Securing social difference: Militarization and sexual violence in an Afro‐Nicaraguan community

Abstract

Renewed violence in Nicaragua in the aftermath of the 1980s Contra War is tied to the drug trade, drug war militarization, and the rise of the postwar security state. State sexual violence in an Afro‐Nicaraguan community under counternarcotics military occupation vividly demonstrates this linkage. I argue that state sexual violence in this case has served as a mechanism for asserting mestizo state sovereignty in a minoritized security zone. The forms of racial and patriarchal power that enabled the violence permeate the social body and structure political life in Nicaragua, and their diffuse nature has made it difficult for local people to find political redress for the abuses of state power that occurred in their community. Politically engaged feminist ethnography can illuminate the relationship between state security projects, preexisting social hierarchies, and endemic forms of insecurity and violence that remain difficult to politicize in postwar Central America.

Help-Seeking Among Women of Haitian Descent in the Dominican Bateyes

“…However, focusing solely on increasing formal help-seeking may privilege the experiences of White, Western, high status women, and fail to acknowledge risk of violence for marginalized women at the hands of formal institutions (Bryant-Davis et al, 2017; Reina & Lohman, 2015). When state violence exists, state agents often engage in interpersonal and sexual violence against minority populations, further alienating women from seeking help (Goett, 2015). Even when positive relationships with institutions exist, formal help-seeking can lead to negative outcomes including losing social support and financial stability, or facing retaliation (Lucea et al, 2013; Thomas et al, 2015).…”

Co-option and Organisational Survival: A Case Study of the Risks and Opportunities of State Attachment within the United States Feminist Antiviolence Movement

“…Proactive legislative and policy advocacy were clearly tempered during the years under Governor Payne's tenure, but for years preceding the attacks the AVC successfully advocated for changes to improve the implementation of laws and policies, and reform criminal justice system responses to domestic violence. As Goett's (2015) ethnographic research suggests, the limits of legal reform to address domestic violence are that such an approach favours controlling and criminalising marginalised communities, instead of pursuing more comprehensive strategies that are attentive to the intersectional inequities that produce and condone interpersonal and structural violence. With that said, the AVC was able to expand their focus while Governor Payne was in office, by establishing the fatality review project, grounded in an understanding that a focus on criminal and legal reform left out other important sites where routes to justice and safety might be achieved.…”

Foregrounding race in analyses of extraction

“…Urban locations associated with Blackness are often treated by non-Black populations as in need of quarantine and/or renewal, not as spaces inhabited by workers or other politically legible (if marginalized) groups (de la Torre, 2005;Falcón, 2008;Goett, 2015;Munoz, 2018;Nunez, 2020;Paschel, 2016). Urban Black communities become sites of fear, avoidance, and hostility in the popular imaginarynot potential allies (Alves, 2019;Bledsoe, 2019b;Morris, 2016).…”