A matrix of violence: Violences against women and the vernacularisation of women’s rights in postwar rural Guatemala

• In Event: Mujer y violencia en América Latina (parte I)

Abstract

In 2008, the Guatemalan congress passed a Law on Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women, criminalising gendered violence and implementing formal legal practices and Research has highlighted the successes and limitations of state and legal responses to violences against women (VsAW) in urban Guatemala, but has not considered the issue in rural context. Drawing on 10 months of doctoral fieldwork conducted in Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the rural Northern Transversal Strip region, I ask how women community leaders and human rights defenders access legal support for victim-survivors of violence, and address VsAW in their communities. This paper highlights the complex manifestations of VAW in rural contexts, and points to the limitations of the formal justice system. By expanding on existing ‘continuum’ theoretical approaches to VsAW (see Kelly 1988; Boesten 2014), I suggest that VsAW in rural Guatemala can ultimately be understood as existing within an intersectional matrix, and is shaped by political, economic, historical and social factors. Further, my findings point to the vernacularisation of women’s rights in rural Guatemala within the context of the proposed matrix of violence, transforming formal legal mechanisms to adapt to local needs and context.

Author

• Julia I Hartviksen, University of Brighton