Ellie Alter
Just Associates (JASS)
Mexico City, Mexico
My name is Ellie, and I am master’s candidate at the Center for Experimental Humanities at NYU. Over the last four years, I have worked locally, providing legal and psychosocial assistance to asylum seekers and refugees. Over time, I have been fortunate to get to know a number of female human rights defenders who are seeking asylum in the US because of the persecution they faced back home in response to their dissent and their activism. Bearing witness to their struggles here in the US, and learning about the impressive social movements they built back home, despite, in some cases, brutal repression by the state or their communities, made me wonder: what could be done to better enable the work of female human rights defenders and protect them from the threats they face? In other words, what can be done so that these women are not forced to flee to survive?
This question lead me to Just Associates, a global women-led human rights network of activists, popular educators, and scholars who work to ensure that women leaders are empowered, well-equipped, and safe as they take on critical human rights issues affecting their communities. While many activists in Central America risk persecution regardless of gender, women human rights defenders disproportionately face particular forms of violence, whether it be sexual violence in response to their activism, or other modes of structural violence which render women less economically, politically, and socially secure. And for many Mexican women, infringement upon their right to dissent does not begin or end with state-sanctioned violence once they enter the public arena of advocacy; it manifests itself in intimate spaces, through gender roles in the family and within their local communities.
Through my work at JASS, I want to probe further into the gendered persecution that women human rights defenders face in Central America: what does it mean to be a dissenting woman in Mexican society? Moreover, how do other identities, such as race, indigeneity, and class converge with gender to produce unique collectivities that in turn provoke unique assemblages of violence?
I want to emphasize, however, that I have chosen to situate my research in a Central American context not only because women human rights defenders are particularly threatened in this region, but also because I am interested in the ways that women-led movements in the region are harnessing a feminist, postcolonial approach as they push back against a unique confluence of human rights violations. I want to investigate the ways in which these convergent collectivies both historicize and resist the rights violations that people face in Central America by targeting some of the intersecting root causes of their plight: colonialism, neoliberal economics, the heteropatriarchy. In what way does this radical approach allow them to hold perpetrators accountable, to bring justice to their communities, and to transform social values?
Crucially, I hope to gain insight into the ways that human rights organizations can work to protect and empower women human rights defenders within a climate that is hostile to feminism and human rights claims alike. What does a gendered response to persecution entail? And, in spite of this climate, how do organizations like JASS reinforce a feminist approach to various rights claims, even ones that are not conventionally framed on the surface, perhaps, in gendered terms?
I’m looking forward to the fieldwork stage of my fellowship, and at the same time, I anticipate certain challenges in carrying out my work. Aside from the language, working in the advocacy context brings up a different set of dynamics than I am not accustomed to in my social work locally, especially as it relates to being an ally. What does it mean to be a white woman of privilege, and a highly opinionated one, at that, in spaces designed to elevate the voices of marginalized women? What can my role be, as a temporary American visitor, in empowering Mexican women human rights defenders during my stay? In a pragmatic sense, how can I be most useful? How can I be a just associate?
Most of all, I feel honored to be invited to bear witness. Even with all of the limitations and implications of being an outsider, I know that a convergence of different perspectives can also be productive and even transformative. So, I am excited to see how all of this plays out.
Thank you for reading 🙂
Ellie