Geographies of Body Politics: Women Negotiating Machismo in Guatemala

Abstract

This thesis is a study of gender based violence (GBV) in Guatemala, and seeks to examine how male violence towards women can be seen as manifestations of machismo. Machismo  is recognized as a set of Latin American hegemonic masculinities and this thesis focuses on its Guatemalan form. Both manifestations of machismo and women’s negotiation of such manifestations are bodily experiences, and thus, the female body is at the core of this inquiry. Geographies of body politics is a contextualized and place specific study of GBV and emphasizes local perceptions of machismo. This thesis seeks to examine how machismo  could contribute to explain GBV that takes place in both domestic and public spaces. It also studies how women who have been exposed to GBV by their intimate partners negotiate machismo with their partners, and how women who work in organizations that struggle against GBV negotiate machismo  with men who react negatively to the work they do. The thesis is based on a qualitative methodological approach and interviews have been carried out in both urban (Guatemala City) and rural (villages and municipalities in the department of Sololá) parts of the country.