Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala
Cecilia Menjivar
Abstract
Drawing on revealing, in-depth interviews, this book investigates the role that violence plays in the lives of Ladina women in eastern Guatemala, a little-visited and little-studied region. While much has been written on the subject of political violence in Guatemala, this book turns to a different form of suffering — the violence embedded in institutions and in everyday life so familiar and routine that it is often not recognized as such. Rather than painting Guatemala (or even Latin America) as having a cultural propensity for normalizing and accepting violence, the book aims to develop an a ... More
Drawing on revealing, in-depth interviews, this book investigates the role that violence plays in the lives of Ladina women in eastern Guatemala, a little-visited and little-studied region. While much has been written on the subject of political violence in Guatemala, this book turns to a different form of suffering — the violence embedded in institutions and in everyday life so familiar and routine that it is often not recognized as such. Rather than painting Guatemala (or even Latin America) as having a cultural propensity for normalizing and accepting violence, the book aims to develop an approach to examining structures of violence — profound inequality, exploitation and poverty, and gender ideologies that position women in vulnerable situations — grounded in women's experiences. In this way, this study provides a glimpse into the root causes of the increasing wave of feminicide in Guatemala, as well as in other Latin American countries, and offers observations relevant for understanding violence against women around the world today.
Keywords:
violence,
Ladina women,
eastern Guatemala,
political violence,
Latin America,
feminicide
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520267664 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520267664.001.0001 |
