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Free Choice or Poverty Alleviation? Population Politics in Peru under Alberto Fujimori
Author:
Jelke Boesten
University of Bradford, GB
About Jelke
Jelke Boesten is Research Fellow, Department of Peace Studies, International Centre for Participation Studies, University of Bradford, UK. Her work focuses on the Andes in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her main areas of expertise are gender and sexuality, gender and violence, HIV/AIDS, social movements and social policy, and, recently, memory and violence. Currently, she is doing research that examines meanings of rape in war and peace, of which the first results have been published as: ‘Marrying Your Rapist: Domesticating War Crimes in Ayacucho, Peru’, in Donna Pankhurst (ed.) Gendered Peace: Women’s Search for Post-War Justice and Reconciliation, London, Routledge, 2007. She is also working on a project examining AIDS activism, violence, and stigma in Sub-Saharan Africa. She recently published ‘Pushing the Boundaries: Social Policy, Domestic Violence, and Women’s Organizations in Peru’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38 (2) 2006, pp. 355-78.
Abstract
In the second half of the 1990s, the Fujimori government in Peru implemented a population policy to sterilize poor, rural and indigenous women according to quotas. How such a neoMalthusian policy was possible in a post-Cairo, post-Beijing era of increasing attention for women’s rights has, however, been relatively understudied. This article argues that the government could impose such policies because 1) it presented its plans with a deceiving rhetoric in which emancipatory and developmental arguments were mixed to cover-up its interests in costeffective poverty-reduction through population policies, and 2) because it could rely upon the long-existing inequalities based on racism and sexism that conditions the lives of poor Peruvians. Unique auto-ethnographical material about Andean women’s reproductive lives, drawn up by a feminist NGO, is used to underpin these arguments.
Resumen: ¿Opción libre o paliación de la pobreza? Políticas demográficas en Perú durante el gobierno de Alberto Fujimori
En la segunda mitad de los años noventa, el gobierno de Fujimori en Perú implementó una polí- tica demográfica que consistió en esterilizar a las mujeres pobres, del campo e indígenas, de acuerdo a un sistema de cuotas. Cómo fue posible formular e implementar semejante política neomalthusiana después del Cairo y de Pekín, período en el que se presta creciente atención a los derechos de las mujeres, ha sido, sin embargo, relativamente poco estudiado. Este artículo sostiene que el gobierno pudo imponer esas medidas debido a que 1) presentó sus planes con un retórica engañosa en la que se utilizaron argumentos emancipatorios y de desarrollo para encubrir sus intereses en la aplicación de políticas demográficas rentables de reducción de la pobreza, y 2) porque pudo descansar en las persistentes desigualdades derivadas del racismo y del sexismo, que condicionan la vida de los peruanos pobres. Para defender esta argumentación, en este artículo se utilizan materiales autobiográficos únicos sobre la vida reproductiva de las mujeres andinas.
How to Cite:
Boesten, J. (2007). Free Choice or Poverty Alleviation? Population Politics in Peru under Alberto Fujimori. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, (82), 3–20. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/erlacs.9637
Published on
15 Apr 2007.
Peer Reviewed
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