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LA Fem IR

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The Latin American space is largely defined by a patriarchal frame that impresses gendered oppression on its inhabitants and ensures serial policy failure: the church, the state, and the individual have all been coopted by inequality

Surviving Baenglish 12. . N.p., Web. 28 July 2013, review of The Chronicles of a Death Foretold: Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The representation and characterization of women in Marquez’s“Chronicles of a Death Foretold” provides an understanding of the varied ways in which patriarchy gets constituted, constructed and re-invented in the Latin American context and experience. Marquez’s women characters in the novella reflect not just the extent of women’s internalization of this hierarchy or their exploitation under this unequal gendered system, but his characterization also reveals the diversity of women’s subversions and resistances to this oppressive subjugation.

Patriarchy in Latin America is unique in its assertion as it works in a society where indigenous cultural practices have been rooted in a celebration of and openness about sexuality. This stood in direct opposition to the orthodox Catholic ideals of chastity and purity that penetrated into the local tradition during colonization under a patriarchal state apparatus. Patriarchy also worked closely through intersecting oppressions of class and race with the advent of Spanish and Portuguese claiming the “New World” from these early indigenous societies[1]. Through the character of Angela Vicario, Marquez presents to us these various dynamics at work in assertion of patriarchy and exploitation of women; the complex links between gender, class and violence; and the trajectories of resistance that women adopt to build an independent space for themselves under such an oppressive system. Angela’s situation raises questions of class exploitation and the position of women under the Christian value system. For Bayado, it is merely a matter of ‘conquest’ of the woman he chooses. Angela Vicario becomes the passive object of her sexual desire. His class position and wealth allowed him this privilege. Bayado becomes representative of the foreign imperialist presence in Latin America. It is made clear in the novel that Angela from the very beginning did not feel any attraction towards Bayado San Roman (It was Angela Vicario who did not want to marry him.”He seemed too much of a man for me” she told me).  She did not appreciate his performative public avowal to show his interest in her and the manner in which he never really courted her or engaged with her feelings, but “bewitched the family with his charm”. Marquez thus critiques this system of exploitation that leaves no space for women to assert or even voice her own choice or opinion. He shows how such a situation is made worse under family pressure mediated through the power exerted by a prospective proposal of social mobility.  Angela’s parents ‘decisive’ argument claimed that “a family dignified by modest means had no right to disdain that prize of destiny”. When Angela only ‘dares’ to hint at “the inconvenience of the lack of love”, her mother“demolishes it with a single phrase — Love can be learned.” Women are hence conditioned and taught to inform their feelings and emotions and as well as their sexuality in accordance with the unequal standards of an orthodox patriarchal society. The novel shows us how the Vicario sisters were provided rigorous training on mastering their domestic role as prospective wives – “The girls had been reared to get married” or Purisima del Carmen’s claim “Any man will be happy with them because they have been raised to suffer”.

As argued by Elizabeth Dore in “Hidden Histories of the Gender and the State in Latin America”, historically, the patriarchal character of colonial society in Latin America was codified in a succession of royal proclamations that granted male members of a family legal authority in their households and established a regulatory framework that restricted and ‘protected’ women. There was a naturalization of patriarchal law. Men’s privileges and obligations were regarded as natural law. State order in the colonial era resided on the fact that a well-ordered society was premised on well-ruled families. Such families were governed by patriarchs who demanded obedience, provided maintenance and guaranteed ‘protection’ of female ‘honour’[2]. This patriarchal authority was reinforced by internalization of such value systems by women like Purisima del Carmel who become active agents for perpetuating patriarchal norms.  Colonial officers drew on legal and cultural norms of patriarchal authority to lend legitimacy to the authority of the state. Marquez in ‘Chronicles of a Death Foretold’ thus deconstructs and challenges the question of ‘honour’ associated with women’s sexuality and the surveillance and regulation that it entails. He exposes how these value systems of preservation of women’s chastity and honour are part of a larger system for exploitation of the masses and perpetration of violence. The protection of a woman’s honour promotes an excess of male aggressiveness and machismo.  Patriarchy thus sanctions senseless violence of which both men and women become victims. The state in its proclaimed role of the patriarch also thereby seeks legitimacy for its violence. Patriarchal violence in Latin America, Elizabeth Dore argues is thus part of a larger system and discourse where states through ‘utilizing coercion and constructing consent’ endeavour to create ‘a political culture that naturalizes one form of social domination’[3]. In the novella, gender and violence thus converge for the murder of Santiago Nasser. The unquestioning acceptance of the murder and the collective unwillingness to avert its course raises larger questions on the imperviousness born out of the everyday experience of violence perpetrated by state apparatuses in Latin America on its people under both its colonial and post-colonial histories.

Marquez is sympathetic to this subjugation of women and it is through women that he offers a critique of this system. While the whole town assembles at the dock awaiting the arrival of the Bishop, Santiago’s mother, Placido Linero refuses to do so. She comments, “He won’t even get of the boat. He will give an obligatory blessing, as always and go back the way he came. He hates this town.” The Bishop is representative of the power of the Church in collusion with the Spanish colonial state and Placido Linero’s comment is an exposition of the hypocrisy of such religious institutions and her refusal to join the people in their extravagant celebration is significant of her critical stance. Even Flora Miguel, Santiago’s fiancé, was not present at the scene. It can be seen as her resistance to the institution whose enmeshed system of values has led to her oppression and condemns her to ‘humiliation’. When General Patronio San Roman arrived at the town, it was only the narrator’s mother who refused to meet him and saw through the contradiction of a community that bowed down to its very perpetrators. General Roman was a ‘hero’ of the civil wars, a representative of the autocratic Conservative regime. She refused to shake hands with “the man who gave the orders for Gerineldo Marquez to be shot in the back”. By creating an enigma around the narrator’s mother and her pagan beliefs through magic realism, Marquez provides an opposition to the rationalist approaches of Western Euro Centric discourse and makes a political statement regarding the fact that the Latin American experience of plunder and violence cannot be described in unequivocal terms. Her character is part of Marquez’s larger vision for articulating the continent’s response to the west to urge the west to recast and reformulate its understanding of the ‘other’. The ‘extraordinary’ is an ordinary part of people’s everyday experience, embedded in the social and historical formation of Latin America – it is a mode of existence.

The pedagogy of patriarchy creates institutions that ensure proliferation, war, destruction of the environment, violence, unmanageable international relations, and extinction

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

6. Psychological Connections The imagery that domesticates nuclear and conventional weapons, natural- izes women, and feminizes nature comes at a high psychological cost. Many feminists claim that patriarchal conceptual frameworks generate what ecofeminist Susan Griffin calls “ideologies of madness” (Griffin 1989). Femi- nist scholarship abounds with discussions of “phallic worship,” or what Helen Caldecott calls “missile envy,” as a significant motivating force in the nuclear buildup (Cohn 1989, 133). Many feminists join psychiatrist R.J. Lifton in critiquing “nuclearism” as an addiction, characterized and maintained by “psychic numbing,” a defense mechanism that enables us to deny the reality and threat of nuclear annihilation. Denial is the psychological process which makes possible the continuation of oppression by otherwise rational beings. Setting aside complicated psychological issues, we can nonetheless ask, “Of what conceptual significance is the alleged psychological data on woman- nature-peace connections? What do feminist philosophers glean from such accounts?” We close our consideration of feminist/peace connections by pro- posing an answer: Such psychological accounts help us understand patriarchy Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady 15 as a dysfunctional social system which is grounded in a faulty belief system (or conceptual framework) (Warren 1993). The notion of patriarchy as a socially dysfunctional system enables feminist philosophers to show why conceptual connections are so important and how conceptual connections are linked to the variety of other sorts of woman-nature-peace connections. In addition, the claim that patriarchy is a dysfunctional social system locates what ecofeminists see as various “dys- functionalities” of patriarchy-the empirical invisibility of what women do, sexist-warist-naturist language, violence toward women, other cultures, and nature-in a historical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political context.” To say that patriarchy is a dysfunctional system is to say that the fundamental beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions (conceptual framework) of patriar- chy give rise to impaired thinking, behaviors, and institutions which are unhealthy for humans, especially women, and the planet. Patriarchy, as an Up-Down system of power-over relationships of domina- tion of women by men, is conceptually grounded in a faulty patriarchal belief and value system, (a), according to which (some) men are rational and women are not rational, or at least not rational in the more highly valued way (some) men are rational; reason and mind are more important than emotion and body; that humans are justified in using female nature simply to satisfy human consumptive needs. The discussion above of patriarchal conceptual frame- works describes the characteristics of this faulty belief system. Patriarchal conceptual frameworks sanction, maintain, and perpetuate impaired thinking, (b): For example, that men can control women’s inner lives, that it is men’s role to determine women’s choices, that human superiority over 16 Hypatia nature justifies human exploitation of nature, that women are closer to nature than men because they are less rational, more emotional, and respond in more instinctual ways than (dominant) men. The discussions above at (4) and (5), are examples of the linguistic and psychological forms such impaired thinking can take. Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic por- nography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-min- ing, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to “rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for “progress.” And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current “unmanageability” of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences .that reflect historically male-gender- identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking.

The alternative is to endorse grassroots ecofeminism as a viable alternative to society’s contemporary patriarchal frame – this is realistic, solvent, and ethically preferable

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

4. Political Connections (Praxis) Francoise d’Eaubonne introduced the term ecofminisme in 1974 to bring attention to women’s potential for bringing about an ecological revolution (d’Eaubonne 1974,2 13-52). Ecofeminism has always been a grassroots political movement motivated by pressing pragmatic concerns (see Lahar 1991). These range from issues of women’s and environmental health, to science, develop- ment, and technology, the treatment of animals, and peace, antinuclear, antimilitarism activism. The Seneca Falls and Greenham Commons Peace Camps, the 1981 Women’s Pentagon Action, the Puget Sound Women’s Peace Camp, FANG (a small all-women’s feminist antinuclear action group), Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP) are just a few of the grassroots feminist peace groups. In addition, hundreds of grassroots environmental organizations and actions initiated by women and low-income minorities have emerged through- out the world. As Cynthia Hamilton claims, “Women often play a primary role in community action because it is about things they know best” (Hamilton 1991,43). Las Mudres de la Plazu de Muyo, women who march every Thursday in the main square in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to commemorate the lives of “the disappeared” in the “Dirty War” (the guerru sucia), certainly illustrate the courageous peace politics of women. Week in and week out they protest the victimization of people, mostly between the ages of 17 and 25, who have been imprisoned, tortured, often shot. Over 30,000 have simply disappeared without a trace. For feminists, it is no wonder that a woman like Rigoberta Mench wins the Nobel Peace Prize for similar activism in Guatemala. A wonderful example of women as political agents of change that clearly shows woman-peace connections is provided by the Chipko movement. In 1974, twenty-seven women of Reni in Northern India tooksimple but effective action to stop tree felling. They threatened to hug the trees if the lumberjacks attempted to fell them. The women’s protest, known as the Chipko (Hindi for “to embrace” or “hug”) movement, saved 12,000 square kilometers of sensitive watershed.8 The grassroots, nonviolent women-initiated Chipko movement was a satyugruha protest movement in the Gandhian tradition of nonviolence. 12 Hypatia It illustrates a peace action initiated by women which gives visibility to women’s objections to the replacement of valuable indigenous forests by teak and eucalyptus monoculture (Center for Science and Environment 1984-85, 94)? Water collection and distribution, food production, and forest management activities are precisely those which women engage in on a daily basis. They are also often “invisible” to mainstream theorists and policy-makers. Concep- tually, this “invisibility” is significant: It accounts for the mistaken assumption that such accounts are not gender-biased. Failure to see these women and what they know-their epistemic privilege-results in misguided technologies, imposed development strategies, and the absence of women from most peace- initiative discussions at high-ranking decision-making levels. As an aside, it is interesting to note that one ecofeminist physicist, Vandana Shiva, a founding member of the Chipko movement, who, until recently, was probably best known for her book Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (Shiva 1988), has just won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize for 1993.

Acknowledging and challenging patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is key

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors-the symptoms of dys- functionality-that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunc- tional system, this “unmanageability” can be seen for what it is-as a predict- able and thus logical consequence of patriarchy. ” The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989,2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reduc- ing their impact and preserving life on Earth” (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.