Mexico

Raising Children in a Violent Context: An Intersectionality Approach to Understanding Parents’ Experiences in Ciudad Juárez

Citation:

Grineski, Sara E., Alma A. Hernández, and Vicky Ramos. 2013. “Raising Children in a Violent Context: An Intersectionality Approach to Understanding Parents’ Experiences in Ciudad Juárez.” Women’s Studies International Forum 40 (September): 10–22. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2013.04.001.

Authors: Sara E. Grineski, Alma A. Hernández, Vicky Ramos

Abstract:

Children's and parents' daily lives are rarely highlighted in coverage of drug wars. Using 16 interviews with parents in the Mexican border city of Juárez in 2010, we examine how drug violence impacts families with a focus on intersections of gender and social class. Related to mobility (the first emergent theme), fathers had increased mobility as compared to mothers, which caused different stresses. Material hardships heightened mothers' isolation within the home, and mothers more often had to enforce children's mobility restrictions, which children resisted. Related to employment (the second emergent theme), fathers took on dangerous jobs to provide for the family while mothers had fewer options for informal employment due to violence. In sum, men and women faced different challenges, which were intensified due to class-based material disadvantages. Conformity with traditional gender expectations for behavior was common for men and women, illustrating the normalization of gender inequality within this context.

Topics: Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Trafficking, Drug Trafficking, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2013

Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico

Citation:

Radel, Claudia, Birgit Schmook, Jamie Mcevoy, Crisol Mendez, and Peggy Petrezelka. 2012. “Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico.” Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (1): 98–119. 

Authors: Claudia Radel, Birgit Schmook, Jamie Mcevoy, Crisol Mendez, Peggy Petrezelka

Abstract:

We examine the nature of the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in the semi-subsistence, peasant production sector of southeastern Mexico, as associated with male labour out-migration. Presenting findings from empirical work with smallholder producers, we discuss the impact of men's migration to the United States on women's participation in agriculture and gendered relations of agricultural production. In 2007, we conducted a survey of 155 semi-subsistence, smallholder households in six ejidos. This survey was supplemented by ethnographic research in a single ejido. Our findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between farm labour and management in this sector, and the potentially significant (but focused) changes in the local relations of agricultural production wrought by gendered patterns of labour migration – specifically in tenure, land-use decision-making and the management of hired labour.

Topics: Agriculture, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Land Tenure Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2012

States as Gender Equality Activists: The Evolution of Quota Laws in Latin America

Citation:

Piscopo, Jennifer M. 2015. “States as Gender Equality Activists: The Evolution of Quota Laws in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society 57 (3): 27–49. doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2015.00278.x.

Author: Jennifer M. Piscopo

Abstract:

This article examines two decades of strengthening, expansion, and diffusion of gender quota laws in Latin America. The analysis departs from studies of quotas’ adoption, numerical effectiveness, or policy impacts, instead focusing on states’ use of coercive power to integrate women into public and private institutions. Viewing these policies in light of feminist theories of the poststructuralist state reveals how state institutions act to restructure government and promote gender equality. In building this argument, the article presents an up-to-date empirical survey and conceptual understanding of quota evolution in Latin America, including recent developments in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Uruguay.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Quotas Regions: Americas, Central America, North America, South America Countries: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay

Year: 2015

Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields

Citation:

Bowden, Charles. 2010. Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields. New York: Nation Books.

Author: Charles Bowden

Annotation:

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 people were killed, a number that is on pace to increase in 2009. In Murder City, Charles Bowden, one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juarez, has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants, a raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juarez's culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north. (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents:

Prologue: get in the car

1. Miss Sinaloa

2. Dead reporter driving

3. Murder artist

Afterword

Appendix : The river of blood

Topics: Sexual Violence, Rape, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2010

We are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements

Citation:

Stephen, Lynn. 2013. We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Lynn Stephen

Annotation:

Lynn Stephen uses the Oaxaca social movement of 2006 to illustrate how oral testimony is central to rights-claiming, participatory democracy, knowledge creation, and the production of new political subjects in contemporary social movements. (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents:

1. Testimony: human rights, and social movements

2. Histories and movements: antecedents to the social movement of 2006

3. The emergence of the APPO and the 2006 Oaxaca social movement

4. Testimony and human rights violations in Oaxaca

3. Community and indigenous radio in Oaxaca: testimony and participatory democracy

4. The women's takeover of media in Oaxaca: gendered rights "to speak" and "to be heard"

5. The economics and politics of conflict: perspectives from Oaxacan artisans, merchants, and business owners

6. In indigenous activism: the triqui autonomous municipality, APPO Juxtlahuaca, and transborder organizing in APPO-L.A.

7. From barricades to autonomy and art: youth organizing in Oaxaca.

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Political Participation, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2013

Selecting Women, Electing Women: Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America

Citation:

Hinojosa, Magda. 2012. Selecting Women, Electing Women: Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Author: Magda Hinojosa

Annotation:

Offers an analytic framework to show how the process of candidate selection often limits the participation of women in various Latin American countries (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents

1. Electing women: female political representation in Latin America

2. Why selection matters: explaining women's representation in politics

3. How selection matters: a theoretical framework

4. The paradox of primaries: inclusive-decentralized selection

5. Inclusive-centralized and exclusive-decentralized selection

5. "Less democratic, but more effective": exclusive-centralized selection

6. Selecting candidates closer to home: widows, wives, and daughters

7. Altering candidate selection: the adoption and implementation of gender quotas

8. Candidate selection and women's representation in Latin American politics

Appendix one: Latin American women's representation by party

Appendix two: interviews.

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Quotas, Elections, Political Participation Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Chile, Mexico

Year: 2012

'Pink Transportation’ in Mexico City: Reclaiming Urban Space through Collective Action against Gender-Based Violence.

Citation:

Graglia, Amy Dunckel. 2013. “‘Pink Transportation’ in Mexico City: Reclaiming Urban Space through Collective Action against Gender-Based Violence.” Gender & Development 21 (2): 265–76. doi:10.1080/13552074.2013.802131.

Author: Amy Dunckel Graglia

Abstract:

Women-only transportation has become a popular option for urban women around the world who are tired of being groped and harassed in buses, subways and taxis. The separation of men and women in public transit is controversial among feminists, since it does not address or solve the fundamental issue of gender inequality which causes violence and harassment. However, less addressed among feminists is how violence makes women afraid to act collectively. To support them, the state can play a role in setting up measures to protect them, while they confront their attackers. This article shows how women’s organisations in Mexico City use women-only transportation to create a safe place for female commuters, where municipal and state authorities have developed ‘pink transportation’. This includes segregated transport together with wider changes to laws, provision of support for victims of violence, and positive images of women which help women act collectively against violence. Pink transportation has catalysed creating wider conversations about gender discrimination, women’s rights and gender equality in media and society.

Topics: Development, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Infrastructure, Transportation, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2013

Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico: AIDS and Migration in Rural Mexico

Citation:

Rosete, Daniel Hernández. 2012. “Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico: AIDS and Migration in Rural Mexico.” International Migration 50 (5): 142–52. 

Author: Daniel Hernández Rosete

Abstract:

The purpose of this text is to analyse the motives of seasonal migrant workers for attempting to get their wives pregnant when they return to Mexico. The meanings attributed to paternity, pregnancy and rearing are analysed from the perspective of the migrant worker and his wife. Ethnographic research was conducted in several Purépecha communities in Michoacán, supported by interviews with indigenous, who travelled to the United States for periods of up to three years, and with their wives, who stayed in Mexico. The migrant workers interviewed consider pregnancy and the paternity derived from it as an important means of male legitimization and sexual control of their wives, particularly valid in their rural communities of origin, where they know they are absentee males. When they return to Mexico they seek sexual relations for reproductive purposes, since they fear their wives will have extramarital relations in their absence. From these findings, it was considered necessary to implement sexual and reproductive health policies with pluri-ethnic and gender approaches that take into account male beliefs and practices regarding paternity and pregnancy in a rural context. The development of sensitizing policies aimed at migrant males during their stays in Mexico is recommended.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Gender Roles, Masculinity/ies, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Health, HIV/AIDS, Indigenous Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2012

"We Are Not Victims, We Are Protagonists of This History": Latin American Gender Violence and the Limits of Women’s Rights as Human Rights

Citation:

MacManus, Viviana Beatriz. 2015. “‘We Are Not Victims, We Are Protagonists of This History’: Latin American Gender Violence and the Limits of Women’s Rights as Human Rights.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (1): 40–57. doi:10.1080/14616742.2013.817847.

Author: Viviana Beatriz MacManus

Abstract:

This article centers on the Mexican and Argentinean ‘Dirty Wars’, examining the limitations inherent in human rights and women's human rights responses to these epochs of violence. I situate Argentina's report on the dictatorship, Nunca más (1984), in conversation with Elena Poniatowska's text on the 1968 Mexico City massacre, La noche de Tlatelolco (1971), to trace the rise of a global human rights discourse that has become the dominant manner of conceptualizing human rights violations and gender violence in the latter half of the twentieth century. While feminist critiques of human rights have centered on the lack of gender-specific focus of violence committed against women, this article questions whether the women's human rights discourse disengages the historical, economic and geopolitical realities from which these violations were committed and instead focuses on women's sexual violations to garner international condemnation of gender violence. By turning to these texts, this article centers on the possibilities and limitations of women's human rights discourse and the impact this has on the shaping of women's political agency. This article calls for a critical feminist approach to women's human rights in order to document narratives of women survivors of human rights abuses without obfuscating their political subjectivities.

Keywords: Latin American 'Dirty Wars', Argentina, mexico, women's and human rights, gender and state violence, literary criticism, Nunca más, La noche de Tlatelolco

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Americas, North America, South America Countries: Argentina, Mexico

Year: 2015

Violence Against Women in Latin America

Citation:

Wilson, Tamar Diana. 2014. “Violence Against Women in Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives 41 (1): 3–18. doi:10.1177/0094582X13492143.

Author: Tamar Diana Wison

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Domestic Violence, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape, Torture Regions: Americas, Central America, North America, South America Countries: Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua

Year: 2014

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