Our Steps Come from Far Away

Black women did not begin acting politically when modern feminism named them. Jurema Werneck’s “Nossos passos vêm de longe!”, published in the ABPN journal in 2010, challenges histories that make them visible only through oppression or devaluation. She asks how they built relationships, mobilized resources and proposed conditions for their own lives.

Beyond recovering an exceptional individual

Through figures such as Ialodê, the article reconsiders women’s authority in African and diasporic repertoires. Its purpose exceeds adding forgotten names to a list. Political capacity also arises through movement between groups, networks and the renewal of usable knowledge. The absence of an official position cannot establish the absence of authority or initiative.

Quilombos and alliances under colonial conditions likewise cannot be reduced to male leaders’ deeds. Maintaining life, circulating information and sustaining relationships can be relegated to background by military or state-centered histories. Restoring those practices does not make every caring act resistance; it requires investigating what particular practices enabled in their setting.

Tradition remains contestable

Werneck explicitly resists reversing racist essentialism into an idealized essence. There is no timeless, naturally strong Black woman representing every African tradition. Identities and political resources are reworked through violence, migration and dispute. Ancestral memory can support present action without becoming a test of cultural purity that people must pass before speaking.

Carneiro’s account of women in movement follows related questions into Brazilian feminist agendas and institutions. The 2015 Black Women’s March declaration shows collective demands taking public form. Werneck offers a way to reconstruct historical questions, rather than a single genealogy to apply everywhere: who made action possible, and whose initiative disappeared when the story was subsequently told?