Receiving and reading my copy of the new The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology as well as reading the story "Federal Police Confronted for Sexual Assults in Oaxaca" inspired me to post a blog on sexual assualt particularly against women of color and specifically in the context of state repression.

On thursday night, a 48 year old Oaxacan women called into the APPO university radio and testified that the Federal Prevetive Police occuping the zocalo had sexualy assaulted and harrassed her. Sinse then, many stories have emerged of sexual assault on part of the Federal Preventive Police. In response, hundreds of women marched around the Zocalo, where police stand gaurd in riot gear with water tanks around the perimeter. Some of the women theaterically reanacted the sexual harassment in front of the PFP, and others held mirrors with "we are rapists" written on them facing the PFP. Before the act the PFP peppersprayed the crowd, and the PFP also advanced water tanks during the performance.

The experience of women in Oaxaca are not alone in their experience. Earlier this year, women in San Salvador Atenco who were arrested by police during the conflict there were similarly treated.

At least 23 complaints of sexual assault including seven rapes – one boy was sodomized with a police baton – have been registered with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the non-government Miguel Pro Human Rights Center. Most were victimized on an horrific six hour ride between Atenco and a local Mexico state prison during which police “officers” pawed women, ripped off their underclothes, masturbated openly, and in serial rapist fashion, forced their victims not to look at them to prevent identification. (Source).

Women from outside the community had more ability to get their stories out. See María Sastres and Cristina Valls's story and Valentina Palma Novoa's story.

The ongoing horrors in Ciudad Juarez can be shown to be related to these stories. In her article, "The Complexities of 'Feminicide' on the Border" (from The Color of Violence, Rosa Linda Fregoso wrote,

The newly constituted global economic order impacts the most vulnerable communities--the bodies of the poor and Third World women, who are its disposable targets of labor exploitation. And critical globalization theories have rightly noted the unevenness of development in Ciudad Juarez, the further exploitation of the poor, the lack of infrastructural development--housing, sewage, electricity, health and other basic services--to accommodate the many poor immigrants recruited from southern Mexico and Central America by the maquiladora industry. However, conflating the exploitation of gendered bodies with their extermination does not offer us the nuanced account of violence that feminicide demands... It is important to recognize how violence--not only in Ciudad Juarez, but also in Mexico City--is not simply a problem for the state but is in fact endemic to it, a 'state of exception' produced by an authoritarian government that has cultivated extreme forms of violence, corruption, and yes, even death, in order to cripple people's capacity to resist, to smother effective counterdiscourse and over-power the revitalized democratic opposition... We should consider femicide in Ciudad Juarez as part of the scenario of state-sponsored terrorism..." (If you don't know much about the situation in Juarez, please go here.)

I recommend reading the entire article that came from because it goes much more in depth than what i can share in this blog. The situation at the border seems to put women at a more severe risk for assault as well as exploitation. Women crossing the border and on the U.S. side of the border are more prone to assault because of the political context of the border.

It's worth mentioning here that there are incidents of sexual assault against border crossers that are attributable to border patrol, vigilantes, and human smugglers. The injustice not only lies in the assault itself, but in the way that it is treated. Immigrant women's livelihoods are not seen as worthy of concern by the Mexican government, by the U.S. government, by various people of both nations, which means sexual assault can continue without punishment, and survivors have little means of support and healing.

Sylvanna Falcón in "'National Security' and the Violation of Women: Militarized Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border" (also from The Color of Violence) addresses the issue of border further. Some excerpts from her essay:

The level of militarization produced warlike characteristics that make rape and other human rights violations an inevitable consequense of border militarization efforts...

...In every war, in every military conflict, rapes occur because sexual assualt is in the arsenal of military strategies; it is a weapon of war, used to dominate women and psychologically debilitate people viewed as the 'enemy'...

Acts of sexual violence which target undocumented (primarily Mexican) women at the US-Mexico border are certainly informed by a legacy of colonialism, which dates back to the forced imposition of a border in 1848. More than 150 years later, migrant women's bodies continue to denote an 'alien' or 'threatening' presence subject to colonial domination by US officials. Many women who cross the border report that being raped was the 'price' of not being apprehended, deported, or of having their confiscated documents returned. This price is unique to border regions in general; while militarized rapes are part of a continuum of violence against women, I call these violations militarized border rapes because of the 'power' associated with the border itself. In this setting, even legal documentation can provide a false sense of security, because militarization efforts have socially constructed an 'enemy' and Mexican women and other migrants fit that particular profile...

...the absense of legal documents positions undocumented women as 'illegal' and as having committed a crime... the existence of undocumented women causes national insecurity, and they are so criminalized that their bodily integrity does not matter to the state...

In this essay, Falcón tells the stories of a number of women who have been assaulted by border patrol agents. One in particular caused me to write "!" next to the passage. Check out how one border patrol agent by the name of Esteves was treated. "In July 1992, Esteves received a twenty-four year prison sentence for the felony rape charge. However, he was released on December 22, 1994." He did under 3 years. How's that for justice?

An interesting and very important point that she makes is that "With a masculinized elite emphasizing the normalcy and role of militarism with regards to 'national security,' broader definitions of security have become marginalized. For example, the provision of basic necessities--such as shelter, health care, and food-- is not seen as a 'security issue' by the US government..."

It's not a national security issue that thousands of U.S. citizens are starving. But it is national security issue that too many people aren't speaking English. This attitude allows for the ability of the media, government, and those who benefit from maintaining the social order for the most part to continue their disempowerment, repression, and hate against immigrants to continue. They've clearly decided what their values are. They use the terms "national security," "freedom," "democracy," "liberation," and such to their benefit, despite the true meaning of these terms, effectively shaping the public face of their efforts.

Why is rape not a national security issue? Or like i mentioned in a previous post (see On "The Terrorists Who Aren't on the News"), why are attacks on women and their reproductive choices not considered a threat to national security?

These efforts at framing immigrants as criminals and a threat to U.S. citizen's livelihood are used to justify poor treatment and even death. How else do you explain the attitude of a MinuteWoman named Christi in this video who says that all the people who died crossing the border (even the children) deserved to die because it was their fault? This is not an isolated phenomenon.

People are purposely creating and maintaining a situation where immigrants are desparate, exploited, targets of assault and violence, and the current situation isn't even horrible enough for many anti-immigrant folks. They want to make things far worse to force immigrants out of the U.S. They don't care about the pain they're causing. At least advocates for sexual assault survivors should make more of an effort to see the relationship between anti-immigrant efforts and sexual assault (those that don't already).

In her essay, "INS Raids and How Immigrant Women are Fighting Back" (2000) Renee Saucedo shared one immigrant woman's story.

[Guadalupe Sanchez] was working for a janitorial company in San Francisco, and she was raped twice by her employer, the head of the janitorial company. A lot of people asked, "Renee, do you really believe her? Why didn't she leave the first time she was threatened by this guy?" Well, Ms. Sanchez was the sole breadwinner in her family; her husband had a bullet in his head and was bedridden. She not only had to support her three children, but found it extremely difficult to find another job because of Employer Sanction, a law on the books since 1986. As a result, it is not easy for people without immigration status to get a job, or at least a job that pays over four dollars an hour. Besides, Guadalupe Sanchez's employer told her if she ever complained or left her job, he would repot her to the INS. She would be deported. That was enough information for her to decided to endure the abuse.

More from Renee Saucedo:

Redwood City police officers, collaborating with INS agents, stormed about six apartments where families were sleeping and paraded them in the hallway before they were sequestered in one family's apartment. They would not allow the family members to dress event hough many of them were in their underwear since they were shaken out of their beds. Two of the women were forced to raise their blouses, exposing their breasts to the INS agents, the police officers, and fellow family members...

INS raids also happen in collaboration with local law enforcement and with the criminal justice system. I have been doing immigration rights work for over ten years, and I can't tell you how many immigrant women suffer from domestic violence and never report their batterers to the cops because most of the time the police ask the batterer and the women about their immigration status.

One of my main reasons for writing this piece is because of my frustration with many feminists who see law enforcement as a means to ending violence against women- and usually these feminists are white, therefore they don't see as much or none of the incidents where law enforcement are the perpetrators of violence against women. The government is often a perpetrator of violence against women. And as long as these white feminists refuse to make efforts to find new solutions that don't include working with the police/government or simply reforming the police/government.

There are a number of women in the minutemen and similar groups who need to be aware of these issues. I have a feeling they may not care, but if they see that they are contributing to and justifying an environment where women can be sexually assualted just because of where they come from, their class status, and/or their relationship to the state, maybe they will identify with it even just a little bit. Maybe, maybe not.

Related too, is the common accusation by anti-immigrant folks that undocumented immigrants are coming here to rape "our women," as well as the complaints that male immigrants sexually harass women. While incidents do occur and i wouldn't want to minimize the experience of anyone, immigrant, citizen, brown, white, or whatever, who has been sexually assualted by a male undocumented immigrant, these incidents should be dealt with on an individual level and not used to bring disempowerment, repression, or hate onto male immigrants or immigrants in general. That is simply not acceptable. I highly doubt that the loud anti-immigrant protester i heard at a rally yelling at immigrants for coming to rape "our women" and molest "our children" had any real concern for women and children's safety more than he had an interest in painting undocumented immigrants as immoral, criminal, and dangerous. I fear that too many feminist working to end violence against women buy into these accusations and avoid making connections between these issues. It must be understood that the state and those allowed by the state have much more power to get away with committing sexual assault than individuals who have few rights in this country. Advocates for sexual assault survivors must shift their focus to government repression if they are to be true allies to these survivors.

I do not want to frame this as just being about immigrant and Mexican women. There are too many stories to mention. I also do not want to frame this as just about women. Other assaults shouldn't be marginalized, such as the boy sodomized in Atenco, and the prison system allowing for sexual assaults to occur in prisons (and men of color/immigrants being disproportionately imprisoned). And I do not forget Amancio Corrales/Dalila, a Mexican immigrant female impersonator who was killed while dressed as a female near Yuma, AZ, most likely murdered because of his gender identity (see this website). These stories are all related.

Another reason i posted about this is that i also had not seen these issues as so related until i happened to read these essays in The Color of Violence and the article on the women in Oaxaca, and i wanted to share this with others.

In addition, anti-globalization, anti-border, immigrants' rights, and liberation movements need to be aware of the additional effect of state violence on women. Particularly anarchists who romanticize riots and conflicts with police need to be conscious of the repression handed down to women, queer, trans, and people of color disproportionately more than white straight male anarchists.

"The Color of Violence" touches on many more issues, and I highly recommend it.