This violence is not one
Illustration by Vane Julián for the book This violence is not one, used under a creative commons 4.0 license.
Book excerpt • La Laboratoria • March 6, 2025 • Leer en castellano
We’re sharing the prologue of the new anthology Esa violencia no es una (This violence is not one), which was written by members of La Laboratoria. The book weaves together the voices and experiences of feminists and activists from five countries and was published by Traficantes de Sueños at the end of 2024. We have translated and lightly edited the prologue to make it easier to read online. The full book is available online in Spanish here.—Eds.
A woven image can be misleading. When we look at it from a distance, we see large masses of color that make up homogeneous and unified shapes. But when we look closer and focus carefully, we discover that what appears to be a continuous image is actually made up of an infinite number of dots and a great variety of colors. From up close, the multiple strands that make up the embroidery become evident.
La Laboratoria is a transnational organization that supports feminist activist research and focusses on work carried out in the field, in proximity to everyday life, in contact with the problems that affect us and based on the experiences of women and sexual and gender dissidents in struggle. We believe that thinking from the conflicts, paradoxes and challenges in a situated way is necessary in order to see this web of images, which are otherwise compressed, in a different way, and to understand the multiple violences that impact us.
Violence is expressed through a permanent war that takes place simultaneously on many levels: it explodes in homes; it disciplines bodies in public spaces and through (social and carceral) institutions; it lethally regulates the mobility of people between countries globally; it operates as a principle of authority in working-class neighborhoods; it plunders common lands and resources; it exploits vital energies; and it colonizes futures through the financialization of social life.
We embarked on the writing of this collective book convinced it was worth understanding this heterogeneous set of interwoven violences. Esa violencia no es una brings together six essays from which to think, in a situated manner, about patriarchal violences and horizons of feminist justice. This book was researched and written from Quito, Buenos Aires, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, New York and Madrid.
Feminist uprisings globally have politicized feminicides and sexual violence. In this book we have continued to think through how forms of patriarchal violence (sexual, physical, economic, criminal, and psychological) are connected with other forms of violence. Esa violencia no es una takes up a radical critique of the carceral state and the dynamics of increasing criminalization, as well as considering emerging tools and strategies that enhance our capacity to act and weave together horizons of justice.
The rising tide of feminism
Our starting point is the global feminist wave that reached its peak between 2016 and 2020. Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) in Argentina and Mexico, Yo Sí Te Creo (I Believe You) in Spain and Me Too in the US all were part of a global drive to politicize patriarchal violence. These movements called out the systemic nature of violence (“it’s not about a bad apple”), pointed out those responsible for its reproduction (as in the masterful performance of “A rapist in your path”) and showed how it is interwoven with dynamics of dispossession (“The debt is owed to us”, read feminist graffiti on the streets of Buenos Aires).
The first essay is titled “How to get out of the trap?” and it’s by Valentina Huelga from Madrid, who follows the thread (by analyzing the slogans, calls to action, and arguments) of the street feminism that organized feminist strikes in 2018 and 2019, while also politicizing sexual violence and centering the judicial system as part of the problem and not the solution.
Lucía Cavallero from Ni Una Menos in Argentina describes how feminisms have built a lexicon that allows economic violence to be seen as patriarchal violence. By way of example she connects the deregulation of the rental market with the non-payment of child support by fathers, and the real world translation of both dynamics into the eviction of a single mother with children.
The idea isn’t to contrast violence and dispossession, rather to understand how they are connected. Scholar and activist Emanuela Borzachiello reminds us that to violate a body it must be dispossessed from itself, and the reverse is also true: to dispossess a body, one must violate it, break it from the outside and inside.
Cavallero recounts how feminisms have revitalized economic debates, redefining from the so-called margins or labor just what is considered work, and who in fact produces wealth.
Impunity and hyper-punitivity
Our times are defined by the expansion of the carceral and punitive state. That’s why it is so important to recall the resounding slogans and arguments of the global feminist uprising as it radically critiques the penal system.
Feminist groups fighting prisons understand this system administers “justice” in a way that is obviously unequal: although it claims “women and children must be protected,” in reality there is a lack of protection, in particular for the working classes. Instead what is offered is impunity for some men (white, property owners), who can exercise violence at will, as (impoverished and racialized) people are disproportionately punished and presented as the epitome of social danger. This is how impunity coexists with the application of hyperpunitivism, in which men from popular sectors are scapegoated for violence from below, and are used by elites to legitimize policing and the carceral state.
The dynamics of the lack of protection, criminalization and impunity are integral to the life of Tatiane da Silva. Together with her the Coletivo Território em Justiça Social (Social Justice Territory Collective) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, reflect on how punitive strategies end up reaffirming other forms of attack against precarious bodies and cast a hierarchy over what some call justice. From there, they invite us to question the logic of penalization and think through the complex relationship between justice, punishment and violence.
For their part, Ecuadorian group Mujeres de Frente (Women out Front) situate their analysis in their experiences as women active in the informal economy, who work in informal jobs and micro-illegal activities. They have been fighting the impacts of the development of carceral systems on themselves and their families for over a decade. They know the relationship between dispossession and criminalization is not new. Nor is racism so present in prisons and working-class neighbourhoods.
In their contribution to Esa violencia no es una, members of Mujeres de Frente think through the new wave of violence in Ecuador, which has lethal dynamics that are difficult to decipher. A renewed logic of social militarization that goes beyond prisons is spreading in different parts of Latin America, connecting masculinity and warmongering and establishing the exceptionality of the “war on drugs” as the norm.
Feminisms against death
Although many women are distrustful of the law and institutions, in many situations and for lack of anything better, they continue to resort to them. We ought not to ignore feminist wisdom that reminds us that our community networks are not only fractured, but also permeated by patriarchal and colonial logics. Any strategy for justice that relies on these networks must take into account the material and symbolic power relations that articulate them.
Susana Draper and Molly Porzig, who are both part of Critical Resistance in the US, highlight the importance of asking questions that allow us to address multiple facets of these issues, without trying to resolve them with a single, homogeneous answer. Going against the grain of individualized classical legal philosophy, they propose to deploy a range of interventions and concrete actions from which to rebuild links where neoliberal capitalism destroys them.
And Helena Silvestre writes from the favelas of São Paulo in manner that moves backwards and forwards at the same time so to recover practices of conflict regulation (of Indigenous peoples, of urban land occupations for housing, within favelas) where the power of the commons is deep and sophisticated, and has avoided being weakened by refusing to delegate power to structures outside of community control.
For the people
Within social and community weavings lives the desire to recognize and be recognized, and to come together to build our own understanding of different forms of violence and the responses we can practice, rehearse and imagine. We aspire to weave a constellation of collaborative networks from which situated theoretical production emerges and circulates transnationally, just as feminist struggles are doing.
Esa violencia no es una aims to contribute experiences and narratives through which we can keep alive the flame of resistance ignited by the global feminist tide. It is part of a push to sustain the politicization of patriarchal, racist and dispossessive violence and criticize the punitive state at the same time as we imagine and rehearse anti-punitive feminism that is as concrete as the blow that breaks us and the law that binds us.
We are weaving a feminism capable of self-defense so that our time and energy cannot be expropriated; and a feminism that treats justice as an open, contentious and collective question.
