The Personal Is Political: Domestic Violence and Feminist Participation in Bolivarian Venezuela

Abstract

First-person testimonies on domestic violence establish the links between Bolivarian macro-social structures, institutions and ideologies and micro-social experiences, aspirations, and activism. The form of the article contains a power politics of its own in foregrounding popular voices and experiences, explaining how women make meanings for themselves in the contexts of conditions that they cannot fully control. An especially generative element comes from the ways in which the undeclared war on Venezuela compels the women activist to sharpen their “both/and” stance of defending the revolution while still critiquing and altering it. It uses the ideas and terms of Rita Segato which establish that familial spaces of the home are places produced by public policy and what she calls the “open secret” of male violence and impunity.