Racism and gender-based violence. Autoethnography of a history of desolation, pain and hope

Abstract

Classism, sexism, and racism are structural elements of the violence suffered by racialized women around the world and every day more people are forced to move from one country to another, trying to find better living conditions. The objective of this work is to make visible the transit experiences of Haitian women who have left Chile for the United States and Canada, seeking dignity for themselves and their families. It is also an invitation to incorporate and capture in our research, the emotions involved in working with others and to discard the supposed neutrality so typical of academic research. These reflections arise from a militant work carried out with the Haitian community living in Chile over the last six years and the emotions that passed through my body, after accompanying, from a distance, four friends who undertook this journey and survived death, kidnapping and extortion and had the courage to tell it.