ABSTRACT
Following the history of the Actoras de cambio feminist group in Guatemala, the chapter analyzes the 20-year fight of women, feminists and lesbians in order to make visible sexual violence committed during the war in the 1980s. The larger impact of this war is also considered, namely the recent conviction of key political leaders as well as the post-civil war struggle against the rise of femicide and against new violence linked to current neoliberal mining activities. By highlighting the confluence of individual and national logics of Guatemalan feminists with those of other local, regional, and international protagonists, the chapter shows how women’s collective organizing, directly affected by this violence, enabled them to trigger social and political change. It thus testifies to practices participating in the globalization of gender, which nevertheless go beyond it, starting from their local, grassroots moorings. All from a resolutely political and profoundly de-colonial perspective.
