Blood Running Down their Legs: Performance, Feminist Activism, and the Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru

• In Event: Reimagining Politics of Gender, Body, and Activism from the Global South

Abstract

This paper explores the politics of visibility around the performances used by feminist in Lima, Peru to raise awareness about the cases of forced sterilizations that took place between 1995-2000. Performance can certainly be a powerful advocacy tool for feminist politics and a mechanism to counter the oblivion that has been created around this event. However, in this paper, I ask: What are the perils of this strategy? What are the unintended consequences of using urban feminists’ bodies as a vehicle for representing the violence that peasant and indigenous women went through when they were forcibly sterilized by the Peruvian government?

Presenter

• Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago, University of Massachusetts Amherst