Qual Sociol (2011) 34:395–399 DOI 10.1007/s11133-011-9191-3 REVIEW ESSAY
Contested Meanings: Violence, Resistance, and Empowerment in Latin America Pamela Neumann
Published online: 22 March 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Alcalde, M. Cristina. 2010. The Woman in the Violence: Gender, Poverty, and Resistance in Peru. Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, TN. Cosgrove, Serena. 2010. Leadership from the Margins: Women and Civil Society Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. Rutgers University Press: New Jersey. Hume, Mo. 2009. The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador. Wiley-Blackwell: United Kingdom. Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the current state of violence in Latin America and its meanings and effects (Moser and McIlwaine 2004; Rotker 2002; Sanchez 2006). With the increasing attention to the relationship between “public” and “private” dimensions of violence, more detailed accounts of the structural, material and symbolic violence suffered by Latin American women in particular have also emerged (Menjivar 2008; Olivera and Furio 2006; Van Vleet 2002). Meanwhile, the growing literature on women’s activism and social movement participation (Auyero 2003; Kampwirth 2004; Stephen 1997) demonstrates some of the ways in which Latin American women have exercised their agency despite structural constraints. The three books reviewed in this essay contribute to both of the aforementioned lines of inquiry by providing a more localized understanding of the varied and sometimes contradictory meanings of violence, resistance, and empowerment for women in Latin America. Manifestations of violence are not discrete but interconnected, touching both the public and private spheres. However, because the dominant historical narrative has privileged public violence (i.e. crime or war-related events), violence committed against women has often been rendered invisible. By weaving together historical events, community-level
P. Neumann (*) Department of Sociology, 1 University Station A1700, Austin, TX 78712–0118, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
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dynamics, and women’s individual narratives, these three case studies drawn from diverse parts of Latin America illuminate how experiences of both “public” and “private” forms of violence affect and inform women’s strategies of resistance. Identifying the precise conditions under which women decide—or are empowered—to engage in resistance is difficult to ascertain. What is clear from these texts is that despite (or because of) the lack of support or protection received from the state or their own families, women’s responses to acts of violence are far from uniform. Their strategies of resistance range from seemingly silent acquiescence to subversive acts in the home to community activism, as Cosgrove emphasizes in her comparative treatment of women activists who emerge from “the margins” in Argentina, El Salvador, and Chile. In highlighting the connections between small, daily acts of contestation in intimate relationships and more readily observed public forms of activism, these three books suggest that resistance, like violence, is best understood as a continuum. Examining the intersections between these two continua reveals how historical, political, and structural factors constrain both the expressions and the effectiveness of different acts of resistance. This is particularly true in the case of Hume’s The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador (2009) which analyzes the many faces of violence in two poor marginalized communities on the outskirts of San Salvador. Situating her study in the context of El Salvador’s history of political violence and militarization, Hume examines how specific events like the Matanza of 1932 (in which thousands of indigenous people were killed following a popular uprising) and the country’s 10-year civil war (1982–1992) have contributed to a “ritualization of violence” throughout the country. Although she demonstrates that this “ritualization of violence” has infiltrated all levels of civil society, she stops short of blaming the state entirely for this dynamic, suggesting that certain interests within the private sector (such as private security firms) collude with the state in the reproduction of social distrust that contributes to increased interpersonal violence. This leads to the creation of what she calls “gendered hierarchies of violence” (p. 41), in which violence committed against women is systematically normalized by a hegemonic discourse that defines such violence as a private matter. The tensions and contradictions within this “justified and socially accepted discourse” (p. 130) emerge most compellingly in the chapters devoted to the lived specificity of violence at the household level. While the connection between the construction of certain kinds of masculinities and domestic violence has been documented elsewhere (see for example, Anderson and Umberson 2001), Hume extends this theoretical framework to encompass the contemporary realities of urban San Salvador through the first-person voices of men in self-help groups for domestic violence. Later, in her analysis of the shocking and painful details that parents disclose about how they discipline their own children (such as by burning their fingers), she vividly illustrates how both men and women participate in the reproduction of violence at the household level. These sections of the book reveal the sinister ways in which hegemonic power tangibly operates in families’ day-to-day interactions, to the point of normalizing violence as “good parenting” (p. 121). Given the “hostile world around them,” Hume contends that for women in these communities, silence and isolation represent a “hidden transcript of resistance” (Scott 1990) and a “strategy to negotiate and survive” (p. 17). However, the lack of descriptive ethnographic material or examples makes it difficult to reconcile this claim with the fact that “silencing or refusing to speak about violence is an important strategy that restricts its meaning; its very existence is called into question” (p. 46). The text tends to equate descriptions of “survival” with “resistance” without demonstrating how community
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members’ own actions and behavior support the conflation of these two conceptually distinct categories. These questions of survival and resistance also surface in Alcalde’s The Woman in the Violence: Gender, Poverty, and Resistance in Peru (2010), which moves beyond a purely gendered analysis to examine the role that class and ethnicity play in the perpetuation of violence against “poor, non-white, rural migrants with low education in Lima” (p. 3). Alcalde pays particular attention to the process of rural-to-urban migration over the last several decades that has altered the social landscape in Lima, bringing more indigenous people in contact with a predominantly mestizo population in the coastline city, where stereotypical perceptions of rural areas (and their inhabitants) as “backward” persist. Paralleling the women’s own narratives, the chapters are organized chronologically around their experiences before, during, and after abusive relationships. Through careful analysis of the life histories of 38 women, Alcalde explores how a woman’s indigenous characteristics (dress, hair, skin color) and—by extension—her perceived value (or lack thereof) becomes the justification for the man who abuses her. This dynamic continues despite the ways these women self-identify (“soy limeña”) or their attempts to rid themselves of certain external markers in a quest for greater social mobility; rather, as Alcalde perceptively notes, “the identity her partner ascribes to her may be constructed to justify his abuse” (p. 99). At the same time, The Woman in the Violence shows how different sites where women experience oppression can become spaces of resistance. Rather than simply enumerate the different strategies she encounters, such as refusing to acquiesce to a husband’s demands for sex, secretly using birth control and sterilization, or conversing with their daughters about sexuality, Alcalde squarely situates these acts of resistance within the unique context of each woman’s daily life, thereby revealing both their significance and their repercussions. In doing so, the book avoids romanticizing women’s agency and highlights the ambivalence that often characterizes and accompanies their everyday resistance, as well as its limited effectiveness. Alcalde pays particular attention to the lack of support abused women receive from both their immediate and extended families in trying to leave their violent partners, and the obstacles they face in dealing with agencies and institutions ostensibly charged with protecting them. Highly textured accounts of interactions that women have with police stations when they seek to file a complaint, for example, show how the bureaucratic process itself becomes a form of symbolic violence linking the private and public spheres. As Hume’s work also acknowledged, our biographies as researchers matters. In that sense, an important aspect of The Woman in the Violence is Alcalde’s candid personal reflections on what her own Peruvian roots, preexisting networks in the country, and relational proximity to the women whose lives she studied meant in terms of her work as an ethnographer. For example, Alcalde recounts how she helped a woman (Daisy) get a position as an empleada with her family, a role that over time gave Daisy increasing access to aspects of Alcalde’s personal life normally hidden from research subjects. The result of this unusually intimate—though still highly unequal—connection established between the researcher and the “researched” over the course of almost a decade is a stunningly complex and panoramic portrait of the many challenges women face after leaving abusive relationships. Despite courageous acts of personal resistance, the continuum of violence that women face in and outside the home means that even “starting over… cannot guarantee the end of violence or poverty” (p. 199). In the face of such seemingly relentless violence, the portraits of women activists in Cosgrove’s Leadership from the Margins (2010) offers insight into some of the more public
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dimensions of women’s empowerment and resistance. Seeking to draw attention to women’s “new tools, strategies, and visions of transformation” (p. 35), Cosgrove’s work examines the trajectories of women from across the socioeconomic spectrum who have become community activists and leaders within civil society organizations (CSOs) in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador. The book begins by tracing the development of civic culture in each country, describing how the common themes of authoritarian rule, military action and theological currents have shaped both the daily lives and social and political participation of women. As one woman whose family was forced into exile during the Dirty War in Argentina put it, “this becomes part of your life, and it follows you all the days of your life” (p. 62). Women’s personal experiences of repression have fueled their commitment to “never again” allow the pervasive violence they experienced at the hands of authoritarian regimes or in the context of bloody civil wars. These kinds of narratives underscore how even pervasive “public” violence has divergent effects on individual responses in different contexts; for example, while Hume’s study emphasized how the militarization of El Salvador contributed to the normalization of brutal household violence, Cosgrove’s analysis shows how similar experiences of violence have spurred women to actively struggle to build a different kind of society. The remaining chapters deal case by case with the lived experiences of women activists in Argentina, El Salvador, and Chile. Although the Argentinean women’s descriptions of their leadership styles “follow fairly stereotypical gender lines” (p. 98), the chapter also raises several important issues women face, most notably their husband’s expectations or violence. While their accounts point to the complex linkages that exist between acts of public resistance and instances of private violence, the chapter lacks the kind of ethnographic description of these women “in action” that would better contextualize the meaning of their struggles as activists. Likewise, the chapter on El Salvador relies heavily on in-depth interviews in which women describe their evolution as activists—moving from a more militant style (stemming from their former involvement in the revolutionary FMLN party) to a more participatory approach within the context of CSOs—without offering observations of these women in everyday life circumstances. In both cases, the reader is thus left with many unanswered questions about the precise ways in which Argentine and Salvadorian women activists cope with the myriad challenges they encounter. While the chapters described above take a “bird’s eye view,” the section on Chile adopts a more microscopic approach. One by one, Cosgrove delves into the lives of six Mapuche (indigenous) women activists and their work to “safeguard Mapuche identity from Chileanization and global consumer culture” (p. 129). Each narrative—mostly told in the woman’s own voice—recounts how specific family, work, and educational experiences have shaped their interest in community activism and the ensuing risks and challenges they have faced. Combined with detailed descriptions of their community and its dynamics, this section shows how women in a variety of roles (traditional healers, community leaders, weavers, advocates, or entrepreneurs) are challenging traditional practices (such as the cutting of women’s feet on their wedding night), recovering aspects of their cultural heritage, and becoming economically independent. This rich portrait of Mapuche women’s simultaneous struggle against sexism and cultural assimilation underscores how women’s activism and resistance “out there” in the public square is deeply intertwined with facets of daily household life. Women are confronted by a continuum of violence on a daily basis in many parts of Latin America. Their resistance takes many forms and occurs on many levels. To varying degrees, these three books offer insight into aspects of both, entering into the interminable theoretical debate between structure and agency. Far from offering tidy conclusions about these matters,
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the texts under discussion demonstrate the complex connections between the “personal troubles of the milieu” and the “public issues of social structure” (Mills 1959). In so doing, they challenge ethnographic researchers in particular to avoid false dichotomies and oversimplifications of the “symbolic dimensions of social action” (Geertz 1973: 39). The gendered meanings of violence, resistance, and empowerment are and will continue to be contested.
References Anderson, K., & Umberson, D. (2001). Gendering violence: Masculinity and power in men’s accounts of domestic violence. Gender and Society, 15(3), 358–380. Auyero, J. (2003). Contentious lives: Two women, two protests, and the quest for recognition. Durham: Duke University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Kampwirth, K. (2004). Feminism and the legacy of revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas. Athens: Ohio University Press. Menjivar, C. (2008). Violence and women’s lives in eastern Guatemala: A conceptual framework. Latin American Research Review, 43(3), 109–136. Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press. Moser, C., & McIlwaine, C. (2004). Encounters with violence in Latin America: Urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala. London: Routledge. Olivera, M., & Furio, V. (2006). Violencia femicida: Violence against women and Mexico’s structural crisis. Latin American Perspectives, 33(2), 104–114. Rotker, S. (Ed.). (2002). Citizens of fear: Urban violence in Latin America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Sanchez, M. (2006). Insecurity and violence as a new power relation in Latin America. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 606, 178–195. Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. Yale University Press. Stephen, L. (1997). Women and social movements in Latin America: Power from below. Austin: University of Texas Press. Van Vleet, K. (2002). The intimacies of power: Rethinking violence and affinity in the Bolivian Andes. American Ethnologist, 29(3), 567–601.
Pamela Neumann (M.A., Latin American Studies, 2011) is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
