We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements. By Lynn Stephen

Abstract

employment, and the right to self-determination” (188). They want more support for childcare and the elderly and an end to harassment and violence against women. Her interviewees consistently reported that despite the challenges of the transition, Tunisia had a solid reform tradition rooted in gender equity, “and will end up finding its own path toward democracy and human rights for all Tunisians” (191). Honwana’s conclusions sober the advocates of democracy and civil society. Youth created new democratic forms in civil society, but they have not been able to translate them into formal political power. Young Tunisians who played the central role in overthrowing the country’s dictatorship simply “have not been integrated into political parties or taken an active role in formal politics” (192). Samir, a twenty-seven-year-old from the coastal city of Sousse, asserted that youth will overcome this: “The youth is the future and we will steer the development of our own society...Just give us time” (193). Honwana makes it clear that neither the traditional political parties nor those who emerged in the wake of the overthrow have spoken to the key concerns of youth: unemployment, social justice, and civil liberties. Instead, campaigns (and then governance) have centered on diversionary debates between secularism and Islamism, rather than the central challenge of neoliberal economic failures and establishing a climate where civil society could flourish. This is not unusual: as the eminent scholar of social movements, Lawrence Goodwyn, once reflected, the burden organic to the creation of large-scale democratic movements is that they need to stay accountable to the movement’s mass base. Too often, he reflected, those who govern in the wake of overthrow take an imperial or condescending stance, rather than a relational one, to those youth or farmers or workers who made the overthrow possible. Governance often proves a hollow echo of the early, heady days of democratic promise. Honwana’s work gives us a front-row seat to view these processes.