Tues, Feb 4th Post

Not Just “Another Woman”: Femicide and Representation in Guatemala by Paula Godoy-Paiz is an article writenn for The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthology in 2012, which is a scholarly journal published by the American Anthropological Association. The article is the result of “12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2007” (p.91) done by Godoy-Paiz in Guatemala City, using various methodologies with the intention of studying th eemerging phenomenon of femicide. Godoy-Paiz establishes the origins of the concept of femicide as arriving to the Guatemalan context due to the international exposure given to high rates of femicide for women in Ciudad Juarez, Mx (p.96). After laying out the historical development of the concept of femicide in Guatemala City and the role of various sectors of society, such as activists whom struggle against femicide or the press which makes a banality out of the daily violence experienced in Guatemalan society, the article’s main intention is to humanize or give face to the “body counts” which are often focused upon by the international press and human rights organizations. Godoy-Paiz does this by utilizing the conversations and interviews she’d established with Doña Celeste, an indigenous woman whom Godoy-Paiz came to know through the institution Fuerzas, which offered “social work, legal, medical, and psychological services to women in situations of abuse, as well as assistance to relatives of murdered women” (p.89). Doña Celeste’s daughter, Lorena, was a victim of femicide in 2003. Godoy-Paiz is able to use the relationship she’s established with Doña Celeste to provide a different picture of the effects of femicide in Guatemalan society to that presented by the media by discussing the ways in which Lorena’s death resulted in the need for her sister, Verónica, to withdraw from school and later reenter but continue to struggle and the difficult struggle of Doña Celeste and her husband Mario in finding and identifying their daughter’s body, and the subsequent impunity of her killer.