The Attack Against Mamá Maquín and Guatemala’s “Eternal Spring”

2016 will mark 20 years since the signature of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, which brought an end to Guatemala’s 36-year long armed conflict and genocide. The war’s casualties included over 200,000 mostly Mayan indigenous lives and thousands of disappeared and displaced. Yet, despite being a country officially at peace, high rates of ongoing violence – from violent crime to attacks on human rights defenders – suggest that the war and its traumas are being reconstituted in new ways everyday. Manuela Camus, Santiago Bastos and Julián López García (2015) refer to postwar violence in Guatemala as a “dinosaur reloaded”; similarly, Diane Nelson and Carlota McAllister (2013) argue that the aftermath of the conflict can be described as “war by other means”

Interrogating Trudeau’s brand of equality “Because it’s 2015”

Last week, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tendered his resignation after nearly ten years of Conservative government under his leadership. On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau was sworn in as Canada’s new Prime Minister, after one of the longest election periods in Canadian history. He took his oath alongside his newly appointed cabinet of 15 women and 15 men, hailed as the most diverse cabinet Canada has ever seen. Some critics challenged his commitment to gender parity on the assumption that equal representation of men and women in cabinet would somehow compromise the merit of candidates appointed to minsters. Yet, as Claire Annesley, Karen Beckwith and Susan Franceschet rightfully point out

A matrix of violences:the political economy of violences against Mayan women in Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip

Following the signing of Guatemala’s 1996 Peace Accords, which brought an end to 36 years of conflict culminating in a genocide against Mayan communities, violences have persisted at alarming rates. Research has noted a high number of reports of violences against women and femicide, highlighting legal battles and challenges to address this issue. This article aims to make an empirical contribution, in that it explores the political economic dimensions of violences against women in predominantly Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in Guatemala’s development corridor, the Northern Transversal Strip region. Furthermore, the article emphasizes how women community leaders have linked violences against women in the contemporary context to the historical gendered violences of colonialism and armed conflict, as well the postwar extractivist development model and related ecological violences, particularly in relation to palm oil. Drawing on qualitative research and expanding on “continuum” theoretical approaches, the article concludes by suggesting that violences against women in postwar Guatemala can be understood as existing within an intersectional matrix, illustrating the dynamics of continuity and change. Violences against women are shaped by political, economic, historical, and social factors, which in turn shape how women organize to resist and address the violences against them in the Northern Transversal Strip region.</p

Paradoxes of peace: violences against women in postwar Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip

This thesis explores the relationships between socio-economic change and violences against women (VsAW) in postwar rural Guatemala, and how this violence is understood, experienced and resisted by women living in the Northern Transversal Strip (FTN) region. Research was conducted utilizing a feminist qualitative methodological approach, drawing on ten months of fieldwork, including semistructured interviews with predominantly indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ women community leaders and social and legal service providers, as well as participant observation in community development and women’s forums. Empirically, the project highlights aspects of continuity and change in a post-conflict context, linking VsAW not only to the historical and social context in which it occurs, but also to rural life and postwar development. In the context of postwar economic transformation, violent crime remains problematic. Research has drawn attention to high reports of VsAW, yet tends to concentrate on urban spaces; little attention afforded to how such violence manifests in rural communities, where many of the shocks of the postwar development model are most acutely felt. In aiming to address this empirical lacuna, this study asks, how can we understand VsAW in rural Guatemala in contemporary times? To what extent are VsAW a legacy of the past, and to what extent are they linked to contemporary political economic change? How does this shape resistance? The research, informed by feminist historical materialist, decolonial and feminist geographical literature, found that VsAW was framed in relation to the political economic, social and environmental impacts of development in rural communities and coloniality, particularly in relation to the palm-oil sector. Theoretically, the project illustrates how shifting from a “continuum of violence” to a matrix approach can illustrate the interrelated social, political and economic dynamics that shape not only the ways in which VAWF occurs, but also how it is resisted by women community leaders

Troubling borders: A brief reflection from Engenderings

To start off the new academic year, two of our blog editors write on the issue of borders, drawing on the refugee crisis from a British and Canadian perspective. Annette and Julia both participated in the #RefugeesWelcomeHere march on Saturday September 12. Here they reflect on some responses to the refugee crisis and the importance of the politics of borders for a feminist politics

Pedagogies of Inclusion: A Critical Exploration of Small-Group Teaching Practice in Higher Education

This paper provides a critical examination of inclusion as a pedagogic principle through a practice-based interrogation of contemporary ‘good practice’ strategies for encouraging inclusion in small-group teaching. The analysis emerges from our experiences of delivering four classroom exercises that are frequently proposed as strategies for increasing inclusion, and borrows insight from critical intersectional feminist pedagogy to interrogate normative discourses of inclusion in HE. We argue that both the terms of inclusion, and the assumption that (verbal) participation is itself a straightforward sign of improving inclusion in classroom spaces, require interrogation. This article thus responds to the proliferation of inclusion discourses in contemporary UK HE, by identifying some of the potential pitfalls of viewing inclusion through the limited lens of participation

Gendered violences and resistances to development:body, land, territory, and violences against women in postwar Guatemala

This article explores the relationships between violences against women (VAW) and rural development in the context of postwar Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip region (FTN). How might we understand the relationships between postwar development, its gendered implications, and VAW in this context? What are the implications of these entanglements for feminist activism? The article explores this question in a twofold way. First, drawing on decolonial and feminist political economic critiques, it broadens the understanding of VAW in relation to development, informed by decolonial, communitarian, and territorial perspectives of bodies, land, and territory. Second, in contending that colonial and neocolonial dispossessions linked to development are linked with VAW, it suggests that these relationships shape women’s defence of land and territories as well as the strategies women community leaders pursue in resisting VAW. Focusing on the impacts of palm oil cultivation in Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the FTN, it highlights the overlapping interests and strategies for feminist activism, highlighting the webbed interconnections between struggles for land and territory and struggles for justice and an end to VAW as they manifested empirically through the research.</p

Roadblocks on the <i>ruta de denuncia</i>: negotiating women’s rights and resisting violences in postwar Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip

In 1996, Guatemala’s Peace Accords were signed, concluding 36 years of war and genocide. However, persisting violence, including violences against women (VAW) and criminalisation of human rights defenders protesting inequalities provoked by postwar extractivism, threatens the democracy promised through formal peace. Specifically, women human rights defenders (WHRDs) play key roles in these struggles, which this paper explores. Drawing on ten months of qualitative fieldwork in Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the Northern Transversal Strip (FTN) region, I ask: what roles do WHRDs play in resolving VAW and in challenging gendered and environmental injustices? Secondly, what political and collective strategies are drawn on by WHRDs; what challenges do they face; and what movements and processes do they engage in, to envision a better future? This paper foregrounds the intersections of municipal political spaces and a constellation of postwar women’s rights legal frameworks, including a 2008 Law on Femicide criminalising all forms of VAW as central to WHRDs’ mobilisations. I explore how locally elected members of consejos de mujeres (women’s councils) and municipal oficinas de la mujer (women’s offices) offer important spaces for WHRDs to organise collectively. I also highlight connections between WHRDs’ struggles against VAW, extractivism, and environmental devastation in the FTN. Simultaneously, I identify several ‘roadblocks’ to WHRDs’ engagement in these spaces and the dangers and criminalisation they face. Ultimately, such ‘roadblocks’ contribute to a vernacularisation of women’s rights in the FTN, which instrumentalises and empowers the language of rights for WHRDs’ struggles.</p