Introduction

Quite apart from the sexual abuse, Poniatowska’s account reveals something else: it shows how the patriarchal culture of the region forces women to remain silent about the dynamics of violence and abuse perpetrated against them. That was at least how we, the authors of this book (Stephen M. Hart and María E. López), interpreted this issue on an afternoon in late November 2019, a few days after Poniatowska’s interview was published in Excélsior. We agreed that violence against women had been the ‘skeleton in the closet’ in Poniatowska’s life. The topic led to a conversation about how, in Latin America, violence and other problems specific to the region, such as poverty, unemployment and systemic violence, among others, intersect and exacerbate the impact of the machista ideology and the battle for the control of women’s bodies; this often occurs with the complicity of the patriarchal society, the police and other relevant authorities, due to either an inability to guarantee the rule of law or a tendency to stigmatise certain social groups, including women.

It was a conversation that gave added impetus to the book we were co-authoring at the time, and this is why, in this book, we argue that feminist activism in Latin America is directly involved in a crucial social project whose aim is to provide visibility to an issue that is routinely ignored by governments and that has – as a result – led to the generation of collective strategies by women to protect women. It is our view that giving the right type of attention to the issue of gender violence in Latin America will lead to an empiric improvement in women’s circumstances and situations right across the region.

We then wondered: how do the less visible dynamics of resistance to masculine power operate in twenty-first-century Latin America? How do women writers in particular approach the dynamics of gender violence in their countries? What does the ‘resistance literature’ against the patriarchal ideology show about the reality ‘on the ground’ in each of the countries of Latin America? All these questions led us to formulate the aim for this book: to explore the mechanisms used by women writers to tell the stories of violence against women, which, we agreed, functioned like the proverbial ‘skeleton in the closet’ in official political discourse.

Let us start by defining violence against women. This global phenomenon affects girls and women of all ages and social classes in periods of both peace and conflict. It manifests itself in a variety of ways including physical, mental and sexual harm or suffering. In particular its presence is evident in threats, coercion, femicide, disappearances, forced displacement, sex trafficking and domestic violence. This violence causes mental disorders from which many women and girls never recover.5 Sarah Bott, Alessandra Guedes, Mary Goodwin and Jennifer Adams Mendoza, ‘Violence Against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean’, Pan American Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Washington, 2012; https://www.paho.org/hq/dmdocuments/2014/Violence1.24-WEB-25-febrero-2014.pdf [accessed 12 March 2021].

At the present time 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of violence against women are located in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Violence against women (VAW) in this region is systemic, it is perpetuated through generations and it replicates the prevalent machista ideology often embedded within patriarchal culture. The negative ideology about women thus manifests itself in different spheres, including the cultural, social, political and legal. As we shall see, women resent the countries’ legal systems, which often neglect them and/or sometimes reproduce the misogynistic use of force against them. This happens because, as we shall see in this book, in many countries in the area, violence against women is sustained in faulty public policies for securing women’s rights and their physical, mental and sexual integrity. The consent of the governments regarding violent dynamics against women is a form of political violence against women that happens due to either an inability to deal with the issue or simply a lack of interest in it.

This can be observed in the study of perhaps the most extreme expression of violence against women: the phenomenon of femicide. El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia are consistently within the top five countries with the highest rates of femicide.6 Observatory of Gender Equality for Latin America and the Caribbean, Feminicidio, 2020; https://oig.cepal.org/es/indicadores/feminicidio [accessed 10 March 2020]. Women from the Northern Triangle – Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador – are consistently reported missing and killed in their searches for better lives in their journeys to the US via Mexico.7 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Women on the Run: First-Hand Accounts of Refugees Fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, 2015; https://www.unhcr.org/publications/operations/5630f24c6/women-run.html [accessed 10 March 2020]. This country is ranked sixth in the world for crimes against females, with an average of ten women killed per day in the country, with only 1.8 of the reported female murders being properly investigated and the perpetrators charged for them.8 National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), ‘Estadísticas a propósito del Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia Contra la Mujer’, 21 November 2019; https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2019/Violencia2019_Nal.pdf [accessed 8 March 2021]. In the migrant corridors to the US, females often find themselves at the epicentre of restricted migration policies and the fight among criminal groups, governments and international corporations, mainly led by males, for the control of the territory and the people.

The Mexican writer Diego Enrique Osorno wonders who is to blame for criminal acts when they are directed, allowed and minimised by the government.9 Diego Enrique Osorno, La guerra de los Zetas: viaje por la frontera de la necropolítica (Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2012). In this sense we can see that there is an indication that the Mexican authorities neglect women at risk with specific mechanisms developed in the frame of the war on drugs and the militarisation initiated by President Felipe Calderón (2006–12).10 Javier Treviño-Rangel and Laura Helena Atusta Becerra (eds.) La muerte es un negocio: miradas cercanas a la violencia criminal en América Latina (Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 2020). The neoliberal production model that operates at the service of international alliances exacerbates the processes of economic and social exclusion for poor and working-class women.11 Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso and María-Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba (eds.), Bordeando la violencia contra las mujeres en la frontera norte de México (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2003).

The femicide phenomenon, therefore, becomes a form of political violence when the governments and other authorities neglect the victims and their families by providing little attention and scarce funds to alleviate their suffering and by developing mechanisms to silence the cases. For example, with the aim of silencing the phenomenon, governmental authorities often report female crimes as female homicides, indicating that the killing of the victim was not linked to her gender but to other issues in the region, such as drug dealing, social exclusion and poverty. In Mexico, for example, very few of the cases of violence against women are reported as femicides. Ultimately, the deficient registration of the femicides can be interpreted as an attempt to keep the ‘skeleton in the closet’ in the region.

The lack of interest in femicide and the disappearances of women shows evidence that these are considered collateral to other problems in the region, such as structural poverty and the lack of job prospects, the lack of resources and job expectations. These issues increase the chance that many young people will join criminal organisations in the region. In doing so, they perpetuate a social system that exacerbates the machista ideology that is embedded in the patriarchal culture. The negative ideology about women manifests, for example, in the lyrics of musical sub-genres, like bachata and reggaetón, in that they present a sexualised approach to women. In the Mexico–US border region, thousands of followers of the narcoculture phenomenon celebrate the drug business as a way of life. In particular, the popular narcocorridos (‘drug ballads’) promote a sexualised view of women at the service of successful businessmen, so working women (obreras) are often perceived as prostitutes (rameras) in the streets.12 David Pavón Cuéllar, Miguel Vargas Frutos, Mario Orozco Guzmán and Flor de María Gamboa Solís, ‘Las mujeres en los narcocorridos: idealización y devaluación, conversión trágica y desenmascaramiento cómico’, Alternativas en Psicología, XVIII.31 (2014/2015), 22–44. In this misogynistic environment, the impunity over the violence and crimes against women is not seen as a problem.

Beyond and above femicides, the role of governments in relation to the high incidence of gender-based violence is a complex issue in the region and varies from country to country. We will see in this book that, for some authors, political violence against women is associated with the memory of several military dictatorships, such as Rafael Videla’s in Argentina, Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile and Fidel Castro’s in Cuba, which terrorised the populations and led to the deaths, imprisonment and exile of thousands of people. In this regard there is the issue of the deaths and disappearances of young women right after giving birth. In Argentina, the battle for the legalisation of free and safe abortion for all women has also taken place in parliament. After years of tireless campaigning by activists, in December 2020 it became legal in Argentina to have an abortion up to 14 weeks, and at later stages in cases of rape or health risks. This is an important issue since clandestine abortion has caused the loss of more than 3,000 women in the last 30 years in the region, and another 49,000 are currently putting their lives at risk.13 Amnesty International, ‘Proyecto de ley por el aborto legal: nueva oportunidad para saldar una deuda de derechos humanos’, 27 May 2019; https://amnistia.org.ar/proyecto-de-ley-por-el-aborto-legal-nueva-oportunidad-para-saldar-una-deuda-de-derechos-humanos/ [accessed 8 April 2020]. The violence against women in El Salvador has also become political violence due to the restrictive governmental policies concerning women who suffer miscarriages. They are often taken to court under accusations of murder and are often condemned with 30-year sentences.14 Karla Zabludovsky, ‘When the Horror of Losing Your Baby Turns into Years Behind Bars’, BuzzFeed News, 24 October 2019; https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/karlazabludovsky/evelyn-hernandez-el-salvador-jailed-miscarriage-stillbirth [accessed 16 April 2020].

Combating the violence against women in the region is therefore a universal mandate. The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ratified at the Belém do Pará Convention (OAS, 1994),15 Organisation of American States (OAS), About the Belém do Pará Convention, 1994; https://www.oas.org/en/MESECVI/convention.asp [accessed 13 March 2020]. is a legally binding instrument that establishes adequate standards for the recognition of the right of women in the region to live a life without violence. Some governments have put in place supportive systems to reduce violence against women and encourage victims to report their abuse. Such is the case with the Peruvian government, which has set up task forces specialised in reducing femicide and prosecuting perpetrators, such as emergency centres for women, a hotline for the victims of violence and the Specialised Police Squad for the Prevention of Domestic Violence.16 Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables (Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations), ‘Gobierno reafirma compromiso para erradicar violencia hacia la mujer’, 28 July 2018; https://www.gob.pe/institucion/mimp/noticias/17270-gobierno-reafirma-compromiso-para-erradicar-violencia-hacia-la-mujer [accessed 13 March 2020]. In Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women (Federación de Mujeres Cubanas) has had inestimable achievements in securing the incorporation of women in productive activities, the protection of sexual and reproductive rights, and universal and free schooling for girls and boys.17 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), ‘Ofrece UNESCO colaboración en temas de igualdad de género con la Federación de Mujeres Cubanas’, 12 February 2020; https://es.unesco.org/news/ofrece-unesco-colaboracion-temas-igualdad-genero-federacion-mujeres-cubanas [accessed 10 March 2020]. In Argentina, the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity (Ministerio de las Mujeres, Géneros y Diversidad) aims to oversee the country’s public policies on issues relating to women, gender and sexual minorities. The ministry was created in 2019 as part of President Alberto Fernández’s cabinet. Despite these advances on the issue of violence against women, there remains a lot to be done.

In recent years feminist activism in the region has been calling for action against the violence against women. While feminists in Europe and the US protest to achieve gender equality, the end of the ‘gender gap’ and the end of covert sexual abuse in the professional sphere, as represented by the #MeToo worldwide movement, women in LAC frame the battle against gender violence in the defence of human rights. This is because for gender studies in the Global North, an important aspect of theorising and transforming gender inequality is pleading for women’s equal access to the public worlds of education, work and politics.

The violence affecting women’s well-being and personal and collective rights in the Global North differs in intensity from that experienced by many women in Latin America. Take the incidence of femicide as an example. The Femicide Census reported that 1,425 women were killed in the UK from 2009 to 2018, with a femicide every four days.18 Femicide Census, ‘UK Femicides 2009–2018’, 2020, p. 2; https://www.femicidecensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Femicide-Census-10-year-report.pdf [accessed 28 July 2021]. The institutional response to Sarah Everard’s femicide by a 48-year-old serving police officer in March 2021 led women across the country to call for changes in the government, police and criminal justice system to minimise the risks that women face from men. The need for institutional change was evident when the Metropolitan Police Chief Cressida Dick addressed femicides as isolated and inevitable incidents and stated that it is incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted on UK streets.19 Clarrie O’Callaghan and Karen Ingala Smith, ‘Cases Like Sarah Everard’s Are Not “Incredibly Rare” and the Police Must Admit It’, The Guardian, 14 March 2021; https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/14/cases-like-everards-not-incredibly-rare-police-must-admit-it [accessed 28 July 2021].

Under the umbrella of the Ni Una Más (Not One More) movement, also called Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), women in Latin America march against the government’s inaction and the active participation of government agents and State bodies in actions that silence, objectify and simplify women’s deaths and suffering. These demonstrations protest the ‘death gap’, meaning the contempt for women that penetrates all spheres of life and is institutionalised via policies and political discourses. As the contempt for women becomes policy, the deaths and suffering of women are normalised.

In Latin America, policies to stop and give visibility to violence against women after the ‘feminist wave’ that began in 2018 have not lowered the incidence of femicides. Colombia registered 208 cases from January to April 2021;20 Red Feminista Antimilitarista and Observatorio Feminicidios Colombia, ‘Vivas nos queremos. Boletín mensual de feminicidios’, April 2021; https://www.observatoriofeminicidioscolombia.org/attachments/article/459/Bolet%C3%ADn%20Vivas%20nos%20queremos%20Colombia%20abril%202021.pdf [accessed 28 July 2021]. Chile registered 151 femicides in 2020, the highest number in the previous eight years;21 Macarena Segovia and Graciela Pérez Campbell, ‘Femicides Do Not Decrease Despite Reforms and Policies Against Gender Violence: 131 Victims Between 2018 and 2020’, CIPER, 7 March 2021; https://www.ciperchile.cl/2021/03/07/femicidios-no-bajan-a-pesar-de-reformas-y-politicas-contra-la-violencia-de-genero-131-victimas-entre-2018-y-2020/ [accessed 28 July 2021]. and Mexico has experienced an increased incidence of femicides in recent years, with reports showing that only 1.3 out of every 100 cases of femicide are resolved.22 Ernesto López Portillo, ‘Feminicidios y bofetada legislativa’, Animal Político, 25 February 2020; https://www.animalpolitico.com/ruta-critica/feminicidios-y-bofetada-legislativa/ [accessed 28 July 2021]. The Mexican National Institute for Women reported in June 2020 that approximately 66 percent of women aged 15 or older had experienced some type of violence in their lifetimes, with an average of ten femicide victims a day.23 Instituto Nacional de Mujeres, Gobierno de México, ‘Violencia contra las mujeres: indicadores básicos en tiempos de pandemia’, 2020; https://www.gob.mx/inmujeres/documentos/violencia-contra-las-mujeres-indicadores-en-tiempos-de-pandemia [accessed 28 July 2021]. Most of the cases are abandoned and the perpetrators remain free.

Women suffer violence in many other ways. For example, in Peru over 200,000 women – most of them indigenous women from poor, rural areas – were sterilised during the regime of Alberto Fujimori between 1996 and 2001, many without consent.24 Ñusta Carranza, ‘Forcibly Sterilized During Fujimori Dictatorship, Thousands of Peruvian Women Demand Justice’, The Conversation, 3 March 2021; https://theconversation.com/forcibly-sterilized-during-fujimori-dictatorship-thousands-of-peruvian-women-demand-justice-155086 [accessed 8 April 2020]. Women in the US–Mexico border region are victims of a misogynistic system in which the government and State forces criminalise those who demonstrate in the streets for justice for women. In March 2020, almost 100 women protested in front of the Ciudad Juárez Special Prosecutor’s Office against the lack of transparency in the investigation of the murder of activist and local artist Isabel Cabanillas two months earlier.25 Miguel Silerio and Marco Antonio López (YoCiudadano), ‘En Ciudad Juárez feministas piden a Fiscalía de la Mujer esclarecer asesinato de la activista Isabel Cabanillas’, Animal Político, 10 March 2020; https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/03/feministas-ciudad-juarez-piden-fiscalia-esclarecer-asesinato-activista-isabel-cabanillas/ [accessed 28 July 2020]. The protesters denounced the legal actions that silence families, downplay the phenomenon of femicide and instrumentalise women’s bodies. In September 2020, several members of the feminist march ‘No More Aggression Without Response’ expressed their explicit rejection of the institutional ‘repression and crime’ against the women of Ciudad Juárez and asked the local administration to train police officers on gender matters.26 Rocío Gallegos, ‘Marcha de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez contra la violencia policial culmina con repression’, La Verdad, 6 September 2020; https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/09/marcha-mujeres-represion-juarez-golpes-abuso/ [accessed 28 July 2021]. These and other events highlight the increasingly normalised political violence against women in the area.27 Amnesty International, ‘México: autoridades usaron fuerza ilegal y violencia sexual para silenciar a mujeres que protestaban contra la violencia de género’, 3 March 2021; https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2021/03/mexico-autoridades-usaron-violencia-sexual-para-silenciar-mujeres/ [accessed 10 March 2021]. In protesting against the dynamics of violence against women, many risk their own lives.

Feminist activism in the region presents gender violence as a central issue, rather than collateral to other problems in the region. There is a claim in the background of the aim to give visibility to the issue: the demand for women to gain control over their bodies and sexuality, which are currently in the hands of male forces. Therefore, the fight against gender violence implies ending the idea that female bodies and sexuality are a disputed territory between State forces, companies, drug traffickers and aggressive men operating in the area. The activism thus campaigns for the end of women being treated as disposable objects in order to satisfy the interests and desires of men.

The battle of feminist activism to make gender violence visible has been fought before in the field of sociology. This issue has been a ‘skeleton in the closet’ in sociology for decades. Durkheim, Weber and Wittgenstein, to name a few, hardly referred to specific situations of violence against women and, when they did, they did it superficially. It was from the 1970s on, particularly during the second wave of feminism, when gender issues began to grab the attention of sociologists. Since then, gender studies – closely related to women’s studies – has developed in parallel with an ever-evolving intellectual wave on the main themes affecting women and sexual minorities, including gender-based violence.

The United Nations Decade for Women (1975–85) brought together women activists and academics from around the world to address the main issues affecting women and labelled the various practices associated with what we now understand as violence against women in both the private and public spheres.28 Gwendolyn Beetham, ‘Gender-Based Violence’, Gender: The Key Concepts, ed. by Mary Evans and Carolyn H. Williams (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 99–106, at p. 100. Feminist activism and further research during this period led to an important recognition that gender-based violence was universal and, at the same time, developed differently based on class, race and cultural differences within the framework of unequal and violent power relations. Anthologies on this topic started to focus on the sexual exploitation of girls at school, gender-based violence in humanitarian and conflict contexts, militarised rape, sexual trafficking, forced prostitution, violence against incarcerated women, police brutality against feminist protests and arrested women, forced sterilisation, femicide, and female genital mutilation, among others.29 Terry Geraldine and Joanna Hoare (eds.), Gender-Based Violence (Oxford: Oxfam, 2007).

The term ‘femicide’ has become a critical tool in the study of policies and political discourses that invoke contempt against women in Latin America.30 See Frida Guerra, #NiUnaMas: el feminicidio en México: tema urgente en la agenda nacional (Mexico City: Penguin Random House, 2018). Diana E. H. Russell used the term ‘femicide’ for the first time at the International Court of Crimes Against Women (1976) to distinguish the murders of women from other homicides. She emphasised the gender division, referring to ‘the misogynist killing of women by men’.31 Jill Radford and Diana E. H. Russell, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), p. 3. Femicide has been presented as a global phenomenon that manifests when governments and relevant State forces do not create conditions of security for women’s lives.32 See Ibid., p. 7. In Latin America, Julia Monárrez coined the term ‘systemic sexual feminicides’ to refer to the series of murders of girls and women that have been occurring in Juárez since 1993 under an ‘absent state’.33 Julia Monárrez, Trama de una injusticia. Feminicidio sexual sistémico en Ciudad Juárez (Mexico City: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2009), p. 49. She argued that the State, seconded by hegemonic groups, strengthens the patriarchal control over women. Therefore, ‘feminicides’ highlight the responsibility of the government and State forces in the murders of women, which are presented as State crimes. It was argued that violent dynamics against women were the consequence of a patriarchal social model that legitimised male control and domination over women.

In the 1990s feminist activists started to frame gender violence in the context of the defence of human rights.34 Sally Engle Merry, Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective (London: Blackwell, 2009). However, there are difficulties when trying to implement international standards on human rights in each region. This happens because the cultural and social approach to women’s rights varies. However, the following question arose: how can sociology and gender studies scholars address gender-based violence when it is so difficult to investigate at an empirical and legal level? At the current time a critical point for analysis in LAC continues to be the methodology for quantifying the prevalence of gender-based violence. In fact governments and civil organisations frequently offer contradictory data on gender-based violence in the same location. For example, in 2020 Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) topped the list of Mexican municipalities with the highest rate of femicide, recording 19 out of the 940 cases registered nationally.35 Executive Secretariat for the National System of Public Security (SESNSP), Información sobre violencia contra las mujeres, 2021; https://www.gob.mx/sesnsp/articulos/informacion-sobre-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-incidencia-delictiva-y-llamadas-de-emergencia-9-1-1-febrero-2019 [accessed 12 March 2021]. Yet, while SESNSP registered 19 Ciudad Juárez femicides, Mesa de Mujeres de Ciudad Juárez reported 175 registered femicides in the city in 2020 – more than 30 percent higher than in 2019.36 Mesa de Mujeres, Manifiesto del Movimiento de Mujeres de Ciudad Juárez con motivo del 25N, 25 November 2020; http://www.mesademujeresjuarez.org/manifiesto-del-movimiento-de-mujeres-de-ciudad-juarez-con-motivo-del-25n-2/ [accessed 12 March 2021]. The registration of female deaths in the city mostly as homicides is intentional. This occurs because the authorities have not established sufficiently effective mechanisms to collect data, sometimes due to their inability to do so and/or a lack of interest, as pointed out earlier.

What has occurred as a result of this widespread indifference among Latin American governments and local government entities is, perhaps, to be expected. Rather than waiting for a time in which empiric evidence of systematic violence against women is readily available, women writers have responded with the only weapon they have at their disposition: their pens. Rather like Marta Traba’s Conversación al sur (Mothers and Shadows; 1981) and Luis Valenzuela’s Cambio de armas (Other Weapons; 1982), this new generation of twenty-first-century women writers have told stories about violence against women not with statistics or public policy directions and recommendations but via gripping, stomach-wrenching stories about the violence perpetrated against women’s bodies in contemporary society. They have taken stories about these acts of violence from newspaper articles, TV newsreels, accounts passed on to them by friends or colleagues, or even their own lives. But, in order to escape legal prosecution, they have often anonymised the victims and/or the perpetrators of the crimes committed, or they have changed certain details in given cases in order to protect themselves and/or the lives of the victims whose stories have been told.

For even political literature – that is, literature which has a political point to it and which, often, uses the platform of literature to draw attention to a flagrant breach of the law, a serious miscarriage of justice or an unjust act characterised by impunity – has to cover its traces. In many ways, indeed, literature can have an even more profound impact as a result of its ‘technique of displacement’. To give a very famous example from the work of a male Latin American writer: when Gabriel García Márquez decided to attack the Colombian government for its handling of the strike of banana plantation workers that occurred in Ciénaga in northern Colombia in December 1928 and led to the massacre of 3,000 striking workers, he did so through the technique of displacement in his classic text, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), by having the statement of the government’s guilt occur in the words of José Arcadio Segundo’s ghost, thereby simultaneously critiquing the government’s rhetorical strategy of ‘invisibilising’ the problem.37 See Stephen M. Hart and Jordan Hart, ‘Magical Realism in the Language of the Emergent Post-Truth World’, Orbis Litterarum, 76.4 (2021), 158–68; https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12297. Although Márquez’s ‘memory’ of the event is belied in terms of its authenticity by the fact that it is ‘spectral’ and, therefore, ‘unverifiable’, it brings into the mix all of the vividness we associate with the literary novel: that is, a depiction of reality that, in its historical and detail-focussed re-creation of a specific past moment, allows us to enter into that world through our imagination and ‘experience’ what the historical subject ‘must have felt’ in a way that could never be conveyed by the empiric statistical information that structures a sociological exposition. García Márquez does not need to give those historical subjects who suffered political injustice names – indeed he could not do so because they were ‘disappeared’ – and, instead, he provides them with metaphorical or allegorical names that astute readers will be able to decode in an appropriate manner.

This technique of displacement is precisely what we find in the literary works studied in this volume, which are all fiction except Lydia Cacho’s Ellos hablan, which presents testimonies of victims of parental violence. In all the selected works, the authors do not need to ‘name names’, because the reader will be aware of the politically charged ulterior motive of the work. When Laura Restrepo in Delirio (Delirium; 2004) tells us a story about a woman, Dolores, who is tortured to death for fun by some drug gangsters in a gym in Bogotá, this unpunished crime is to be understood in terms of the precipitation of the VAW climate in 1980s Colombia, rather than the clarification of a cause célèbre relating to a specific crime of impunity. The deaths of various women narrated in the novels studied in this book, ranging from Zeta in Cien botellas en una pared to Luismi in Temporada de huracanes, synthesise – or better synecdochise – the VAW atmosphere in the political and epistemic environments described in these novels. They are not intended to be interpreted as the opening gambit of a sociological study or a court case. But they are denouncing a crime that is happening in society and calling for its prevalence to be curtailed, its criminality to be understood, and the perpetrators of such crimes to be prosecuted.

In essence, then, this book should be read as a response to the need to raise awareness about violence against women as a form of political violence in LAC in the twenty-first century. To do this, it offers a critical analysis of a selection of works written by women from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. The authors selected for this book have something in common: they approach violence against women from a perspective halfway between the sociological and literary account and in line with the discourse by academics of gender and women’s studies. These authors, therefore, manage to offer a comprehensive insight into the subject from the outside, as critical analysts of the reality affecting women in their countries, and from within, as female citizens who are aware of the dynamics of violence and discrimination against women in their countries. The selected narratives reveal a critical view of the patriarchal social order in contemporary times, particularly how this reproduces a machista ideology that gives males control over women’s bodies. For most of these authors, as we shall see, patriarchy is a breeding ground for discrimination, femicide and sexual abuse.

The selected authors have something else in common. They urge us to listen to and learn from their particular knowledge of violence against women as a form of political violence. By highlighting women’s voices from the Global South, we promote a decolonised approach to the issue and a dialogue among scholars across regions to expand understanding, knowledge and research horizons on policies and discourses that perpetuate the derogatory treatment of women. This book aims to give visibility to their literary works so that they continue gaining prominence in literary anthologies, in reading plans and at book fairs. This is because, although women writers from the region have gained prominence in the publishing market in recent years, much remains to be done in this regard.

This book is organised by country. In Cien botellas en una pared (One Hundred Bottles on a Wall),38 Ena Lucía Portela, Cien botellas en una pared (Doral: Stockcero, 2010). for example, the Cuban author Ena Lucía Portela presents her personal approach to the mechanisms employed by women and sexual minorities to survive the political violence during the Special Period of the 1990s. The novel encompasses much more than the political and social crisis that almost ended the revolutionary project in the 1990s and offers an allegory of the political, economic and moral stagnation that determines the lives of the island’s inhabitants at present. In Portela’s novel, Havana acts as a gigantic hideout (a guarida) for those who do not feel represented by the government’s ideology, including the female protagonist, Zeta, and her group of friends. The city thus offers women and sexual minorities a space where they can exercise freedom of expression and thus challenge censorship, political persecution and institutional homophobia.

In Negra (Black),39 Wendy Guerra, Negra (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2013). the Cuban writer Wendy Guerra addresses institutional racism as a form of violence against women in contemporary Cuba. The novel tells the story of a young, well-educated Cuban Creole woman, Nirvana del Río – known as Nina. Already the title makes it clear that the novel does not offer a conciliatory portrait of the ways in which the Cuban government-State deals with racial discrimination and gender violence. Nina’s story shows how the Cuban system perpetuates discriminatory behaviours against black women with mechanisms that limit their access to economic resources, housing and work on the island. The island is thus presented as a claustrophobic place for a beautiful young woman with a strong desire to break with the gender and sexual norms, as well as with the cultural tradition for African descendants, on the island. The more she learns and travels, the more Nina realises that gender and class stereotypes operate outside the island too. Despite some problems with structure and characterisation, the novel offers an informative approach to the political violence against women in contemporary Cuba.

In Argentina, Selva Almada addresses the unresolved femicides in rural Argentine society where she grew up as State crimes to the extent that the relevant authorities do not guarantee the safety of women and neglect the families of killed and disappeared women. Chicas muertas (Dead Girls)40 Selva Almada, Chicas muertas (Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, 2014). addresses the circumstances surrounding the unsolved femicides of Sarita Mundín (20 years old), María Luisa Quevedo (15 years old) and Andrea Danne (19 years old) in the 1980s. A mixture of chronicle, testimonial work and fiction, this literary work presents the lack of resources to address women’s mistreatment and the impunity over violence against women as consequences of the machista ideology in the area. Almada aims to recover the memories of the victims because making known the violence that women endure due to their gender is a crucial first step in solving the problem. In this sense, Almada points to the issue of memory as essential to achieving justice for the victims, in clear reference to the same debate regarding the killed and disappeared individuals during Videla’s dictatorship.

The stories of Quién no (Who Does Not),41 Claudia Piñeiro, Quién no (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2018). by Claudia Piñeiro, problematise women’s loss of control over their sexuality and bodies in both privileged and marginal settings in Argentina. For Piñeiro, only those women who manage to free themselves from gender prejudices escape the disciplinary system. The chapter analyses four stories from Quién no: ‘Claro y contundente’ (‘Clear and Convincing’) narrates how the mother of a child with special needs is tempted to kill everyone around her to free herself and her son from social prejudice; ‘El abuelo Martín’ (‘Grandpa Martín’) describes how the discovery of a femicide in the family home dismantles the apparent happy life of a middle-class family; ‘Basura para las gallinas’ (‘Scraps for the Hens’) presents the practice of illegal abortion as the only alternative for women without economic resources in Argentina; and ‘Un zapato y tres plumas’ (‘One Shoe and Three Feathers’) addresses the repressive and violent family dynamics against women and children. This story is an allegory for the trauma caused by the political violence against and repression of women and children during the Videla era.

In the Mexican context, Lydia Cacho addresses the impact of sexist values on the mental well-being of children and women in her book #EllosHablan: testimonios de hombres, la relación con sus padres, el machismo y la violencia (#TheySpeak: Testimonies of Men, Relationships with Their Parents, Machismo and Violence).42 Lydia Cacho, #EllosHablan: testimonios de hombres, la relación con sus padres, el machismo y la violencia (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2018). The book offers the testimonies of men who suffered parental violence when they were children. Their stories explain how being educated in a dysfunctional home environment can produce trauma in individuals. Cacho’s goal is to show that sexist violence and hostility against male children in the home lay the foundations for violent and discriminatory social dynamics against women and children. Her study highlights the need to build variations in the traditional notion of masculinity in Mexico to create a more fluid and inclusive approach.

In Temporada de huracanes (Hurricane Season),43 Fernanda Melchor, Temporada de huracanes (Mexico City: Penguin Random House, 2017). Fernanda Melchor addresses the social inequality and violence against women, girls and sexual minorities in Veracruz (Mexico), where she grew up. Temporada de huracanes narrates the lives of a group of people who are immersed in a vicious circle of violence and a lack of hope and who spend their days in a marginal space of despair, alcohol and drug abuse. As a consequence, compulsive sexual relations and the fantasy of migration seem to be their only incentives. The novel presents women and sexual minorities in the area as preferential victims of this system in that they are perceived as carrying a stigma. The dynamics of violence against them are therefore rooted in a dysfunctional and ineffective socio-legal space that enhances the specific process that subordinates them to male power.

In the four novels chosen as test cases for the discussion of political and artistic trends in twenty-first-century Colombia and Chile in Chapters 1–2 and 7–8 – Laura Restrepo’s Delirio (Delirium), Alejandra Jaramillo Morales’s Acaso la muerte (Perhaps Death), Diamela Eltit’s Fuerzas especiales (Special Forces) and Carla Guelfenbein’s Contigo en la distancia (With You in the Distance) – it is striking how, despite their different artistic approaches, these novels share a common characteristic: they begin their narratives with the image of a female body that is alternately delirious, murdered, abused or attacked and, in each case, the directionality of the plot is structured around a search for truth and an answer to this question: why do we treat women’s bodies in this way? In Colombia, Restrepo’s Delirio explores the ways in which the female body lies at the intersection between delirium and political impunity, while Jaramillo Morales’s Acaso la muerte delves into the murky depths of corruption and violence in the 1970s and 1980s and asks the question: why is it that women pay the price for society’s sins? In Chile, Eltit’s Fuerzas especiales uses the moral destitution of a young girl living in a four-storey block of flats in a deprived area of Santiago that is under lockdown by the police to create a searing critique of military, technological, gendered and sexual violence. Guelfenbein’s Contigo en la distancia begins as a whodunit thriller concerned with discovering who pushed the Chilean writer Vera Sigall (based on the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector) down the stairs of her apartment, and it ends as a very human story about jealousy, love, revenge and literature.

This volume is just a drop in the ocean in the effort to make visible women’s defence of their rights in twenty-first-century LAC. The choice of each author implies the discarding of many other talented and productive female writers who struggle to make their work known and to break down the barriers for an activity that has always been dominated by men. For example, in Mexico, Criseida Santos Guevara addresses homo-maternities in Rhyme & Reason (2008);44 Criseida Santos Guevara, Rhyme & Reason (Mexico City: Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2008). Adriana González Mateos addresses incest in El lenguaje de las orquídeas (The Language of Orchids);45 Adriana González, El lenguaje de las orquídeas (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2007). Marina Herrera addresses the myths about the feminine in El cuerpo incorrupto (The Uncorrupted Body);46 Marina Herrera, El cuerpo incorrupto (Coahuila: Instituto Coahuilense de Cultura, 2007). Cristina Rivera Garza addresses the construction of gender and identity in La cresta de Ilión (The Crest of Ilión);47 Cristina Rivera Garza, La cresta de Ilión (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2002). and Valeria Luiselli addresses childhood and migration in Los niños perdidos (The Lost Children).48 Valeria Luiselli, Los niños perdidos (Madrid: Sexto Piso, 2016).

In Argentina, never before have so many female writers been published or reached such a level of legitimacy in academia and in the publishing market. With Los peligros de fumar en la cama (The Dangers of Smoking in Bed), Mariana Enríquez confronts the everyday with one of the literary genres par excellence: terror.49 Mariana Enríquez, Los peligros de fumar en la cama (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2009). In Por qué volvías cada verano (Why Did You Come Back Every Summer), Belén López Peiró recounts the actual abuses that she suffered during her holidays between the ages of 13 and 16;50 Belén López Peiró, Por qué volvías cada verano (Buenos Aries: Las Afueras, 2018). in La piel intrusa (Intrusive Skin), Yanina Rosenberg narrates the precariousness of the everyday world for a mother;51 Yanina Rosenberg, La piel intrusa (Madrid: Páginas de Espuma, 2018). and in Matate, amor (Kill Yourself, Love), Ariana Harwicz describes the suffocation, irony and toxicity of certain family relationships while unmasking the taboos of motherhood, marriage and the postmodern dream of leaving the city to live the monotony of the countryside.52 Ariana Harwicz, Matate, amor (Buenos Aires: Paradiso, 2012). In Cuba, the literary portfolio of Cuban women writers is somewhat limited, in line with the problems and restrictions that affect life on the island. In a country drowned by an authoritarian regime and the economic blockade of the US, gender violence is embedded in other problems that directly affect access to medicines or quality education. Therefore, the limited number of female voices that address this specific issue is not so much because the situation for women may be less urgent in Cuba than elsewhere but rather due to the fact that this issue manifests there in a lesser order of magnitude. With her novel Desde los blancos manicomios (From the White Asylums), Margarita Mateo Palmer explores the routes of a magical and mestizo world in the country;53 Margarita Mateo Palmer, Desde los blancos manicomios (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2008). in Elogio de la altea o las paradojas de la racialidad (In Praise of Altea or the Paradoxes of Raciality), Zuleica Romay Guerra offers a critical look at the history of racial discrimination in Cuba;54 Zuleica Romay Guerra, Elogio de la altea o las paradojas de la racialidad (Havana: Fondo Editorial Casa de las Américas, 2012). and in Las voces y los ecos (Voices and Echoes), Aida Bahr revisits the dogmatisms that clouded the Cuban cultural world during the 1970s, a period that scholars have called the ‘quinquenio gris’ (‘five grey years’).55 Aida Bahr, Las voces y los ecos (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 2006).

In Colombia a number of novels published in the twenty-first century by women resonate thematically with the novels studied in Chapter 1 of this volume; Melba Escobar’s La casa de la belleza (House of Beauty; 2015), for example, deftly uses the crime novel genre in order to investigate how the female obsession with beauty gets muddled up with political corruption and leads to the mysterious murder of a young girl, while Pilar Quintana’s La perra (The Bitch; 2017), which won the fourth Library of Colombian Narrative Award, uses the theme of the childlessness of the protagonist, Damaris, and her adoption of a female puppy which, by contrast, is able to give birth, as a frame with which to focus on the violence which often accompanies female disenfranchisement. The twenty-first century in Chile saw an intense flowering of new fiction by women writers, some of which overlaps with the themes covered in Chapter 4; Lina Meruane’s Sangre en el ojo (Seeing Red; 2012), for example, is a boldly written autofiction that uses the language of illness and dependency (the protagonist suffers a haemorrhage in her eyes soon after moving to New York) to focus on the paradoxes of life and the viciousness beneath the veneer of love, while Alia Trabuccio Zerán’s novel, La resta (The Remainder; 2015), focuses on the experience of two young girls, Iquila and Paloma, marked by a parent’s death, as they take a road trip across Chile whilst trying to come to terms with the inherited burdens of Pinochet’s legacy of political oppression.

In this volume we have sought to give some indication of the breadth and diversity of literary work published in the twenty-first century by women writers who focus on the theme of violence against women. This volume could not be more timely, given the increase in domestic violence being experienced by women across the world – and not only in Latin America – as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have not sought to provide a comprehensive survey of contemporary Latin American fiction focusing on VAW; this would have been impossible in one volume. Our aim is to leave for a future volume the analysis of the portrayal of gender violence in the fiction written in other countries in the region, such as Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and the Central American countries.