Reconfiguring Gender in a Context of Heightened Violence Against Women

IMPERILED FEMININITY: RECONFIGURING GENDER IN A CONTEXT OF HEIGHTENED VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN By CHARLOTTE ANNE HANEY Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Atwood Gaines Department of Anthropology CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May, 2013 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of ____________Charlotte Anne Haney________ Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree*. (signed) __________Atwood D. Gaines________________________________ (chair of the committee) ___________Eileen Anderson-Fye_____________________________ ___________Vanessa M. Hildebrand___________________________ ___________Mary P. Erdmans________________________________ (date) ___January 24, 2013____ *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary Material contained therein. 1 For Rowan and Sam, who grew up alongside this work, For Charlie and Theo, who were born into the midst of it, And Michael, who made it all just barely possible, You are the secret that keeps the stars apart. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4 List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...5 Abstract………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………6 Chapter 1 Problematizing Violence and Gender in Chihuahua, Mexico……………………………………………………….………7 Chapter 2 Methods of Investigation…………………………………………………………………….44 Chapter 3 Circulating Discourses of Gender Violence…………………………………………………………………………………71 Chapter 4 Women Modeling Gender At the Intersection of Fields……………………………………………………………...115 Chapter 5 The Historical Dismembering Of the Body Politic…………………………………………………………………………….168 Chapter 6 The Quotidian Praxis of The Novel………………………………………………………………………………………...192 Chapter 7 Threatened Identities and Anthropologies of Violence………………………………………………………………...229 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………………..………..243 References……………………………………………………………………………………..………………..262 3 LIST OF TABLES 3.1 Informant ‘s descriptions of Violence………………………………………………………….106 4.1 Minimal number of informants needed to classify a desired proportion of questions……………………………………………….126 4.2 Breakdown of Demographic characteristics of the study population ……………………………………………………………………………….129 4.3 Characteristics of women with negative competencies……………………………………………………………………………………………….133 4.4 Comparison of general answer key with subpopulations of education levels………………………………………………………………140 4.5 Comparison of general answer key with subpopulations of marital status…………………………………………………………………..148 4.6 Comparison of general answer key with subpopulations of age………………………………………………………………………………….151 4.7 Comparison of general answer key with subpopulations of birthplace………………………………………………………………………..156 4.8 Comparison of general answer key with subpopulations of violence………………………………………………………………………..…160 5.1 Demographic characteristics of women adopting various citizenship strategies…………………………………………………203 4 LIST OF FIGURES 3.1 The newly built ‘procu’ .……………………………………………………..……………….79 3.2 Inside the ‘procu……………………………………………………………………….…….80 3.3 Images of Public Service Announcements………………………………………………………………………103 3.4 Cruz of Protest………………………………………………………………………….…..113 6.1 A young woman’s room………………………………………………………………..197 5 IMPERILED FEMININITY: RECONFIGURING GENDER IN A CONTEXT OF HEIGHTENED VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ABSTRACT BY CHARLOTTE ANNE HANEY This dissertation clarifies the manner in which violence against women is implicated in the re-constitution of gender in Chihuahua. Using data collected with a mixed methods, multi-staged protocol, this dissertation investigates how the routine threat of gender violence and the common presence of gender violence in women’s lives impacts the manner in which they reconfigure gender in the rapidly changing environment of Northern Mexico. This dissertation is intended as a contribution to Medical Anthropology in general, but specifically to the Anthropology of Violence and to Gender and Health Studies in its focus on gendered violence. This dissertation also contributes to the refinement of theory and methodology in Medical Anthropology. The implications of this research call for further research into the role of routinized terror in cultural reproduction and transformation as well as a renewed emphasis on embodied threat as a common aspect of the operation of power though societies. (Gender Violence, Embodiment, Biological Citizenship, Cultural Reproduction) 6 CHAPTER 1 PROBLEMATIZING VIOLENCE AND GENDER IN CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO “The routinization of terror is what fuels its power”—Linda Green 1999 We have become accustomed to images of fields of pink crosses. Although the serial murders of women known as the feminicides that first drew international attention in the Chihuahuan border city of Juárez continue to spread to cities throughout Latin America and around the world (Ensalco 2006, Godoy-Paiz 2012), reports of these crimes have lost a good deal of their ability to provoke us. Seemingly undisturbed by outrage and protests, these crimes persist and in their terrible resilience have become all but routine. But back in 2005, while these events were still potent in their emotional valence, the seed of this dissertation research came to me while watching the documentary “Senorita Extraviada”[Missing Young Woman]. In the film, the filmmaker goes around interviewing women in Juárez about the feminicides. At one point, she asks two school girls as they wait for a bus if they are frightened that they could be victims. The girls respond with uncomfortable giggles and just as one of them says “no,” her eyes sweep up to look at the picture of a missing girl posted on a flyer on the telephone poll next to them. I wanted to understand the significance of that look and what that look would mean as these and other young women came of age in place where gender was being re- constituted. This dissertation grew out of that original kernel of an idea. It is an examination of the routinization of terror. Long after it loses the ability to shock, terror settles into the fabric of daily life shaping lived experience and the operation of power structures. 7 A few years later, I headed out early for an interview with a young Assistant D.A. named Haydee1. It was my first time meeting her and she lived in the part of downtown Chihuahua City where the streets all go cattywampus around the Cerro Coronel, one of three small mountains inside the city limits. After a few missed turns and unexpected dead ends, I found her gated apartment. A mutual friend had arranged the interview and met us there to make introductions. We shared coffee in Haydee’s kitchen and spent the evening talking about life in the Attorney General’s office. My friend, Lourdes, who had formerly worked in juvenile crimes before leaving discussed why she had left and Haydee explained the increased pressure she faced in light of the recently enacted reforms of the Chihuahuan judicial system. According to Haydee, the new female Attorney General—appointed because of the state’s bad reputation due to the murdered women—worked them from “9 a.m. to 9 p.m.” Haydee was quite evidently pregnant so I asked how she planned to deal with these increased pressures at work and the demands of childrearing. Rather than answer the question directly Haydee replied that her father wanted her to quit because her work was bad for the baby. She said that at the time he first made this comment she thought it was silly but now she found herself thinking about it more and more because of her increasingly stressful work. She talked about the long hours, her nervousness with the new oral arguments, the reform requirement that all crimes be charged within 72 hours of being reported. She complained about police officers who drove nice cars and sent their children to 1 All names are pseudonyms. 8 expensive schools and needed to be pressured to do any work at all. And then she told the story of the time when she was out at the attorney general’s request combing the desert for victims with local anti-feminicide groups. Haydee said that they spent most of the day searching but that she didn’t expect to find anything because the desert was too big and hilly. She said she didn’t think the A.G. expected to find anything either. It was, she thought, just a publicity stunt to show that the new woman A.G. was doing everything possible about the feminicides. Haydee recalled that she spent the day hot, sweaty and resentful. Finally, they were told that they could pack it in. As she walked back to her car, a stray dog came trotting up to her with a human skull in his mouth. Haydee paused for a while and then continued, “a lot of people have old fashioned ideas about pregnancy. They think that the character of the mother is transferred to the baby inside her. I don’t think so, but maybe my father is right about quitting.” In the intervening years between viewing the film and conducting this interview, my research question had evolved its focus. Having lived on both sides of the border for years, I knew that life in Northern Mexico was changing, particularly in terms of the practice of gender. I wanted to understand how the routine terror of gender violence was implicated in the ongoing reconstitution of gender in Chihuahua City, Mexico. This episode in Haydee’s kitchen conveys many of the themes that became relevant as I investigated this question. Here we see three women, the A.G., Haydee, and Lourdes, engaged in

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