Description
In the decades following Guatemala’s 1996 Peace Accords, gendered violences persist at alarming rates. The postwar years simultaneously ushered in new laws criminalising violence against women (VAW) and femicide. Yet, little research attends to the ways in which queer women and-gender non-conforming people, in particular lesbians, transwomen, femme-presenting and non-binary (NB) people, encounter gendered violences and access legal recourse when they do. With this in mind, this paper offers both a theoretical and empirical contribution to queer feminist political economy, and research on gendered violences in the Latin American context. I ask, how can we make queer feminist political economic sense of violences encountered by lesbians, transwomen, femme-presenting and NB people in postwar Guatemala, and their access and appeals to justice? Informed by qualitative research (2023-2025) and queer feminist political economic critiques highlighting the heteronormativity and cisnormativity of the state (Gore 2022; Lind 2012; Peterson 2020), I will explore how the Guatemalan state regulates gender identity and sexualities in cases of violence against lesbians, transwomen, femme-presenting and NB people. I will also amplify the tensions and possibilities that emerge through activists’ work with, around, against, and through the state and its structures to challenge the violences they encounter.
