Please respond briefly to one of the bulleted questions below (and, if you think of one, please provide your own discussion question as well):
How did Fujimori utilize international feminist discourses on reproductive health and rights and also alliances with Peruvian feminists to implement these population control programs? Whom were these population control programs directed toward, and how were they implemented?
Ewig explains that “a number of factors compromised feminist responses to the abuses of the family planning program.” What were these factors?
Why does Ewig conclude that “both pragmatic feminist groups that are willing to interact with the state and autonomous radical feminist groups able to strongly criticize state actions are essential to the success of feminist policy positions”? Based on this article, and other readings/conversations in our class, do you agree with this conclusion?
If you are familiar with similar histories of sterilization in the U.S. (including against Puerto Rican women, African American women in the South, and Latinx women in California), what similarities and differences do you see between these cases and what occurred in Peru?
Ewig points out that the voices of the women most affected—“poor, rural, and indigenous women” were absent from many of these debates that she explores in the 1990s. The Quipi project, a “living archive of collective memory,” attempts to give voice to those women and men who were sterilized without their consent.
Please explore the website: https://interactive.quipu-project.com/#/en/quipu/intro
Click on “Start listening” and listen to the introduction, and then to one or several of the testimonies.
Here is how the site explains its project:
“In the 1990s, during his 10-year reign as president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori launched a new family planning programme that resulted in the sterilisation of 272,028 women and 22,004 men in only 4 years.
“They were almost exclusively indigenous people living in rural areas. Thousands have claimed this was done without their informed consent. Their stories have taken a long time to emerge because they have almost no means of media representation, often living in isolated villages. Many of them are illiterate or only speak Quechua, therefore they struggle to access the institutions of the Spanish-speaking Peruvian state. It was only after President Fujimori’s resignation in 2000 that the injustices really started to come to light. After almost two decades they are still seeking justice.
“Quipus are knotted cords that were used by the Incas and ancient Andean civilisations, to convey complex messages. This interactive documentary project is a contemporary interpretation of this system. Through a specially established phone line connected to this website, the testimonies of around 150 sterilised people have already been collected. We expect that the number of voices will continue to grow and connect, building a community around this common issue.
“The aim of the Quipu Project is to shine a light on the sterilisations, creating a collective memory archive of this case. Our intention is that these stories are never forgotten, that these abuses will never be repeated. We are working in partnership with Amnesty International to support their Against Their Will campaign, and in collaboration with local women’s organizations who hope to use this archive in their fight for recognition and reparation.”
What do you learn from exploring the website and/or listening to these testimonies? What does listening to these testimonies teach you about this history that our secondary source does not?
