Gender Politics in Latin
America: Debates in Theory
and Practice
by Elizabeth Dore (ed.), Monthly
Review Press, 1997, 251 pp., S38
(cloth), S18 (paper).
This edited volume examines ques-
tions of gender in the political, eco-
nomic and social relations of Latin
America today. By drawing on his-
torical and literary sources, in addi-
tion to political-economic studies
of social life, these essays contextu-
alize theoretical debates in
Marxism, feminism, and postmod-
ernism around the relationship be-
tween gender and politics. The in-
clusion of materials from several
disciplines and across theoretical
paradigms provides the reader with
a multifaceted approach to ques-
tions about the class and gender di-
mensions of social institutions, po-
litical activism and identity.
Together, the essays bridge the
gap between theory and practice,
and between policy and the every-
day experiences which our theoret-
ical models seek to explain.
One of the central themes that
has driven research and scholar-
ship on gender, for example, has
been the conceptual separation of
social life into public and private
spheres, with the public represent-
ing the world of politics and eco-
nomics (presumed, for a very long
time, to be the prerogative of men),
and the private, representing the
home and the family, sexuality and
reproduction (allegedly the realm
in which women held sway). In
“Public and Private Spheres: The
End of Dichotomy,” Tessa Cubitt
and Helen Greenslade provide an
overview of the literature that crit-
ically analyzes this conception, and
point out the fluidity between these
so-called “spheres” for both women
and men. For example, elements
considered “private” at one time
may be launched into “civil soci-
ety” or the “public” domain at an-
other. Furthermore, it has often
been assumed that women’s entry
into the paid labor force will neces-
sarily empower them as they be-
come increasingly integrated into
the “public” sphere. However, as
both this essay and Sharon
McClenaghan’s essay, “Women,
Work, and Empowerment: Roman-
ticizing the Reality,” point out, re-
search has yielded mixed results.
In many cases, in fact, women’s ac-
tivities are further restricted, their
burdens multiplied, and their
power diminished.
In “Engendering Human Rights,”
Elizabeth Jelin challenges us to ex-
amine the emphasis on the individ-
ual in the conventional notion of
human rights, the liberal insistence
that these rights are universal, and
the contradiction between this for-
mulation and the needs of the col-
lective-of women generally, for
example, or of ethnic groups and
communities.
In “From Margin to Center,”
Jean Franco focuses on the ways in
which marginalized and delegit-
imized individuals of both North
and South have disrupted main-
stream discourse and mainstream
politics. For instance, “queer the-
ory,” which has undermined the
previously unchallenged categories
of sex, gender, and sexuality, is
central to current feminist theoriz-
ing in the United States and Latin
America.
The debate, thankfully, is no
longer simply about the relative
importance of gender and class.
Indeed, the text goes beyond for-
mulaic conceptions, enhances our
grasp of historical processes, and
shows that an important body of
thought about gender has been gen-
erated in various Latin American
contexts.
-Erica G. Polakoff
Other People’s Blood:
U.S. Immigration Prisons in
the Reagan Decade
by Robert S. Kahn, Westview Press, 1996, 265 pp., $55 (cloth), $21 (paper).
Five years ago, in an incisive look
at the U.S. bracero program, author
Kitty Calavita wrote that former
Immigration and Naturalization Ser-
vice (INS) Commissioner Joseph
Swing admitted-after he resigned
-that in the 1950’s he had “decen-
tralized the INS and deliberately
placed the new [regional offices] in
out-of-the-way places in order to
make it difficult for immigration
lawyers to access them, and to insu-
late the agency from the input of in-
dividual members of Congress.”
Calavita also told us that “[u]nlike
most other government agencies,
the Immigration Service has relin-
quished virtually no internal docu-
ments since World War II to the
National Archives in Washington,
D.C.,” and that the agency has even
withdrawn records after they were
used for a book of which the agency
apparently disapproved.
With Other People’s Blood,
Robert S. Kahn steps into this trou-
blesome territory with a passionate
and meticulous telling of the dou-
ble-edged story of U.S. mistreat-
ment of the thousands of Central
American refugees who came to
this country fleeing U.S.-sponsored
wars at home: “U.S. lawmakers of
both parties continue writing
‘tougher’ immigration laws, fuel-
ing hatred of immigrants, as though
the lies, abuses, and murders of the
1980s had never happened and that
the violence is not continuing,
above all, on the U.S.-Mexican
border.”
Kahn worked as a legal assistant
at Proyecto Libertad in Harlingen,
Texas, and as an editor at the
Brownsville Herald. In this book,
he focuses on the South Texas de-
tention project, which, in 1989 be-
came the Justice Department’s
“biggest detention project since it
had imprisoned Japanese Ame-
ricans during World War II.”
Readers who know about the his-
tory of U.S. intervention in El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Nica-
ragua may be shocked by the re-
lated horrors in the detention cen-
ters of South Texas, Louisiana, and
Arizona. For example, at the Port
Isabel “Service and Processing
Center” in Harlingen-known lo-
cally as el corral6n, or the big cor-
ral-the INS regularly strip-
searched babies and put children in
isolation cells for standing too close
to windows. There’s a good reason
this isn’t common knowledge.
After all, the INS is so absurdly se-
cretive that its spokespeople denied
the existence of some of its own
memos, even while Kahn held them
in his hand.
Kahn demonstrates the conscious
implementation of policies intended
to deny Central Americans even
their right to apply for political asy-
lum here. Other People’s Blood is
chilling as it weaves between the
daily humiliations of “indefinite de-
tention”-that’s an INS term-and
the broader policy-level repression.
“Prisons are about power,” writes
Kahn, “and in this demoralizing set-
ting, petty harassment was one of
the perks….Virtually every man
processed through Los Fresnos im-
migration prison [el corral6n] was
told if he applied for political asy-
lum, he would have to stay in jail
for a year or more… As the refugees
stood naked with [delousing] chem-
icals on their genitals, prison guards
misinformed them about U.S. law
to discourage them from seeking
political asylum.”
Those potential refugees who did
find their way into a court might
also find themselves being taunted
by the immigration judges who de-
termined their fate. “More harm
was done to more refugees… by bu-
reaucrats in judges’ robes…than by
all the petty muggers and sexual
predators in Border Patrol and
prison guard uniforms.” Out of con-
text this might sound a bit rhetori-
cal, but consider this: “Not once, in
the dozens of [Salvadoran] asylum
trials I attended, did I hear an INS
translator correctly translate “es-
cuadron de la muerte.” One in-
terpreter who simply omitted the
words from an applicant’s testi-
mony blushed, observes Kahn,
when the man’s attorney finally
shouted, “Death squad! Come on,
death squad!”
Kahn concedes that some cases
were a matter of incompetence-as
with the interpreter who translated
escuadron de la muerte as “death of
the squadrons.” The problem was
that, since the Reagan Admin-
istration wasn’t admitting the exis-
tence of U.S.-trained and funded
Salvadoran death squads, the INS
courts weren’t admitting it either.
Kahn criticizes “the lockstep behav-
ior of immigration judges, who sys-
tematically violated federal law to
deport refugees-many of them to
their deaths.”
Unfortunately, Khan’s account re-
mains all too timely. “The South
Texas detention project,” he writes,
“had two real effects: It swept the
refugees from the streets, which
made the national and international
media lose interest, and it intensified
abuses inside Port Isabel prison and
in South Texas immigration courts.”
Both tendencies are worth bearing
in mind today. On April 1, 1997,
provisions of the Illegal Immi-
gration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996 relating
to so-called “expedited removal”
went into effect. With minimal re-
view, asylum-seekers can be turned
around at airports and sent home by
INS officers, and those allowed to
pursue their claims are more likely
than ever to be detained.
Needless to say, there are no pro-
visions in the new law for increased
accountability. “With the end of the
Cold War,” Kahn belatedly ob-
serves, “… the ‘illegal alien’ is be-
coming the faceless wraith against
whom US. citizens will be asked to
take a stand.” The disgraceful INS
policies of the Reagan decade turn
out to have been only a beginning.
-Mark Dow
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