The tools of violence: race, gender, sexuality and military campaigns in Mexico
Stephen, Lynn. “The Construction of Indigenous Suspects: Militarization and the Gendered and Ethnic Dynamics of Human Rights Abuses in Southern Mexico”. Perspectives on Las Américas: a reader in culture, history and representation. Edited by Matthew Gutmann. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
Stephen examines the gendered and sexualized patterns of militarization and torture in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and how in these processes, long held myths and stereotypes about women and indigenous peoples are mobilized in what she calls "the cultural packaging of violence", that is, the construction of subjects who can be targets of violence. She notes based on her ethnographic work that gender and ethnicity are critical for the construction of the worthless, subversive, dangerous subjects of violence (for the analysis of violence in Chile, we would need to add class as another critical factor, and the racialization of working-class subjects). She also points at the continuity of colonial discourses and themes, especially the feminization and sexualization of the conquered/victims. Given that the modern Mexican state has promoted the ideology of mestizaje, indigenous peoples have continued to be constructed both as part of a romanticized past, and as inferior and backwards. But the emergence of the EZLN in the early nineties came to dislocate and subvert narratives of mestizaje, and the equation one nation=one state, destabilizing the political legitimacy of Mexican institutional power. In response, the government launched an aggressive military and paramilitary campaign in the areas of indigenous insurgency, which has included constant practices of surveillance, harassment, detention and torture of anybody of is deemed a "suspect". As a result, self-censorship and fear have become part of people's daily lives.
The racialized, gendered and sexualized patterns of repression are expressed in:
- the feminization and demasculinization of men during practices of detention and torture
- the use of racial insults for both men and women
- the use of rape or threat of rape as a tool of violence against women who are politically active (they are accused of being whores and looking for sex)
Stephen examines the gendered and sexualized patterns of militarization and torture in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and how in these processes, long held myths and stereotypes about women and indigenous peoples are mobilized in what she calls "the cultural packaging of violence", that is, the construction of subjects who can be targets of violence. She notes based on her ethnographic work that gender and ethnicity are critical for the construction of the worthless, subversive, dangerous subjects of violence (for the analysis of violence in Chile, we would need to add class as another critical factor, and the racialization of working-class subjects). She also points at the continuity of colonial discourses and themes, especially the feminization and sexualization of the conquered/victims. Given that the modern Mexican state has promoted the ideology of mestizaje, indigenous peoples have continued to be constructed both as part of a romanticized past, and as inferior and backwards. But the emergence of the EZLN in the early nineties came to dislocate and subvert narratives of mestizaje, and the equation one nation=one state, destabilizing the political legitimacy of Mexican institutional power. In response, the government launched an aggressive military and paramilitary campaign in the areas of indigenous insurgency, which has included constant practices of surveillance, harassment, detention and torture of anybody of is deemed a "suspect". As a result, self-censorship and fear have become part of people's daily lives.
The racialized, gendered and sexualized patterns of repression are expressed in:
- the feminization and demasculinization of men during practices of detention and torture
- the use of racial insults for both men and women
- the use of rape or threat of rape as a tool of violence against women who are politically active (they are accused of being whores and looking for sex)
Again, I wonder how race works in Chile, by contrast, especially as there's no official discourse of mestizaje in the same way.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to suggest that class in Chile functions as race does in Mexico. Perhaps you could say more about this...
Yes, it is true that discourses of mestizaje do not operate in Chile in the same way than in Mexico or Bolivia. However, the ideology of mestizaje is definitely present in Chilean narratives of nationhood. Take for example the stance of conservative historian Sergio Villalobos, author of the most respected textbooks used to teach history to secondary level students in Chile, the book by which I, and many generations behind and after me learned Chilean history. Also the winner of the1992 National Award on History, Villalobos understands the racial encounter of Spaniards and indigenous peoples in the 16th century as a fortunate event that brought mutual benefits, given by the natural superiority of the Europeans. Not only he attributes moral and physical superiority to the Europeans, but because of mestizaje, he dismisses current indigenous claims for land and autonomy by denying them their authenticity:
ReplyDelete“El mestizaje predominó al norte y al sur del Biobío, al punto de que las fuentes históricas del siglo XVII señalan que sólo por excepción, en rincones muy apartados, quedaban indios puros. Desde entonces y hasta el día de hoy, los llamados araucanos - eufemísticamente, mapuches- no son más que mestizos, aunque sean notorios los antiguos rasgos.”
[Mestization predominated to the North and South of the Biobio to the point that historical sources of the 17th century point out that, only in exceptions, in very far away corners, there were pure Indians left. From then and until today, the araucanos -called euphemistically, Mapuche- are nothing but mestizos, even if the old features are noticeable.]
El Mercurio, May 14th, 2000, page A2. Santiago de Chile.
Taking on Ien Ang's (1995) idea that whiteness, far from being merely a biological feature or a pigment, is rather a position of power in complex social hierarchies, I suggest that the elites have routinely used racial difference to establish class hierarchies. By racializing the poor, or even, everyone whose political agenda subverts class hierarchies, the elites assign them stereotypical characteristics of being backwards, dirty, lazy, loose, immoral, among other meanings. I attempt to explore how this process took place specially in the days of the Unidad Popular, when the elites saw their interests more threatened, and how these discourses compete with alternative narratives in the dictatorship and transition.