This Marker I Call My Body: Coloniality and Racism in the Academy

Abstract

Women of colour have had to navigate a particular set of interpersonal and structural challenges in the academy that frustrate and deny their aspirations. These concerns defy a simplistic analysis, as they are part of a complex amalgam of raced, gendered, and classed experiences. I present a framework to analyse how racist/sexist hierarchies of power created during colonialism are continuously rearticulated within academic spaces to account for the persistent marginalisation of people of colour in universities in the USA, and Black women in particular. I argue that we need to understand coloniality as operating within the university as the everyday state of affairs and, as such, as an obstacle to diversity. I show how, in practice, coloniality and white racism work in partnership to construct a world that reduces Black women to their flesh and to beings that are by nature inferior. An analysis that begins with coloniality situates the intersections of racial identity and processes of othering in a system underpinned by social hierarchical relationships of domination and exclusion. My point is not to reject attempts at changing the university, but to call for a deeper understanding of the experiences of Black women in relation to its colonial legacy.     

The 1934 Southern Railway Strike in Peru

This article examines the 1934 Southern Railway Strike, a largely neglected yet important episode in Peruvian labour history. The strike, which pitted the British-owned Peruvian Corporation against its workforce, resulted in victory for the company. Drawing on a variety of original primary sources, I examine the factors that shaped the development and outcome of the strike. I pay particular attention to the strategies developed by the company managers to defeat the workers. The success of these strategies, I suggest, owed in no small measure to the volatile political situation created by the insurgency tactics of APRA and the Communist Party, which made victory for the workers politically impossible, and to the capacity of the Peruvian Corporation managers to draw on 'imperial connections' in their dealings with the Peruvian government.     

The Class Context of Temporary Immigration,Racism and Civic Nationalism in Taiwan

This article adopts a Marxist framework for examining the class bases of racism against guest workers in Taiwan, focusing on the legislative and administrative mechanisms adopted by the state to racialise and recompose the labour market and to politically repress immigrants, largely for the benefit of capital accumulation. It examines the ways in which racism against immigrants has constituted an important element of Taiwan's civic nationalism; an ideology which depicts guest workers' resistance as a source of social instability in the nation-state. The article also considers the ways in which the state has adapted to immigrants' struggles, together with the immigrants' and local workers' efforts to unite in solidarity against wage exploitation and racism. The article brings together evidence supporting the contention that Marxist analysis is the most effective means of explaining both racism and anti-racism.     

Despite Insurgency: Reducing Military Prerogatives in Colombia and Peru

Colombia and Peru made significant progress in reducing the institutional prerogatives of their respective militaries in the 1990s and 2000s while reforming their economies in a neoliberal direction. They accomplished this despite internal armed threats to state authority and stability. The end of the Cold War, U.S. promotion of "market democracies," and the international centrality of free markets and formal democratic governance coincided with the rise to power in Peru and Colombia of "neoliberal policy coalitions." The internal insurgency mitigated the emergence of antiglobalization or antidemocratic reform factions in the military and civil society. The armed forces unified behind their counterinsurgency mission, and opposition in civil society was weakened, creating greater space for neoliberal elites to reform their economies and reduce military prerogatives.     

The Societal Consequences of Market Reform in Peru

This article analyzes how market reform policies already in place affect social interests, and the feedback effects of those interests on reform processes. The variety of societal responses includes the creation of new societal organizations, reflecting the variable content and asymmetrical distribution of costs and benefits of the policies implemented. Because of this variety even in Peru, where the disorganizing effects of neoliberal reform appear to be strongest, it would seem that the societal impact of economic reform elsewhere in Latin America would also warrant more careful examination.     

The Repoliticization of Collective Action After Neoliberalism in Peru

Examining the popular uprising against the privatization of electric service in Arequipa and other revolts against foreign direct investment in Peru, this article explores the changing basis of antigovernment mobilizations against economic liberalization. It suggests that the transition from Fujimori to Toledo led to a major shift in the political opportunity structure, creating a more conducive environment for greater levels of mobilization while increasing the leverage of challengers, along with their chances to achieve positive goals. These new forms of collective resistance are geographically segmented or territorialized; they present concrete demands; and they often involve unexpected actors, yet they resonate at the national level. These results confirm the expectations from recent repoliticization literature insofar as collective actors remain acutely responsive to market reforms in more democratic settings.     

Democracy Without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori's Peru

Political parties are critical to Latin American democracy. This was demonstrated in Peru, where an atomized, candidate-centered party system developed after Alberto Fujimori's 1992 presidential self-coup. Party system decomposition weakened the democratic opposition against an increasingly authoritarian regime. Since the regime collapsed in 2000, prospects for party rebuilding have been mixed. Structural changes, such as the growth of the informal sector and the spread of mass media technologies, have weakened politicians' incentive to build parties. Although these changes did not cause the collapse of the party system, they may inhibit its reconstruction.     

From Thaw to Deluge: Party System Collapse in Venezuela and Peru

What conditions facilitate party system collapse, the farthest‐reaching variant of party system change? How does collapse occur? Numerous studies of lesser types of party system change exist, but studies of party system collapse are rare. This study draws on the existing literature and the cases of party system collapse in Venezuela (1988–2000) and Peru (1985–95) to advance some answers to the important questions about the phenomenon. The study posits three conditions that predispose political party systems to collapse: the presence of an acute or sustained crisis that questions the ability of system‐sustaining political parties to govern; extremely low or extremely high levels of party system institutionalization; and the emergence of an anti‐establishment figure with the desire and personal authority to generate a viable alternative to the established party system. The study also posits a three‐election sequential process during which collapse takes place.     

The Silent Scream of the Locas in Mariposas en el andamio

This article explores the way cross-dressing has been used as a tool of dissent by queer subjects in the film Mariposas en el andamio . This documentary not only advocates the integration of homosexuals in the realm of Cuban society, but also evidences the establishment of a culture of transvestism on the island. The ultimate intention of Mariposas is to posit the male-to-female transvestite as a figure that contests hegemonic heteronormativity as well as the machista values predicated by the Cuban revolution. The film not only opposes sexist heteronormativity (machismo in Latin American societies), but also establishes a link between homosexuality and cross-dressing practices in Latin America, as transvestism becomes an externalisation of these individuals' homosexual identity. Furthermore, the film seems to suggest that the transvestites feel trapped in the wrong biological sex. The second focus of this article is on the geographical spaces where such transvestic practices are permissible on the island. Although the film makes a case for a more open and inclusive Cuban society, it fails to show that same-sex desire and cross-dressing can be played out outside the neighbourhood's canteen in which the show takes place. Finally, I intend to show how camp becomes the best strategy for the transvestites to challenge the idea of homosexuals as anti-revolutionary figures as well as Latin American heteronormativity. To this end, I engage in a study of a strategy of gender subversion that I call 'camp fuck'. This type of campness de-constructs the idea of a bourgeois camp to transform it into a more political device, which permits the contesting of heteronormativity through elements that have traditionally been regarded as frivolous and apolitical.     

Development Dynamics of Chinese Resource‐Based Investment in Peru and Ecuador

This article analyzes the developmental impact of two of the earliest investments made by Chinese companies in South America, the Shougang Corporation's mining activities in Peru and Andes Petroleum's oil extraction operations in Ecuador. The article draws attention to the importance of contextualizing and disaggregating instances of Chinese resource‐based investment in order to adequately grasp the complexity of processes that are contingent to particular regimes of natural resource governance, companies' backgrounds, and the strength and nature of local reactions, among other factors. It thereby encourages a critical examination of Chinese investment in South America that explores how the characteristics of that investment are reshaped by the long and contested histories of resource extraction in the region, the promotion of and resistance to particular visions of development, the agency of multiply situated and complex actors, and the wider transnational production networks in which resource extraction processes are embedded.     

Vulnerable Women in a Pandemic: Paid Domestic Workers and COVID-19 in Peru

Paid domestic workers (PDWs) in Peru, who are predominantly women, are one of the most vulnerable labour sectors in the country. We argue that an important factor explaining this is linked to national legislation that grants only partial rights to the sector, thus maintaining inferior labour conditions for such workers. Here we share our analysis of a survey of 314 PDWs, conducted between April and May 2020, confirming that PDWs in Peru are highly unprotected, particularly during the COVID pandemic, in which there has been a lack of comprehensive social protection schemes.     

Women's Citizenship and Neopopulism: Peru Under the Fujimori Regime

This article argues that the increased participation of women in Peruvian politics in the 1990s and the advances made in some areas of their citizenship rights are connected to the strategies put in place by some sectors of the women's movement and to the openings provided by the Fujimori regime. Some of the impact of neopopulist rule on political institutions is shown to be positively related to women's increased opportunities during this period; yet the weak rule of law and the political use of the women's agenda by an increasingly questionable regime placed the women's movement in a complex political panorama. A disaggregated analysis of the politics of women's citizenship reveals that women from the popular sectors did not benefit from the same progress in their rights claims as women from the feminist movement or women in party politics.     

Rethinking Indigenous Politics: The Unnoticed Struggle for Self-Determination in Peru

Most scholars characterise Peru as a country with weak indigenous movements, whose demands would have no influence in regional and national policies, even though its socio-economic structures are similar to those of Bolivia and Ecuador, where indigenous movements are stronger. Based on fieldwork in the northern Peruvian Amazon and Lima between 2012–2013 and 2016–2018, this article argues that pro-indigenous legislation enacted as a response to strong indigenous mobilisation as well as the creation of indigenous autonomous governments in the Amazon express an unnoticed struggle for indigenous self-determination. These social phenomena also raise questions about the common assessment of the strength or weakness of indigenous movements.     

Extractive Relations: Natural Resource Use,Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Protection in Peru

Through ethnography of Ashaninka communities' involvement in timber extraction in Peruvian Amazonia and an engagement with recent discussions around Buen Vivir the article interrogates the common association between indigenous notions of ‘living well’ and environmental protection. A key insight is that Ashaninka individuals emphasise everyday well-being and equality over the preservation of their surroundings. Older critiques of extractivism are used to show the recent advent of environmentalist discourses and highlight issues connected with emphasising ontological difference. The article concludes that Buen Vivir would be better framed as a desire, and right, to self-determination rather than being associated with specific behaviours.