Automatically translated by AI.
By Ana-Marcela Montanaro [1].
In Costa Rica, the lethality of violence against women is increasing, both in frequency and in cruelty. Feminicidal violence is not only a product of plain patriarchy; feminicidal violence is an issue that is linked to the lethal and intertwined link of patriarchy, the advance of neoliberal policies and the different expressions of colonialism. Feminicidal violence destroys women’s lives, especially those of the most materially and symbolically impoverished; it dispossesses us of our bodies-territories and murders us.
A group of organizations and activists presented a document demanding that INAMU declare a national emergency due to the increase in femicides and that resources and policies be prioritized. In addition, they demand that the minister be committed to women, act independently and not as an instrument of the Executive. That the state must assume responsibility and guarantee the protection of women.
The increase in femicides in Costa Rica is not only the responsibility of one institution, nor is it only the responsibility of Cindy Quesada, the current Minister for the Status of Women, who works hand in hand with the president of the National Women’s Institute (INAMU), Yerlin Zúñiga Céspedes.
INAMU, neither before nor now, has sought structural feminist transformations, but rather, since its creation in 1998, has put assistance patches in the framework of Creole neoliberalism and the mandates of international financial organizations, limiting its capacity to generate structural feminist transformations.
Since its creation at the end of the 1990s, INAMU has been dedicated to developing public policies on gender, gender equity, empowerment and, more recently, “entrepreneurship”: a long list of public policies aimed at lifting women out of poverty and inserting them into the market and within the framework of a feminist narrative of human rights close to neoliberalism, a feminism I call prosperity, with the objective of bringing women into the neoliberal dynamics.
Almost thirty years of INAMU, and today in Costa Rica there is an abundance of public policies and legislation on “gender issues” and laws against violence against women. Neither public policies nor laws have been able to stop the advance of social inequality and exclusion, nor have they stopped systemic violence against women. This reality is not only the result of the incapacity of a minister, but of the state machinery that sustains and reproduces structural violence.
In recent weeks and from some activist sectors, with the support of the majorities of the PLN, PUSC and Frente Amplio legislative fractions, a motion demanding the resignation of Minister Quesada was voted.
It is repeated that the minister is unfit to hold the position, and by some activists it is said that “the State has failed and INAMU too” in protecting women’s lives; all this is debatable.
It is true that the minister does not have a solid background in feminism, nor does she have a background in activism. However, she is not the first minister of the status of women or president of INAMU who does not know the feminist bases, and when they have, they have exercised their positions according to the neoliberal postulates of each administration.
It is true that Minister Quesada, displaying her ignorance, has disqualified the organizations that denounce the situation regarding male violence, calling them “radicals” and has refused to declare a national emergency, since she states that she is not responsible for what is happening.
INAMU is part of the State, it is an institution that responds to the governments in power. Throughout its history, its presidents and ministers for the status of women have been co-responsible for deepening the neoliberalism of the country. Minister Cindy Quesada, like her predecessors, responds to violent and classist policies promoted by the government of the day.
The current minister is supported by President Rodrigo Chaves, a misogynist and violent man, who is very little different from the previous ones; this one, however, does not hide the violence nor does he keep political correctness in his speech. However, this minister, like the previous ones, responds to government mandates. This and previous governments are equally patriarchal, classist, racist and violent, with their inserted creolism. All of them -PAC, PLN, PUSC and now Chaves- have undermined social rights and social cohesion, have deepened the precariousness of life and the conditions necessary for a dignified life, which has an impact on the increase and lethality of feminicidal violence.
Furthermore, Rodrigo Chaves, in the line of Creole authoritarianism and as a reflection of the global trend of the advance of authoritarian political right-wingers, not only normalizes, but also deepens structural violence and neoliberalism, which contributes to the increase in feminicidal violence.
The minister says that those who demand her resignation are exercising political violence against her. She is wrong. Political violence is the phrase repeated almost as a mantra by women in political positions to avoid being questioned and to avoid the strong debate of ideas. No, Minister Cindy Quesada, this is not a matter of political violence against you.
The demands for Minister Quesada’s resignation reflect a broader political dispute. What currently exists in Costa Rica with respect to INAMU is a political dispute over the hegemony of an institution that masquerades as feminist activism.
Underlying the demand for the resignation of the current INAMU minister is a dispute for the power of a feminist narrative and for maintaining the status quo of many femocrats who, in the “name of women’s rights”, have deepened social exclusion, neoliberalism and poverty, co-responsible for the increase and lethality of feminicidal violence.
Femocrats, as Hester Eisenstein says, are feminist women who hold high technical or political positions in governments and in NGOs financed by the State and international cooperation; gender experts, those affluent feminists who, in the “name of women’s rights,” empower the political right, as Sara Farris rightly points out.
The feminists of prosperity, of empowered gender and of punitivism; the feminists who appeal for more prison, who appeal for security and not freedom, for more punishment for aggressors and not for the good life, the same ones who, like leaders of the LGTBI movement, applaud figures such as Ana Helena Chacón, Carolina Hidalgo, Laura Chinchilla, the former heads of INAMU and other women who talk about human rights, gender and feminism, while they have been part of the neoliberal and corrupt governments in power, emptying feminism of its transforming force and turning it into an institutional progre feminism allied to Creole neoliberalism; reducing it to mere identity banners, to “gender politics”, to an abstract sorority, a “feminism of prosperity” emptied of transgression.
There are different feminist expressions; there are hegemonic feminisms and feminisms allied to power, but there are also peripheral, counter-hegemonic and critical feminisms. Feminist perspectives of those of us who consider that the system is not only patriarchal, but that capitalism has surnames: it is a patriarchal-capitalist-colonial patriarchy, not in a multiplicity of fragments but imbricated. Feminists who focus beyond institutionalism and the formal framework of rights.
Criticism should not be limited to the figure of the minister, but to the institutional logic that prioritizes superficial assistance over structural changes.
Thinkers and activists such as Silvia Federici, Nancy Fraser, Breny Mendoza, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, María Galindo, Françoise Vergès, Rita Segato, have pointed out, from different feminist perspectives, critiques such as the ones I outline and have pointed out the importance of articulating feminist struggles that transcend institutionalism and confront the systemic roots of violence against women In Costa Rica, this view is essential to imagine real alternatives that do not depend solely on the state apparatus.
I question the discourses and praxis of feminisms allied to the neoliberal-colonial Creole power. Those feminisms that seek the “prosperity of women” that clothe themselves in neoliberal progressivism and femocracy.
I am not undermining the work of INAMU’s public workers, I know many of them and consider them to be committed workers, but one thing is clear: from INAMU, from the public policies of gender equity and attention to violence, live many “feminists of prosperity”, “femocrats” who live from very well paid consultancies, from trips, linked to human rights organizations; urban feminists of prosperity, academics, “very academics”, who live from the story of the empowered gender, close to political, academic or economic power and with enormous presence in different social spaces and with great symbolic power in academic and political spaces.
INAMU’s shortcomings are not new, they are not only the responsibility of this administration and its unpresentable people, but they are of long standing. INAMU’s attention to violence has been going backwards for a long time. No, it is not only the responsibility of the government of Chaves and Cindy, it is part of a process of weakening of the social rule of law and of the policies that have some social sense.
Both Cindy and the previous ministers and executive presidents are and have been directly responsible for the deterioration of women’s living conditions, social exclusion and the deepening of neoliberalism with a Creole accent. They and the Creole prosperity feminists have contributed to the advancement of the lethality of feminicidal violence.
The dispute for the control of INAMU, the “bet on institutionality”, and going for Cindy Quesada’s resignation, is insufficient to confront male and feminicidal violence, and in the long run, it is a mistake.
The solution to feminicidal violence does not involve changes in leadership or institutional reforms, but rather the construction of strong, autonomous social movements, with a sense of class and capable of disputing the very meaning of justice and a dignified life. By separating from the feminist narratives of prosperity, which seem to be hegemonic in Costa Rica. Other narratives must be constructed and contested. We need to dismantle the structures that perpetuate feminicidal violence, the precariousness of women’s lives, the control of bodies-territories and open spaces for other forms of community and political organization.
[1] Ana-Marcela Montanaro defines herself as an Anticapitalist and Anticolonial Feminist. D. candidate in Human Rights. This article has been sent to us for publication by the PRT of Costa Rica.
