Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades

Alex E. Chavéz,Gina M. Pérez

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Published in Association with School for Advanced Research Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780826363572
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

The contributors in Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades highlight the value of "radical inclusion" in their research and call for a critical self-reflexivity that marshals the power of bearing witness to move from rhetoric to praxis in support of these methodologies within anthropological perspectives. The essays in this collection do not offer simple solutions to histories of colonialism, patriarchy, and misogyny through which gender binaries and racial hierarches have been imposed and reproduced, but rather provide a crucial opportunity for reflection on and continued reimagination of the contours of Latinidad. These scholars deploy Latinx strategically as part of ongoing dialogues, understanding that their terminologies are inherently imprecise, contested, and constantly shifting. Each chapter explores how Latinx ethnographers and interlocutors work together in contexts of refusal—ever mindful of how power shapes these encounters and the analyses that emerge from them—as well as the extraordinary possibilities offered by ethnography and its role in ongoing social transformation.

CHAPTER ONE

“While You Are Struggling, You Are Healing”

Latinas Enact Poder through the Movement for Reproductive Justice

PATRICIA ZAVELLA

“Consuelo,” an undocumented migrant living in a colonia near the US-Mexico border, became an activist with the Latina Advocacy Network (LAN) sponsored by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.¹ She came to identify with LAN’s discourse promoting poderosas (powerful women). Through LAN she learned about her rights and found the courage to confront her spouse about his violence and demand his respect; her husband now attends LAN events with her. In reflecting on the meaning of her activism, Consuelo said, “For me being a poderosa is a means of connecting with my dignity. It doesn’t matter what I have suffered or my family has suffered or in my community. It doesn’t matter the attacks that this government does or what people say or what my circumstances are. Those are negative details that bad people use so you don’t believe in yourself.” In a focus group I organized to understand women’s activism, she reflected further on the process of becoming an activist:

The first time that I heard that activists are poderosas it lifted my soul. You could see the pride in their faces. It is a way of coming to terms with yourself; that is, to be a human being. I know I have rights. I am connected and we are in community and nobody can take that away. Being a poderosa is something that has given me light in my life and I am very grateful and pleased to be part of something so large and so agreeable and that has helped me get ahead so much.

Consuelo contextualizes her agency within structural inequalities and highlights her relationships with others in similar circumstances; furthermore, her activism includes spiritual expressions.

I problematize women’s agency and how ethnographers engage with women by asking, what does empowerment mean for Latinas living in poverty? I explore the apparent contradiction wherein women like Consuelo live in poor conditions yet come to embrace a discourse claiming they are powerful. I discuss the organizing strategies and discourse promoted by activists in the movement for reproductive justice working with LAN, which organizes mainly low-income Latinas—many of whom are undocumented and live in colonias—and contests state and federal policies within the framework of “Health, Dignity, and Justice.” I reflect upon the implications of this activism for the politics of dissent by structurally vulnerable women. Specifically, what are the implications of these Latinas contesting the Trump administration’s policies related to immigration and reproductive health?

According to Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen, women’s empowerment begins when they “change their ideas about the causes of the powerlessness, when they recognize the systemic forces that oppress them, and when they act to change the conditions of their lives.”² Bookman and Morgen see empowerment as “a spectrum of political activities that range from acts of individual resistance to mass political mobilization that aim to challenge the basic power relations in society.”³ Thus, “empowerment is a process aimed at consolidating, maintaining, or changing the nature and distribution of power in a particular cultural context.”⁴ Further, Ruth Wilson Gilmore draws attention to struggles for social justice that occur within “forgotten places” marginalized through racialized capitalist practices and neoliberal state interventions, within which migrants attempt to survive.⁵ Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz suggest that, through accompaniment and improvisation, these spaces become insubordinate when residents nurture “new ways of knowing and new ways of being” and “a collective capacity for social justice can be developed and deepened.”⁶ Building on these approaches, I suggest we analyze women’s activism using the analytic of poder (power), which signals vulnerable people’s ability to develop skills or capabilities and aspire to better lives or even wellness, engaging in activism that advances social justice. Drawing on activist-research conducted in 2015 and 2018 that included interviews with national and Texas staff, a focus group with LAN participants, and LAN’s use of social media, I analyze reproductive justice praxis in colonias and suggest it leads to women’s empowerment and refuses Trump’s neoliberal agenda.⁷

Neoliberalism entails a “massive disinvestment in families and communities” by the state through privatization and encourages individual responses to social problems, a process characterized by an assumption that those who struggle, particularly people of color, are deficient and responsible for their own misfortunes.⁸ The US conservative movement goes further and promotes the politics of “reproductive governance,” in which various actors use “legislative controls, economic inducements, moral injunctions, direct coercion, and ethical incitements to produce, monitor, and control reproductive behaviours and practices.”⁹ Reproductive governance is particularly evident in states that restrict abortion by targeting abortion providers, mandating pre-abortion wait times and fetal ultrasounds, reducing gestational ages for legal abortion, and pushing legislation mandating fetal “personhood” and parental consent for minors seeking abortions.¹⁰ Reproductive governance is compounded by “legal violence,” a convergence and implementation of immigration and criminal law with discourses that create extraordinary vulnerability for migrants, with origins in the Clinton era of immigration and welfare reforms that led to massive deportations and restricted access to social welfare.¹¹ This legal violence was exacerbated by the Trump administration’s xenophobic rhetoric and “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policies, designed to deter migration by separating children from their parents in detention, “metering” asylum seekers’ access to hearings, leaving them in precarious conditions in Mexico or Guatemala, and building a wall along the US-Mexico border.¹²

Reproductive justice activists are contesting neoliberal reproductive governance of women and legal violence against migrants across the country. Working within a holistic framework that melds intersectionality and human rights, the movement’s mission is to promote women’s right to bear children free from coercion or abuse, terminate their pregnancies without obstacles or judgment, and raise their children in healthy environments, as well as the right to bodily autonomy and gender self-identification.¹³ This social movement engages in grassroots organizing, policy advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels, and culture shift work that contests symbolic violence perpetrated through dominant narratives about women of color by framing their advocacy through the discourse of empowerment. Reproductive justice proponents believe that reproductive justice is only possible in communities free from state violence expressed through colonialism, neoliberalism, criminalization, or restrictive policies related to poverty, child welfare, the environment, immigration, reproduction, or education. The movement has been active since the 1990s, working with racially specific groups—African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Chicanas/Latinas, Native Americans, and Muslims—while simultaneously forging multisector and cross-racial coalitions for specific issues, including strategically using the political identity “women of color.” They have honed specific organizing strategies and discourse about inclusivity and secular spirituality about balancing mind-body-spirit and expressing women’s full selves.¹⁴ Moreover, reproductive justice advocates honor their communities’ rights to spiritual expression in relation to historical trauma by engaging in “healing justice.” Initially formulated at the 2010 US Social Forum by activists, healing justice is “a practice of attention and connection” that heals the sense of being fractured or disconnected “that may be a result of trauma or oppressive socio-cultural narratives and practices. … It is a practice that asks social practitioners of all kinds to cultivate the conditions that might allow them to feel more whole and connected to themselves, the world around them, and other human beings.”¹⁵ Often, healing justice practice takes the form of narratives that include individual self-care in addition to community healing.

The Latina Advocacy Network has a long history of activism in which they mobilize poder, multiple forms of capacity-building that engage women in policy advocacy and culture shift on behalf of low-income Latinas. LAN is realizing empowerment in relation to historically specific structural conditions at the US-Mexico border, policies instigated by the Trump administration, and engagement by Latina activists. In what follows, I argue that empowerment is a complex process in which women move from developing their political subjectivity and embracing their identities as poderosas to expressing their spiritual power and open resistance.

Reproductive Governance and Legal Violence at the Border

Like eighteen other states, Texas did not expand Medicaid after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Even though Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country (an estimated six million people), the state led a challenge to the ACA’s constitutionality, garnering a favorable federal district court ruling.¹⁶ In 2011 the Texas legislature cut state family planning funding by 66 percent and authorized the “affiliate rule,” which barred health centers from receiving state funding if they were affiliated with facilities that provide abortions, essentially targeting Planned Parenthood. In 2013 the legislature passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States, requiring physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, banning most abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy, and requiring that all abortion facilities meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center. Women seeking abortions are required to undergo an ultrasound and counseling (including detailed descriptions of the ultrasound images) and then wait twenty-four hours before receiving the procedure, for which minors must have parental consent.

This antiabortion legislation immediately restricted access to health services to women of reproductive age whose reproductive health examinations often identify other health issues as well.¹⁷ In South Texas, nine out of thirty-two state-funded family planning clinics closed, largely because physicians were unable to obtain hospital privileges, and those that remained open served 54 percent fewer clients.¹⁸ There was also an increase in unplanned pregnancies and second-trimester abortions because of limited abortion services.¹⁹ All of this took place in a context in which the four counties that make up the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexican border are home to 275,000 women of reproductive age, about two-thirds of whom are estimated to be in need of subsidized contraceptive services. After reviewing the consequences of restricting access to abortion services, Grossman and his colleagues concluded the Texas antiabortion legislation constitutes a “public health threat.”²⁰ This was the legislation struck down by the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016, a suit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights with an amicus brief by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.²¹

These chilling effects on women’s reproductive rights were particularly ch...