Neoliberal settler logics of elimination in 1900s Peru: Lucía Isabel Stavig, ‘Unwittingly agreed: Fujimori, neoliberal governmentality, and the inclusive exclusion of Indigenous women’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2021 | settler colonial studies blog

Neoliberal settler logics of elimination in 1900s Peru: Lucía Isabel Stavig, ‘Unwittingly agreed: Fujimori, neoliberal governmentality, and the inclusive exclusion of Indigenous women’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2021

23Jun21

Abstract: In 1996, Alberto Fujimori introduced the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning 1996–2000, the first publicly funded family planning program in Peru’s history, under which at least 10,000 Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized. This program was aided by what I came to identify as the Reproductive and Sexual Rights (RSR) assemblage – a group of feminists working in reproductive and sexual rights in Peru. This was made possible by Fujimori’s co-optation of the reproductive rights discourse and the rise of neoliberal governmentality, which enlisted the expertise of non-state actors in projects of governance. Moreover, in their heartfelt desire to bring reproductive rights to Peru, the RSR did not appreciate Indigenous women’s inclusive exclusion from citizenship – their inclusion in the settler colonial nation as marginal members whose bodies could be instrumentalized for national projects. Through the National Program, Fujimori instrumentalized Indigenous women’s bodies to create statistics showing a reduction in poverty for international lenders. A similar reading of the RSR’s actions is possible. By downplaying the magnitude of the forced sterilizations in the late 1990s, the RSR unwittingly contributed to the violation of Indigenous women’s rights in the name of extending reproductive rights to ‘all Peruvian women.

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Settler colonialism is a global and transnational phenomenon, and as much a thing of the past as a thing of the present. Settlers 'come to stay': they are founders of political orders who carry with them a distinct sovereign capacity.
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