Domestic Violence, Human Rights, and Postcolonial Intersectionality of Afro-descendent and Indigenous Women in Cuba and Guatemala

Abstract

Violence against women, including domestic violence or intimate partner violence, is a violation of human rights. As such, ending violence against women is embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality and empowerment. This article gives voice to the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, geography, and gender in describing systemic and institutional power used to subjugate and isolate women experiencing domestic violence via examples from an Afro-Cuban woman and two Guatemalan indigenous women’s experiences with domestic violence. The United Nations has adopted resolutions that offer direction to social work in eliminating domestic violence. Social workers in the Global North must understand neoliberal policy and its impact on globalization processes in the Global South as they work to demand an end to intimate partner violence. Advocacy on behalf of domestic violence survivors then should be based on a human rights framework with postcolonial intersectional feminist theory to contextualize the experiences of women of color in Cuba and Guatemala.