“The Garbage of Society”: Disposable Women and the Socio‐Spatial Scripts of Femicide in Guatemala

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the processes of meaning‐making around femicide in Guatemala, highlighting how particular bodies and spaces are pre‐figured as “disposable” through racialised and gendered imaginaries. I draw upon Butlerian epistemologies of violence and indigenous and feminist scholarship from Guatemala and the Americas to analyse why femicides are scripted differently for victims who emerge in “public” spatial formations. Grounded in analysis of the main national newspaper’s reporting and the state’s regulatory framework around violence, and supplemented with interviews and ethnographic observations that emerged in the context of a high‐profile “private” femicide, I argue that “public” victims are read relationally against two subjects who—through reactivated historical scripts of violence—help communicate public victims’ disposability. This paper contributes a rich account of the socio‐spatial logics informing how bodies matter in Guatemala; more broadly, it emphasises the productive work of states and powerful institutions like media in reinforcing hierarchies between victims of femicide.