Anti-racist Feminism or Barbarism: Moroccan Women Seasonal Strawberry Workers

In September 2017, feminist assemblies began meeting on the eighth day of each month in multiple cities and towns across Spain to prepare for the feminist strike in the country. That same fall, the trial is held for the “wolf pack,” the gang rape that occurred during the festival of San Fermín in 2016: once again, the woman who was raped is put on trial, and not the rapists. With the slogans, “I believe you” and “Listen, sister, here is your pack,” the call goes viral, filling streets, plazas, and social media. This viral call is repeated in April when the sentence in announced that only condemns the members of the group for “abuse” and not for rape, and with even one vote from a judge who dared to say that there was enjoyment on all sides. The streets are dyed a feminist purple: a capillary feminism that reacts as a single body against each piece of news of sexist violence. In that atmosphere, and following a massive feminist strike on March 8, the denunciation of sexual abuse presented by several seasonal strawberry pickers in Huelva leaps into the media. Some collectives call for a march, expecting it to go viral again. However, the response it not at all the same either in number or in intensity. What happened? Debates catch fire. There are accusations: the feminism organized around March 8 and that was expressed in the protests against the wolf pack is racist. The answer is more complex, but there is no doubt that the feminist defiance of the seasonal strawberry workers challenges organized feminism and the unions in an unprecedented way. It speaks of the capillary quality of feminist sensibility, but also of its limits and paradoxes.