Matrix of Violences Against Women in Guatemala’s Development Corridor

This book offers a critical discussion on violences against women in Guatemala's Development Corridor post-war environment by examining how these violences are shaped and fueled by colonialism, conflict, environment, social factors, and political economy, which all influence how women resist and push back against these violences.

A Matrix of Violences Against Women in Guatemala’s Development Corridor highlights the intersections between the political economy of post-war development and violences against women and resistance. Drawing on research from Guatemala’s contested so-called ‘development corridor’ region, the Northern Transversal Strip, this book explores the multi-sited nature of violences against women through an intersectional ‘matrix of violences’ framework, which emphasises how such violences are shaped, constituted by, and resisted through the landscape of post-war development. Hartviksen sheds an important light on the entanglements between the enduring legacies and reconfigurations of colonialism and conflict, environmental transformations, the political economy of violence against women, and the gendered discontents of development. Ultimately, the book considers the gendered, webbed interconnections between social norms, relations of land and territoriality, historical legacies of violence, and both the constraints and possibilities of postwar development, positing that violences against women are necessarily shaped by political, economic, historical, and social factors, which in turn influence how women organize to resist and address the violences they encounter.