Gender and Embodied Geographies in Latin American Borders

Gender and Embodied Geographies in Latin American Borders is the first study of its kind to bring a gender perspective to studies on violence and "illegal markets" in the region.

Analyzing the structural problems that create inequality and enable gendered violence in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina, the authors offer a critique of the securitization of borders and the criminalization of human mobility, and propose alternatives to reduce violence. Newspaper reports on gender and the variables of violence, human trafficking, people smuggling, missing persons, victims and perpetrators uncover the production and reproduction of discourses and images related to violence. Interviews with strategic actors from nongovernmental organizations, academia, as well as public policy makers diversify the experiences from the different voices of authority.

Gender and Embodied Geographies in Latin American Borders encourages us to continue to question silence, impunity, the restriction of mobility, the dehumanization of securitization policies and the institutionalization of gender violence. A welcomed must read for scholars, researchers, policy makers, and students of gender studies, security studies and migration.

María Amelia Viteri, Ph.D., holds an affiliation as a Research Professor at the Department of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and as a Research Associate with the Department of Anthropology at University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Desbordes: Translating Racial, Ethnic, Sexual and Gender Identities across the Americas (2014), also published in Spanish (2020). Her work has critically addressed borders and inequality as mutually constitutive with issues around gender, sexuality, racism, belonging and migrant status in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Iréri Ceja is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, National Museum, Brazil. She is the co-author of the books Migración (CLACSO UAM, 2021) and Corpografías: género y fronteras en América Latina (2017). She is a fellow at the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT, Mexico). She has been awarded the distinguished Wadsworth International Fellowship from the Wenner Gren Foundation (USA). Her areas of research are migration and forced displacement, the role of the State, violence and humanitarianism.

Cristina Yépez Arroyo is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at McGill University, Canada. She is the co-author of the book Corpografías: Gender and Borders in Latin America (2017). Her work focuses on the crossroads between gender, human mobility, detention and deportation. She has worked as an independent consultant and researcher for various projects related to gender and sexualities, human mobility and prevention of violence both in continental Ecuador and in the Galapagos Islands.