Enduring Violence. Cecilia Menjívar
ways, it was the women's example and the various lessons they taught me that motivated and sustained me to complete this project. I hope that the work I have produced contributes something in return.
There are several individuals who contributed in diverse ways to this project. First, I thank Anne Pebley, who invited me to participate in her project—with her Princeton, Institute of Nutrition for Central America and Panama (INCAP), and RAND collaborators—on maternal and child mortality in Guatemala. Anne introduced me to studying Guatemala and doing fieldwork there; she provided crucial guidance, mentorship, and key resources in those important initial stages of research. Most of all, her generosity and the dignity with which she approaches the subject of her work have been models I seek to emulate in my own professional life. I am also immensely grateful to the people at INCAP for their logistic and technical support, in particular, Nora Coj, for her patience and dedication to the project. I also want to thank Dolores Acevedo García for paving the way for me to do research in the two towns where I conducted my fieldwork.
I am very grateful to institutions that provided financial support for this research endeavor. The National Institutes of Child and Human Development, through grants to Anne Pebley and her collaborators and a supplement to support my part, financed the initial stages. Arizona State University (ASU) facilitated additional fieldwork in Guatemala through a Faculty Grant-in-Aid Award, a Dean's Incentive Grant (twice), a grant from the then Center for Latin American Studies, and another one from the Women's Studies Program (now Women and Gender Studies). Funds provided to me through the Cowden Distinguished Professorship were instrumental in the last stages of this project.
During the time I was working on the book, I spent a semester visiting at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris and another one in the Department of Sociology at Yerevan State University in Armenia. I am grateful for the institutional support I received in both places, in particular, the use of the wonderful library in Paris and the opportunity to teach a course and learn from conversations with students and colleagues in Yerevan. I would like to thank Polymia Zagefka, who welcomed me to the Institut des Hautes Études de l'Amérique Latine, Université de Paris 3, and introduced me to others working there.
Several friends and colleagues offered advice and introduced me to work that proved immensely useful. M. Gabriela Torres always has been ready to help, to share her work with me, and to give me feedback and suggestions; she also invited me to present my work at panels she organized at meetings of the Latin American Studies Association and the American Anthropological Association, both of which gave me opportunities to obtain excellent comments. Miguel Huezo Mixco immediately sent me information about writings on violence produced in Central America when I asked him. And Paula Godoy-Paiz and Nestor Rodriguez also have been quick to share their work with me whenever I have asked.
At ASU I would like to acknowledge friends and colleagues for their friendship and collegiality over the years. Mariluz Cruz-Torres, Kathy Kyle, Vera Lopez, Lisa Magaña, and Rose Weitz have been great listeners. Though I did not discuss with all of them details of what I was writing, their friendship alone meant a lot to me during the time I was writing. And my colleagues in the School of Social and Family Dynamics and the Center for Population Dynamics have created a wonderful environment conducive to research and intellectual engagement.
Several other people have been instrumental in one way or another in this project. I am grateful to my brother, Oscar Menjívar, who provided me with a place to stay in Guatemala City during the time I was doing fieldwork. My cousin Sara Menjívar de Barbón took time out of her busy schedule teaching medical students at the university in San Salvador to visit me in Guatemala; she ended up organizing field notes and making photocopies for me but also accompanying me to visit the women, which I hope made up for the mundane tasks she volunteered to undertake. And Ivette Castro, my close friend since childhood, has always been a great sounding board for my research ideas and projects.
I thank the editors of the Latin American Research Review and Studies in Social Justice for their permission to publish versions of “Violence and Women's Lives in Eastern Guatemala: A Conceptual Framework,” Latin American Research Review 43 (3): 109–36; and “Corporeal Dimensions of Gender Violence: Women's Self and Body in Eastern Guatemala,” Studies in Social Justice 2 (1): 12–26. Chapters 2 and 3 are based on these articles.
I would like to thank the Albright Knox Art Gallery for permission to use an image of Rufino Tamayo's painting Mujeres de Tehuantepec on the cover of this book, and in particular Kelly Carpenter for making sure I obtained permission.
At the University of California Press, once again Naomi Schneider took on a project of mine with professionalism, diligence, and care. This book has benefited from her remarkable editorship, and I will always be grateful to her. I also thank the reviewers for the Press for their extremely helpful comments and the production staff for taking this project to completion, in particular, Sheila Berg for once again editing my work with great care and Emily Park, for her patience and help throughout the production of this book. I am also grateful to Sandy Batalden in Tempe for her fine editing, as always.
Perhaps an indication of the multiple connections to other countries in my family, I have worked on this project in different parts of the world. During this time, I have had the good fortune to spend time with my in-laws, Sergei Gaikovich Agadjanian and Valentina Semeyonovna Guseva. Whether it is at their home in Moscow, at ours in Tempe, or during our visits in Paris and Yerevan, they have made sure that I have ample time to dedicate to my work (I miss them in Maputo!). This means that they take care of everything else around me, from cooking the delicious meals that Valentina Semeyonovna knows I like, to spending time with my son, and doing all sorts of other routine and time-consuming tasks. For all this and much more, Bol'shoye Spasibo! I also thank the rest of the Agadjanian (and Muradian) family, in particular, Susana and Sergei, for their kindness and hospitality during my visits to Yerevan but especially during the semester my family and I spent there.
From the very beginning of this project, my colleague, closest friend, and husband, Victor Agadjanian, has been involved in various ways. He is no doubt my toughest critic but also my main source of support. His dedication and respect for my ideas and my work have been indispensable for my professional fulfillment and fundamental to the home we have shared for two decades. Any words of appreciation fall short and prove inadequate to convey my deep gratitude to and for him. And Alexander (Sasha), our “tween,” continues to bring distractions and commotion to my daily routine. His interruptions of my work to share the latest sports news or to ask for help with his Latin homework are beautiful reminders of the sheer joy of being his mother.
I dedicate this book to the long line of women on my maternal side—my great-grandmother, great-aunts, mother, and aunt—with admiration and gratitude for their generosity and example in living amazing, dignified, and out-of-the-ordinary lives.
CHAPTER I
Approaching Violence
in Eastern Guatemala
The aim of the psychological war is to win people's “hearts
and minds” so that they accept the requirements of the
dominant order and, consequently, accept as good and
even “natural” whatever violence may be necessary to
maintain it.
—Ignacio Martín-Baró, “Violence in Central America”
Rather than view violence…simply as a set of discrete
events, which quite obviously it also can be, the perspective
I am advancing seeks to unearth those entrenched processes
of ordering the social world and making (or realizing)
culture that themselves are forms of violence: violence that
is multiple, mundane, and perhaps all the more fundamental
because it is the hidden or secret violence out of which
images