The Long-Term Struggle for Violence against Women Legislation: The Guatemalan Women's Movement and the Politics of Patience

Abstract

A scholarly consensus depicts strong, autonomous domestic women's movements as critical for the passage of gender equality reforms, alongside openings in domestic and international political contexts. What, then, is a nascent women's movement seeking gender equality reforms to do if it lacks strength or a history of autonomous organizing? A long-term analysis of the Guatemalan women's movement's push for reforms to address violence against women demonstrates that one potential road forward is through a “politics of patience,” rooted in the pursuit of cumulative, incremental victories. Adopting a politics of patience allows nascent domestic movements in developing and post-transition contexts to achieve incremental victories that create future political openings while simultaneously building movement strength and autonomy over time. This finding highlights the temporal and strategic power of women's movements, as well as the iterative and potentially reinforcing nature of social mobilization and political reform.

Violence against Women and Specialized Justice in Guatemala: Advances and Limitations

“…Yet there have also been those who deprioritized or actively resisted change at every level—from presidents to police. At the level of policy making, the concept of a patchwork state demonstrates why governments like Guatemala’s may pass progressive laws, spearheaded by committed policy makers working with domestic movements and international allies but then fail to fully fund or implement those laws (Beck 2021a). After all, different actors and institutions are involved in the passage of reforms, budgetary allocations, and the implementation and operationalization of reforms.…”

“…This article therefore takes, in part, a micro-sociological or “street-level-bureaucracy” view by zeroing in on institutions and actors that are key to the realization of VAWG reforms but that have been understudied in developing country and non-Western contexts: specialized VAWG criminal courts and the judges that preside over them (Lipsky 1980; Biland and Steinmetz 2017). 4 My approach parallels a trend in the Latin American law and society literature that focuses on feminist legal activism related to VAWG (Friedman 2009; Roggeband 2016; Beck 2021a), understandings of VAWG inscribed in laws (Segato 2003; Casas and Mera 2004), the implementation of VAWG reforms (Santos 2005; Casas, Riveros, and Vargas 2010; Menjívar and Walsh 2016; Neumann 2017), and the challenges women confront when attempting to engage the criminal justice system (Arensburg and Lewin 2014; Walsh and Menjívar 2016; Beck 2021b; Beck and Stephen 2021). This work points to the limitations of purely criminal justice responses to VAWG based on a depoliticized view of VAWG as merely interpersonal, rather than structural, in nature (Segato 2003; Godoy-Paiz 2008; Arensburg and Lewin 2014; Beck and Stephen 2021).…”

“…Thus, activists and their government and international allies lobbied for legislation that fully criminalized VAWG, recognized the gendered nature of these crimes, and mandated the creation of specialized criminal justice institutions (Beck 2021a). Article 5 of the resulting VAWG Law criminalized economic, psychological, sexual, physical violence, and femicide.…”