ABSTRACT
Most of the more than 1,800 Latin Americans who attended the NGO Forum of the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW)—held in August-September 1995 in the small backwater town of Huairou, China-appeared to revel in an effusive celebration of post-Robin Morgan "global sisterhood"1 A festive climate of mutual recognition, exchange, and solidarity-reminiscent of the Latin American feminist encuentros of the 1980s2-prevailed among many forum participants, who not only had encountered a planetary venue in which to call attention to the needs of women in their own countries but also had discovered their commonalities and differences with women's struggles around the world. Women from every conceivable sector of the Latin American women's movements' "mosaic of diversity"3 and from every country in the region organized numerous workshops, demonstrations, and cultural events on themes ranging from racism and black and indigenous women's struggles to women's growing impoverishment and to sexuality and reproductive rights. Though the professed goal of the forum was to influence the proceedings and conclusions of FWCW, most at the Latin American "regional tent"—one of the liveliest and most heavily programmed of the dozens of thematic and regional meeting spaces in Huairou-appeared little concerned with and mostly minimally informed about the workings of the UN conference itself.
