Reinventing Infanticide for a Global Age: Gender, Race, Class, and Nationality in Infanticide Prosecutions in Venezuela

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

This research is concerned with the way infanticide and related crimes are prosecuted in Venezuela because the criminal processing of these cases, appropriately analyzed, can yield insight on important themes in law. Preliminary research in Delta Amacuro State in the eastern part of the country and in the capital, Caracas, suggests that both prosecution and defense arguments as well as media accounts focus on issues relating to social inequality. In Delta Amacuro, where the racial distinction between "indigenous persons" and "criollos" (meaning "non-indigenous persons" or members of the "national society") structures all aspects of life, race lies at the heart of legal arguments when defendants are classified as "indigenous." In Caracas, on the other hand, poverty and immigration are much more pressing social issues; thus, when women are tried for infanticide in the capital they are often depicted as products of an "environment of violence" and "social disorganization," thereby reproducing dominant images of life in poor hillside "barrios" and of ignorant, unruly immigrants. The research conducted to date has enabled the PI to generate a number of hypotheses regarding the conduct of infanticide trials in Venezuela and their relationship to broader legal, social, political, and economic processes. A central hypothesis is that the content of case discussion has changed, from individual psychopathology, to emphasis on structural issues related to social inequality. A research team that includes four advanced students will work in a range of sites around the country for three months in the summer of 2000. The data collected will then be analyzed using discourse analytic techniques designed to test the research hypotheses generated in the preliminary study.