Guatemaltecas: The Women's Movement, 1986–2003

Chapter 1. Face-Off: Gender, Democratization, and Globalization

Chapter 1 face-off: gender, democratization, and globalization Además de cuestionar a las instituciones sociales, las diferentes corrientes feministas están confrontando los espacios globales y locales en los cuales nos desenvolvemos.1 —irmalicia velásquez nimatuj, guatemalteca, k’iche’, anthropologist After more than thirty years of military rule, civilians returned to power in Guatemala in 1986. A neoliberal globalization project has accompanied the democratization process, and both have led Guatemalan women, collectively and individually, to renegotiate their positions and relations within their private and public spheres.While democratization has universally opened political space to more diverse discourses, it has particularly animated the women’s movement to initiate and conduct debates over their political representation, citizenship, and engagement with the state, and the definition and priority of women’s interests. Consequently, while globalization—based on the liberal ethos—is restructuring the economic participation, needs, and goals of Guatemaltecas, it is also helping to reshape the way the women’s movement does politics. Shifting from protest politics to women helping women, the movement has progressively NGOized , professionalized, and self-authorized with legal breakthroughs. Democratization and global restructuring have influenced the character , structure, and strategic formations of the women’s movement, but the movement itself has, in turn, affected political and economic restructuring in Guatemala. Through multiple and hybrid spaces, women have pressured for the insertion of gender sensitivity into the national consciousness . They have fought for institutional reforms, employment options and conditions, social conditions, and property rights based on gender equity. In renegotiating gender positions, Guatemaltecas—though not always achieving their multiple, diverse, and, at times, contradictory ends —have highlighted issues of gender within the nationalist discourse and its policymaking apparatus. 2 guatemaltecas This study undertakes an examination of the formation and practice of the Guatemalan women’s movement since 1986, the manner in which it has negotiated and continues to negotiate global restructurings, and how it inserts itself institutionally and discursively into the national body politic . It explores the changing relations of power and gender and the manner in which domination has [re]configured them, and looks at how the interactive nature of politics blends with the discursive [re]imaginings of gender under global restructuring. Three hypotheses are explored in this study. First, neoliberal democratization has led to the institutionalization and NGOization of the women’s movement and encouraged it to turn from protest politics to policy work and to become the helpmate of the state in imposing its neoliberal agenda. Second, while the influences of dominant global discourses are quite apparent, local definitions of femininity , sexuality, and gender equity and rights have been critical to shaping the form, content, and objectives of the women’s movement in Guatemala . Third, a counterdiscourse to globalization is slowly emerging from within the women’s movement that incorporates a rejection of separating production from social reproduction, while calling for the formation of strategic unity based on diverse conceptions of gender. The study thus addresses manifold complexities informing the development of the women’s movement in postwar Guatemala. In doing so, it attempts to explore and challenge the viability of using primarily northern social movement, feminist, and globalization discourses to study southern countries like Guatemala.2 Does globalization really create favorable conditions for the growth of civil society and the weakening of authoritarian control? Does social movement development necessarily strengthen civil society and build democracy? Do autonomously organized women’s groups better address the interests of women than mixed-gender organizations ? Are women’s strategic and practical interests truly separate and distinct? Is neoliberal restructuring presenting the conditions by which women can liberate themselves from patriarchal restrictions, or is it helping to reconfigure and ultimately strengthen the patriarchy? social movements, democratization, and globalization Much that has been written about ‘‘new’’ social movements in Latin America during the last fifteen years is pertinent to this study of the Guatemalan women’s movement. When social movements were first spotted on the Latin American landscape, the responses of pro-democratic activ- face-off 3 ists and academics alike were almost unanimously positive. It was argued that the new movements would reinvigorate civil society and advance the conception of democracy by decentering politics and political power. By demanding recognition of the rights of the previously marginalized , movements would ultimately change how politics was done.3 The social movements’ paradigm that emerged contended that the ‘‘new’’ social movements were...