Sexual Violence Against Indigenous Women as Represented by the Performance of Regina José Galindo

Abstract

What did Guatemala do to deserve so much suffering? This question, like those so often posed to the indigenous victims of sexual violence committed during the Guatemalan internal conflict (who were accused of being somehow culpable for the attacks they suffered), drives at the heart of the problems addressed in this essay: how can artistic performance find new modes of representing violence that stop this practice of victim blaming, and how can it make this violence visible in a society that refuses to come to terms with its past? For centuries, the sexual abuse of women has been invisible in patriarchal societies due to the wide-spread belief that any woman not supported by a man is available for sexual satisfaction. This sentiment is even stronger in places with a long colonial history, where the indigenous population has been controlled and discriminated against in the process of imposing a European political and economic organization. The answer to the question what did Guatemala do is the same as that given by women conscious of the sexual crimes perpetrated against them: nothing. Neither Guatemala nor the women did anything to deserve so much suffering, the latter ‘guilty’ only of having been born female.

Keywords:

• body
• the Galindo
• Regina José
• Guatemala
• indigenous women
• sexual violence
• subaltern
• testimony

Notes

1 Established by the Oslo Agreement on June 23, 1994.

2 The State extended military power to the local population through CMs and PACs, which controlled roads, checked identification documents, and denounced and stopped suspects to give them to the army. CMs kept a register of people of age for military service.

3 The Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Interdiocesan Project for the Recuperation of Historical Memory) was elaborated in the report Guatemala: nunca más (Guatemala: Never Again).

4 All translations from Spanish are my own.

5 Selected testimonies are available on Regina José Galindo's webpage, www.reginajosegalindo.com.

6 The complete testimony is on the CVR webpage at www.cverdad.org.pe. It can be watched on YouTube at the Lugar de la Memoria (Place of Memory) channel: lum.cultura.pe channel.