'Mas me pegas, mas te quiero?': Gender violence, resistance, and poverty in women's lives in Lima, Peru

Domestic violence is not a new phenomenon but it has been ignored for a very long time. Intimate partner violence includes physical, psychological, sexual, and economic abuse and is embedded in and facilitated by gender, ethnic, and class-based inequalities that vary from culture to culture. In Lima, ninety-nine percent of women from the lower socioeconomic classes state that at least one of the women among the women they know well suffers abuse (Loli 2001: 1).; My fieldwork and the writing of this dissertation have been informed by five goals: first, to dispel myths regarding battered women in Peru; second, to contribute to the opening of the topic of violence against women in the home to anthropological discussion; third, to help bridge the gap between activism and academic research on domestic violence; fourth, to show the multiple dimensions of battered women's lives; fifth, to contribute to a theory of everyday resistance that speaks directly to the experiences of battered women and which moves beyond the simplistic dichotomy of staying or leaving.; This dissertation is based on interviews with thirty-eight battered women and five service providers. Analysis of court records of domestic violence cases, shelter records for statistical purposes, and newspaper depictions of women and domestic violence complemented interviews.; The study of battered women's resistance highlights how groups in power have historically defined categories of gender, ethnicity, and class in ways that continue to be hierarchical and discriminatory towards poor women in Lima. I also argue that women's resistance is often ambivalent and provides short-term rather than long-term solutions. Just as women contest many cultural ideas that harm them, in their everyday actions and through their beliefs they also reinforce many of the structures that perpetuate their discrimination in the long-term. The absences of resources and the widespread prejudices against poor battered women restrict women's actions and contribute to the ambivalent nature of battered women's resistance. At the same time, that women's resistance is often ambivalent and oriented towards the immediate future does not take away importance from women's contestation of individuals, beliefs, and institutions which prevent them from leading violence-free lives.