Feminist trajectories from Peru to Colombia: taking violence experienced by women into account in truth commissions (original) (raw)
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Gender, race and power : examining the Peruvian state’s relationship with intersecting forms of violence and inequalities (1980-2019), 2019
Women in Peru are still experiencing high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). Despite the existence of a broad legal framework that strives to eradicate violence against women (VAW) and GBV, there is limited impact towards transforming structural inequalities/inequities that produce and perpetuate hierarchies along of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and class lines in Peru, all of which inextricably linked to GBV. Drawing largely on primary official documents and secondary literature, this research aims to critically understand the Peruvian State’s relationship with intersecting forms of gender based-violence and inequalities during war (1980–2000) and peace (2000–mid-2009). The deep-rooted and present-day forms of violence and inequalities are present not just in wartime but also in peacetime, reverberating into a historicized continuum of violence that is critically linked to patriarchal, ethno-racial, gendered and colonial structures of power. I thus provide a state-centred analysis with a prioritization of power, decoloniality and intersectionality to understand how structures of power and processes of differentiation operate in the production of gender-based violence that disproportionately affect indigenous and impoverished rural women. To that end, I analyze a case study of the 2009–2015 National Plan against Violence toward Women and its implementation, reflecting upon its vision and success as well as limitations and constraints, in a continuing effort to unpack the complexity of adequately addressing GBV and its underlying causes. I finally emphasize the Peruvian State’s responsibility to work towards the substantial transformation of these inequalities associated with structures of power that have sustained gender-based violence in war and peace alongside its historicized continuation, particularly in light of the State’s active facilitation of the same. With this, I hope to improve our understandings, rethink the State’s responses and strategies in culturally diverse settings, and improve access to justice, as central to effectively addressing the historical and contemporary forms of sociocultural ideologies and systems of inequality that affect indigenous and non-indigenous women's lives differently, while working to prioritize and address prevention in practical terms.
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2018
Velásquez to highlight the paradoxes of beauty as a measure of status, wealth and moral value in twenty-first-century 'socialist' Venezuela. There is some interesting information and relevant ideas, but clearer historical and social analysis is needed to explain the prevalence and significance of beauty pageants in Venezuela. It would seem that their popularity, propagation of Euro-centred beauty norms and reflection of meritocratic valuesthe importance of hard work as opposed to lineage or genesare related to the growth of the oil economyparticularly the boom of the sthe development of consumerism in a rentier economy, high rates of European migration in the s and s, and the populist 'Punto Fijo' democracy established in . The relationships between these factors and/or the allegedly ongoing importance of the colonial values of honour, lineage and elite status need greater analysis, though, for a clear argument to emerge.
Despite the ascent to power of several high profile women throughout Latin America and the Caribbean many indicators show that women still suffer from high levels of gender inequality. In Peru, women occupy 21.5 per cent of parliamentary seats (UNDP 2013), and have been very visible, some in high profile positions, within municipal, regional and national government since the 1990s. A quota system obliges political parties to include to reserve 30 percent of their electoral lists to women, and since 1996, a women's machinery within government addresses (some) issues related to women's vulnerability, if arguably not equality. Indeed, improvement in representation has not solved some of the major ills of gender inequality: violence against women, including rape, continues to be appallingly high, reproductive and sexual rights and health are still contested, and the labor market continues to favor men. 2 How can we understand women's increasing representation and visibility in politics parallel to continuing high levels of gender-based violence and the opposition to abortion?
Women, Memory and War. Two Testimonios of the Peruvian Commission for Truth and Reconciliation.
Between 1980 and 2000, Peru experienced a period of extreme violence involving two opposing political groups: the Maoist Communist Party (The Shining Path, PCP-SL) and the Communist Movement (MRTA) on one side, and the forces of the state on the other. The confrontation resulted in 68,700 casualties. A Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (CTR) was formed in 2001 to investigate the causes of the violence and those responsible for human rights violations. The CTR collected 17,000 testimonios (testimonies) from actors on all sides of the conflict including alleged " members of the alleged subversive groups " , victims (mostly rural indigenous civilians), police officers, soldiers, and government officials agents. In this paper, I analyze two testimonios kept in the archive of the Information Center for Collective Memory and Human Rights. I compare testimonios that bear witness to the different way the " years of terror " were lived and interpreted by two Peruvian women: Lucero Cumpa, a high-ranking leader in MRTA; and JG, a middle-rank militant of Shining Path. Cumpa and Galván are currently serving a 30-year and a 20-year sentence respectively at the women's high security prison in Lima. : I analyze the conceptions these women have constructed about their nation in order to avoid social isolation. These women's voices organize a tense, heterogeneous version of history that suggests a new, alternative Peruvian narrative.
Australian Journal of Human Rights, 2022
ABSTRACT Drawing on Andrea Durbach’s work around post-conflict transformative gender justice, this paper asks if criminal justice for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) can bring about transformative gender justice in Latin America. The paper offers a comparative analysis of two judicial cases of conflict-related rape: the Sepur Zarco case in Guatemala and the Manta y Vilca case in Peru. The paper argues that domestic courts can have important transformative effects on victim-survivors, their families and on criminal justice practices for CRSV, when international standards for evidentiary practice are adhered to within the specific local context of the case in question, as was the case of Sepur Zarco. If international standards of evidentiary practice are not considered, it is much less likely that such cases are transformative, in fact, the process might do harm, as in the case of Manta y Vilca. Therefore, criminal justice processes are not by default transformative, but good practice can be important to transformative gender justice by providing redress for victim-survivors and affected communities, unsettling hierarchies and building accountability.
2017
How does it come to pass that the rollout of a women’s rights regime becomes a condition for the violation of women’s rights? This thesis begins with the rollout of the PNSRPF 1996-‐2000 (a family planning program), as part of a larger women’s rights campaign in Fujimori’s Peru, and the forced sterilization of upwards of 10,000 campesina women. I examine the historic memory of the Peruvian feminist movement for factors that led to the vulnerabilization of campesinas in a women’s rights campaign. The feminist movement was made up of three assemblages concentrated around reproductive and sexual rights, critical human rights, and civil and political rights. However, only the critical rights paradigms was able to contend with the intersectional identity of campesinas and their inclusive exclusion as citizens. The other two assemblages assumed they were protecting “all women” or “all Peruvians,” leaving campesinas to fall into the lacunae created by the siloization of rights paradigms. iv
The State and Violence Against Women in Peru: Intersecting Inequalities and Patriarchal Rule
This article builds on long-term research looking at violence against women in both war and peace, and recently gathered data regarding persistent failure to use policy as a tool to reduce such violence in Peru. The research shows that impunity and tolerance for violence against women persists despite a state that has actively intervened to eradicate such violence for some twenty years. Including the state as perpetrator of violence in the analysis of impunity helps understand the failure of policy and legislation. Moreover, the notion of patriarchy allows us to look at a historically shaped male-centered and sexist organization of state and society, and helps understand the ambiguities in contemporary policy and legislation.