Indigenous Women, Violence, and Silence in a Pluri-legal Ecuador

• In Event: Feminismos indígenas, violencias y resistencias

Abstract

Since 1998, Ecuador recognised customary law as part of the Ecuadorian legal system. Customary law -before applied de facto by indigenous communities- was transformed into a state accepted alternative to ordinary justice. Has the pluri-legal scenario influenced the way they deal with violence and abuse? This paper aims to explore these questions by looking at the complexity of recognising violence in everyday life and, consequently, the difficulty to reported it and judge over it.

I argue that while violence could be assumed as motivated by hostility or intent to cause harm, it can also have a functional role. Hence, I propose to understand it as a working tool to mediate social relations. This approach considers that violence is dynamic and utilitarian and can be experienced and used horizontally, which makes it so difficult to identify. How to categorise violence when it is explained as used to protect? To educate? If violence is dynamic and utilitarian, it difficult to report and to rule over, making it easy to normalise and difficult to counter.

The silence and the difficulty in reporting are the final points of the paper. The paper aims to explain victim’s silence as one of the harmful effects of violence because even though it is not categorised as bad, it hurts, and even though it hurts, it cannot be reported unless it is excessive. Silence becomes the first obstacle to overcome when reporting violence.

Author

• Andrea Espinoza, King's College London