"Violencia de género contra las mujeres indígenas y discapacitadas en el cine peruano y venezolano: La teta asustada y Brecha en el silencio"

Abstract

This research focuses on the issue of gender violence against indigenous and disabled women in Peru and Venezuela. On the one hand, gender violence is analysed in terms of its impacts in society, the effectiveness of laws and governmental projects that aim at educating citizens about this problem and it oversees the current situation in the aforementioned countries. On the other hand, it looks at how politics, history and culture have impacted gender violence in South American societies. Furthermore, this research analyses how gender and gender violence towards indigenous and disabled women is represented in the Peruvian film La teta asustada (2009) and the Venezuelan film Brecha en el silencio (2013). Moreover, this representation of women and gender violence is analysed from an intersectional perspective. Through this intersectional approach, the cultural representation of women and gender violence will be considered as well as their interaction with different types of discrimination: ethnic, social and disabilityrelated. This analysis also takes into account imagological studies, looking at the image of the self and the Other. To conclude, this paper argues that gender violence and women’s representation has indeed developed throughout the years but nevertheless, there is still a lack of accurate representation of minority women’s groups on big screens. Additionally, despite some government’s efforts in tackling this issue, statistics show that gender violence which in several cases leads to feminicide, still plays a shocking role in Latin American societies. This emphasises the rapid growth of social grassroot movements that aim at creating awareness to the issue and help victims and survivors of gender violence to reintegrate in societies.