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Bolivia
Stressing the need to create inter-agency agreements, the 2017 Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean’s report on femicide shows that Brazil topped the list of femicides (with 1,133 victims confirmed in 2017). In 2016, Honduras recorded 5.8 femicides for every 100,000 women. In Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, high rates were also seen in 2017, equal to or above 2 cases for every 100,000 women. In the region, only Panama, Peru and Venezuela have rates below 1.0. In the Caribbean, four countries accounted for a total of 35 femicide victims in 2017: Belize (9 victims), the British Virgin Islands (1), Saint Lucia (4) and Trinidad and Tobago (21). In the same year, Guyana and Jamaica — which only have data on intimate femicides — reported the deaths of 34 and 15 women, respectively, at the hands of their current or former partners. In 2017, the rates of intimate femicides in Latin America ranged between a maximum of 1.98 for every 100,000 women in the Dominican Republic, to a minimum of 0.47 in Chile.
Reports on how women in Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras and Mexico who are willing to hold public offices experience violence and do react against intimidation.
Relevant document on political violence against women for each of these countries can be found below.
International: INCLUDE PDF; http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
Bolivia: http://observatorioparidaddemocratica.oep.org.bo/ (Spanish). For further readings, please see http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/11/take-five-katia-uriona
Brazil: http://www.brasil5050.org.br/ (Portuguese)
Mexico: https://www.gob.mx/conavim/documentos/protocolo-para-la-atencion-de-la-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-en-razon-de-genero-2017; http://mexico.unwomen.org/es/digiteca/publicaciones/2017/10/protocolo-oaxaca
This short video shows Bolivian President, Evo Morales announcing the creation of a Defence Cabinet specialised in tackling violence against women and in supporting grassroots efforts. This video situates Bolivia’s move within the wider international context of governments integrating women’s liberation into the executive branch, taking inspiration from countries such as Cuba and Vietnam, which have done the same. In the video, RT producer, Cale Holmes, analyses how, despite an increase in femicide, violence against women and reactionary backlash in Bolivia, the government under Evo Morales was supporting women’s struggle.
Compares struggles over water in Andean communities of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia and Native American communities in S .W. USA, noting the combined goals of cultural justice and socio-economic justice.
On 1977-78 hunger strike.
This is a special issue on women’s organized resistance to the extraction of natural resources that has a damaging impact on their lives and environment. Articles cover movements in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico and also Ghana, focusing on the importance of water as a vital resource, and also on women’s embodied experience of suffering from water pollution and scarcity. The articles also discuss gendered critiques of extraction.
Explores women’s fight against oil extraction in the Bolivian Tariquía Reserve and the threat against forms of self-governance, of dispossession from the land and the environment this constitutes. The authors bring into the analysis the false division between the public and the private sphere. The threat of dispossession, in fact, is projected in daily life, as when women have to endure divisions within their families, occurrence that is considered a form of private and public violence.
Covers the story of Brisa De Angulo, now in her 30s, who was raped at the age of 15 and, two years after, opened the first – and only – comprehensive support centre for child survivors of sexual violence. This led to creation of the charity A Breeze of Hope and prompted support from Bolivian society and local NGOs.
Analyses the reality of women’s political participation in Bolivia, and the efforts towards its promotion, within the spheres of indigenous institutions, sindicatos (i.e. trade unions) and state participation.
Covers other protests over land, water and coca, but the final chapter ‘El Alto and the Gas Wars’ describes and analyses 2003, including brief discussion of women’s organizations and the role of radio.
Dangl is an editor of http://towardfreedom.com and http://upsidedownworld.org.
Notes that 1952 revolution is not well covered in the literature (even in Spanish). Charts changing economic and political context, giving weight to the role of the militant working class in the mines, but also notes role of Catholic Church on human rights (pp. 128-31).
Useful summary analysis including brief case studies of corporate misuse of water and resistance to them (and further references): Nestle in US, Vivendi and Suez in Mexico, Bechtel in Bolivia and Coca Cola in India.
Covers women’s political rights across all major regions of the world, focusing both on women’s right to vote and women’s right to run for political office. The countries explored are Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, New Zealand, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, South Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, the United States, Uganda, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.
Highlights the evidence that in 32 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean at least 3,529 women were victims of femicide in 2018. According to the report by ECLAC, the five countries with the highest rates of femicide in Latin America are: El Salvador (6.8 femicides per 100,000 women), Honduras (5.1), Bolivia (2.3), Guatemala (2.0) and the Dominican Republic (1.9). In the Caribbean, Guyana leads with 8.8 femicides per 100,000 women, followed by Saint Lucia (4.4), Trinidad and Tobago (3.4), Barbados (3.4), and Belize (2.6).
Report on grassroots initiatives promoted by Christian Aid and Latin America civil society aimed at developing a national system of data and statistics on violence against women in El Salvador. It also discusses women’s deprivation of citizen rights in the Dominican Republic; the struggle of women defending their community in the Brazilian Amazon; the need to protect the rights of LGBTIQ people in Colombia; the need to enhance the participation of women in the labour market in Guatemala, and to tackle gender based violence and its legitimisation by the Church in Bolivia.
The authors note that many of the groups in the Bolivian coalition mobilizing against global warming draw on indigenous philosophy and worldviews to oppose value commitments to economic development. Drawing on fieldwork in 2010, they assess the relationship between state and non-state actors and argue that the coalition has had a significant global impact, despite the failure of multilateral climate change negotiations.
See also article by the same authors: 'Bolivia vs. the Billionaires: Limitations of the "Climate Justice Movement" in International Negotiations', Nacla: reporting on the Americans since 1967, Vol. 46, issue 2, 2013, pp. 27-31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2013.11722008
Examine's Bolivia's role at UN Conferences in Copenhagen and Doha and notes the strength of the opposition, not only from powerful global companies blocking real reduction iof carbon emissions, but 'the capitalist economy itself'. They also discuss the World People's Conference in Bolivia in 2010 and report criticisms of Evo Morales reliance on extractive industries f or economic development, despite his 'anti-capitalist discourse'.
This book is the outcome of long term research by the Antiracist Research and Action Network of the Americas into rising racial intolerance, but also increasing resistance by both Black and indigenous people throughout the Americas. It covers six Latin American countries - Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico - as well as the US, and discusses the backlash against earlier gains in rights within nation states. The book argues that this nation-based strategy, pursued in a neo-liberal capitalist context, was inadequate and that the focus should now be on resisting ‘racial capitalism’ which bolsters white supremacy. The rise of militant anti-racial activism in the US and around the world in 2020 makes the book especially relevant.
Wide ranging exploration of campaigns in all parts of the world seen at first hand. Includes coverage of Sem Terra in Brazil, Cochabamba in Bolivia, township resistance to privatization in South Africa, the Zapatistas, opposition to mining in West Papua, and campaigning groups in the USA. See also his: , Protest still matters New Statesman, 08/05/2006 , 8 May, 2006, discussing why the Global Justice Movement has dropped out of the news, the turn away from street demonstrations to social forums, and stressing that struggles still continue, especially in the Global South.
Includes material on strikes, demonstrations, hunger strikes and road blocks.
This volume investigates different abortion and reproductive practices across time, space, geography, national boundaries, and cultures. The authors specialise in the reproductive politics of Australia, Bolivia, Cameroon, France, ‘German East Africa,’ Ireland, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, the United States and Zanzibar, and cover the pre-modern era and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the present day. Contributors draw on different theoretical frameworks, including ‘intersectionality’ and ‘reproductive justice’ to explore the very varied conditions in which women have been forced to make these life-altering decisions.
In this interview Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Special Envoy on Climate Change, talks about the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice. She discusses how climate change disproportionately affects women, especially through undermining food security, and notes that many women are farmers in developing countries.
See also: Editorial spotlight: Climate action with women, UN Women, 13 September 2019.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2019/9/spotlight-climate-action-with-women
Link to women-led initiatives in Bolivia, the Caribbean and Cambogia to tackle climate change.
See also: Empowering women on the frontlines of climate change, UN Environment Programme, 8 March 2019.
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/empowering-women-frontlines-climate-change
Brief introduction to “Promoting Gender-Responsive Approaches to Natural Resource Management for Peace”, a Sudanese project implemented by UN Environment, UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme.
The state, argues Zibechi, ‘is not the appropriate tool for creating new social relations’, and therefore Morales’ presidency represents a challenge to popular emancipation. Instead, he looks for inspiration to the social struggles in Bolivia and the forms of community power instituted by the Aymara people, especially in El Alto.
Zunes provides detailed case studies of civil resistance to military coups in recent decades. His aim is to advance an analysis of the role of civil society and nonviolent movements in resisting such takeovers, and the role of international pressure and solidarity by both governments and activists. Eight coup attempts defeated by popular resistance are analyzed, including Bolivia, 1978, the USSR 1991, Thailand 1992 and Burkina Faso 2015, as well as four in which resistance did not succeed. Available in PDF at: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ICNC-Mono...
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See also Vol.1. E.II.1.c. Burma: Resisting the 2021 Coup, which covers the mass popular mobilization against the February 2021 coup by the Burmese military junta.
A Guide to Civil Resistance
Volume One
Volume Two
The online version of Vol. 1 of the bibliography was made possible due to the generous support of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). ICNC is an independent, non-profit educational foundation that develops and encourages the study and use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies aimed at establishing and defending human rights, democratic self-rule and justice worldwide.
For more information about ICNC, please see their website.
The online version of Vol. 2 of the bibliography was made possible due to the generous support of The Network for Social Change. The Network for Social Change is a group of individuals providing funding for progressive social change, particularly in the areas of justice, peace and the environment.
For more information about The Network for Social Change, please visit their website.
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