CAFCA

My interest in this topic was sparked by a student in my class on Repression and Resistance in Central America who had decided to do her senior capstone research project on femicide in Mexico and Guatemala. In 2007 the student, Masako Delalieu, helped to organize a set of speakers to come to campus to give presentations on the issue. One of those speakers was Lucia Muñoz who founded the...

On December 19, 2010, an article appeared on page 2 of the Guatemalan newspaper Nuestro Diario with the headline “Strangled: The bodies of two women were abandoned by their murderers in Zone 1 as though they were trash” (“Estranguladas: Los cadáveres de dos mujeres fueron abandonados por sus asesinos en la zona 1 como si fueran...

In their important volume Violence in War and Peace (2004), Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois make the argument that anthropologists had, at the time the volume was published, only fairly recently begun to analyze violence as a cultural phenomenon. They argue that due to fears of feeding into long-standing colonial and racist images of typical anthropological subjects (tribal and...

Guatemala is today considered to be one of the most violent countries in the world based on the rate of violent deaths per 100,000 population. According to the 2017 Small Arms Survey publication by McEvoy and Hideg (2017, 25) it ranked 17th out of all countries in 2016. The Small Arms Survey includes in the category of “violent deaths” all killings that occur within the context of...

Since the turn of the century Guatemala has not only come to be known as one of the most violent countries in the world in general, but also as one of the most dangerous countries for women. This is due to the fact that within the overall rise in violence as indexed by intentional homicides, the murders of women have also risen and remain comparatively high. For example, between 2004 and...

Despite the seemingly overwhelming nature of patriarchy and discrimination toward women in almost all realms of social, economic, political, and religious life that have characterized both the colonial and post-independence period of Latin America, women have always found ways to resist and negotiate those relations of patriarchy whether in private or...

In May of 1978 the following “cadaver report” appeared in Prensa Libre:

In the last chapter I showed that murder reports in Nuestro Diario are characterized by a heavy focus on the violence done to the body while perpetrators remain invisible—unknown men who can attack at any time, even while a woman is doing the most routine of activities. Bodies are dumped in public places and communities are turned into tiradero de cuerpos. The...

On July 26, 2013, the following murder report appeared in Nuestro Diario with the headline “Atentado cerca del Puente La Asunción: Víctima estudiaba derecho” (Attack close to the La Asunicón Bridge: The victim studied law).

Beginning in the 1970s domestic violence began to garner a great deal of attention in the United States and Europe as feminists and others began to challenge the degree to which it was considered to be a normal manifestation of problems within marriage, the right of a husband to discipline his wife, and a private issue best resolved by the family rather than the...

In this book, I have argued that there are three basic frames through which the media represent and discuss VAW. The first frame that I discussed in Part III is one in which VAW is represented as primarily caused by common crime—inexplicably violent gangs and delinquents who attack women for extortion, robbery, revenge, their involvement in illicit activities, or just general evil...

On February 5, 2013, Mariela Castañon published an article in La Hora based on an interview she conducted with the Minister of the Interior Mauricio López Bonilla. In the article titled “Después de 30 mil muertes violentas, se puede anhelar un país seguro?” (After 30,000 violent deaths can we hope to have/yearn for a secure country?), she begins with...

Sarah England is associate professor of anthropology at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California. She is originally from Austin, Texas, and has a BA in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in anthropology from the University of California at Davis. She has conducted research in Honduras, Trinidad, and Tobago, and Guatemala on issues of race, gender, and...

The Latin American Gender and Sexualities series is a timely addition to current scholarship on gender and sexuality. In the last decade, a number of Latin American governments are showing openness to new kinds of sexualities through public policy. The study of gender and sexuality also developed during that time to examine questions of power, nationalism, and changing identities within the social...