance of gender in social movement processes (Acker 1990; Brown and Ferguson 1995; Einwohner et al. 2000; Ferree and Martin 1995; Neal and Phillips 1990; West and Blumberg 1990). Specifically, my analysis builds on the subjectivity of gendered mobilization (Aretxaga 1997; Borland and Sutton 2007; Friedman 1998; Moghadam 2000; Robnett 1996) to address the ways this variable informs the use of discourse, strategies, and collective action by women in the movement, especially participants from Alianza. As part of this reflexive approach, I consider the role of memory as a defining element in the formulation of ideas and meanings for those being mobilized (Olick and Levy 1997; Olick and Robbins 1998; Pennebaker 1997; Wagner-Pacifici 1996; Zerubavel 1995). I further argue that women’s engagement in the mobilization events of 1999-2003 was guided by their history of the military presence on the island and their appropriation and interpretation of the struggle. This cultural process of meaning making—or reflexivity—resulted in a mobilization discourse and narratives that set Alianza’s work apart from that of preexisting actors while broadening the field of action of the antimilitary movement. This article contributes to social movement theory by considering gender and reflexivity as key cultural variables. In particular, how