Theoretical and methodological contributions of Latin American feminisms for the study of land-territory defending and violence against women: perspectives from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico

Abstract

As part of the doctoral research "Peasant Movements in Via Campesina: a comparative study of Brazil and Colombia", this project aims to deepen the contributions of Latin American feminisms for the set of studies on violence, specifically the typologies that permeate the organizational processes of rural women, who in different territories of Latin America and the Caribbean, defend life, land-territory. In countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, platforms such as CLOC-Via Campesina have made possible a broad articulation of common proposals and their strengthening, for the confrontation of inequalities that are the product of rapacious Capitalism and Patriarchy, whose reproduction is carried by the exploited bodies of women. Facing this reality, an important set of studies and reports indicate that these three countries, together with Honduras and Guatemala, have been the most violent in the last years for the exercise of leaderships and human rights defenders, on whom an intense control is applied through violent mechanisms. The contributions of Gender and Feminism studies from our region indicate that the patriarchal domination model is at the base of capital violence, indicating a strong relationship between the types of violence against women, who play an important political role in their peasant and ancestral territories, and gender violence. In the face of the politics of death, from their territories, the message of rural women is strongly constructed from outstanding resistance experiences. In order to understand its unfoldings and particularities, we concentrate our study on the Mexican experiences, in which country the struggle for territory has been historical. In dialogue with the realities of these countries, from the BEPE in the program 'Estudios e Interevenciones Feministas' of the CESMECA-UNICACH, we seek to approach an understanding of the phenomenon of Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting the contributions of dialogues between geography and other fields of critical social sciences. (AU)