  The use of the themes of gender and empowerment was further deployed by newly democratized states. Feminist activists found themselves in a different relationship to the state as it adopted the language of gender. Once a vehicle of repression, especially under military rule, Latin American feminists now had to contend with a drastically different engagement with the role of the state, one that had co-opted the very terms of a movement that was initiated in opposition to its repression. Newly formed liberal democracies understood women as potential markets for modernizing and development, thus deploying the language of gender and empowerment (Alvarez 1998: 271). However, the way in which the state managed poverty as part of its modernizing mission was mired in individualism with little focus on communities.