ABSTRACT
Based on my activism and scholarship as an advocate for the abolition of gender-based violence, this chapter describes several key points. First, it offers one of the few existing comparative analyses of violence against women of colour in México, the US, and Canada, with particular attention to disenfranchised and dispossessed Latinx womxn and Indigenous/First Nations womxn. While this chapter acknowledges the unique experiences of womxn in all communities and respects the individual voices and agency of marginalised womxn across time and space, this chapter highlights the underlying commonalities of these realities of gender-based violence. Second, this chapter utilises the well theorised notions of femicide (femicidio)(Monárrez Fragoso, 2009; Lagarde y De Los Ríos, 2010) and feminicide (feminicidio) (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010) widely used and at times, interchangeably used, in the context of gender-based violence in México and across the Américas. Third, this chapter examines how the legal systems of Canada, the US, and México fail to safeguard the rights of economically poor and politically disenfranchised womxn, which fosters cumulative institutional violence. It works, however, to avoid engaging in “damage-centered research” (Tuck, 2009). Lastly, this chapter ends with foregrounding the local, national, and transnational efforts of Indigenous and Latinx womxn that use epistemologies and methodologies, such as testimonios, popular tribunals, and other mechanisms beyond state control to demand attention to their claims for justice, equity, and accountability, on their own terms.
