ABSTRACT

Indigenous Guatemalan refugees passing through Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. move in the space of a larger transborder territory created over the past six decades in response to U.S. foreign policy in Central America, historical patterns of labor movement and retreat from violence in the region. I frame this larger territory within the larger settler colonial politics of dispossession and elimination as carried out by the U.S. Mexican, and the Guatemalan states, albeit in different ways and at different stages, that often result in the fragmentation of human and social bodies. I look specifically at how Mam women navigate this transborder territory to escape gendered violence and seek safety for themselves, their families, and communities, and reconstitute themselves as Maya communities in diaspora. I suggest how the bodies of Mam women who have sought redress for gender violence through the process of seeking asylum in U.S. immigration courts are fragmented into discourses, narratives and forms legible through state loci of biopolitics. Finally, I suggest how Mam women refugees seek reintegration of their human and social bodies through reconstitution in shared transborder communities.

摘要

途经墨西哥前往美国寻求庇护的危地马拉原住民难民在过去六十年中创建的更大的跨境领土空间中移动，以响应美国在中美洲的外交政策、劳工运动的历史模式以及该地区从暴力中撤退。我将这个更大的领土置于更大的定居者殖民政治中，如美国墨西哥人和危地马拉国家所实施的剥夺和消除，尽管以不同的方式和不同的阶段，这往往导致人类和社会身体的分裂。我特别关注 Mam 女性如何在这个跨界领土上航行，以逃避性别暴力，为自己、家人和社区寻求安全，并在散居国外的玛雅社区中重建自己。我建议通过在美国移民法庭寻求庇护的过程中寻求性别暴力补救的 Mam 妇女的身体如何通过生命政治的国家场所被分割成话语、叙述和形式。最后，我建议 Mam 女性难民如何通过在共享的跨界社区中重建来寻求她们的人类和社会身体的重新融合。