Si uno es mujer las cosas se ponen dificil: The Role of Sexual Violence in Central American Transmigrant Memory

• In Event: Central American-U.S. Migration and Discourses of “Humanitarian Crisis” - Part 2

Abstract

The recent mainstream US media coverage of Central American children and adolescents arriving at the US-Mexico border presents the phenomenon of the “humanitarian crisis”as a new experience. However, the framing of this critical moment as spontaneous neglects long histories of US involvement in Central America and the intimate relationship between Central American political, economic, and military elites with US politicians and businesses. These longstanding connections have led to projects of spectacular violence like the Guatemalan state’s genocide of Indigenous people, the Salvadoran civil war, and the continued detrimental impacts of neoliberal reforms like CAFTA-DR (Dominican Republic-Central America- US Free Trade Agreement) among many others. Consequently, millions of Central American people continue to be displaced both domestically and internationally. The journeys that many Central Americans took during the height of their expulsion in the mid to late 1980s often involved uncertainty, violence, and abuse. Therefore, this presentation examines how the threat of sexual violence pervades narratives of Central Americans who migrated to the United States through Mexico from the 1970s through the 1980s. While not every migrant is sexually assaulted on their journey through Mexico, many describe the specters of sexual violence and bodily harm as an expectation. I use narratives taken from personally conducted interviews of both Central American women and men who migrated during this time and now reside in Los Angeles. These interviews allow me to demonstrate how Central Americans theorize their racialization while in Mexico by Mexican authorities and civil society. In focusing on these two aspects of Central American transmigrant experiences I interrogate the violent intersections between heteropatriarchy, racist state violence, and militarization in Mexico. Expanding the historical lens through which Central American migration is understood places the recent flow of unaccompanied minors on the border within a longer continuum of transmigratory historical violence. Finally, I highlight ways in which the collusion between the United States, Mexico, and Central American governments continues to treat millions of Central American people as disposable and violable.

Author

• Alejandro Villalpando, University of California, Riverside