War Echoes: Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production

By Ariana E. Vigil

War Echoes examines how Latina/o cultural production has engaged with U.S. militarism in the post–Viet Nam era. Analyzing literature alongside film, memoir, and activism, Ariana E. Vigil highlights the productive interplay among social, political, and cultural movements while exploring Latina/o responses to U.S. intervention in Central America and the Middle East. These responses evolved over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—from support for anti-imperial war, as seen in Alejandro Murguia's Southern Front, to the disavowal of all war articulated in works such as Demetria Martinez’s Mother Tongue and Camilo Mejia’s Road from Ar Ramadi. With a focus on how issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect and are impacted by war and militarization, War Echoes illustrates how this country’s bellicose foreign policies have played an integral part in shaping U.S. Latina/o culture and identity and given rise to the creation of works that recognize how militarized violence and values, such as patriarchy, hierarchy, and obedience, are both enacted in domestic spheres and propagated abroad.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Jul 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780813572154

Ariana E. Vigil

Ariana E. Vigil is an associate professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of War Echoes: Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production.

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War Echoes

Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production

Ariana E. Vigil

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vigil, Ariana E., 1980–

War echoes : gender and militarization in U.S. Latina/o cultural production / Ariana E. Vigil.

pages cm. — (American literatures initiative)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8135-6934-5 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-8135-6933-8 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-8135-6935-2 (e-book)

1. American literature—Hispanic American authors—History and criticism. 2. Gender identity in literature. 3. Militarism in literature. I. Title.

PS153.H56V54 2014

810.9’868073—dc23

2013040665

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2014 by Ariana E. Vigil

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu

A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.

For my parents, Vicki B. Vigil and David Vigil

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Gender, War, and Activism in Contemporary U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production

1. Gender, Difference, and the FSLN Insurrection

2. I Have Something to Tell You: Polyvocality, Theater, and the Performance of Solidarity in U.S. Latina Narratives of the Guatemalan Civil War

3. Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue and the Politics of Decolonial Love

4. Father, Army, Nation: Familial Discourse and Ambivalent Homonationalism in José Zuniga’s Soldier of the Year

5. Camilo Mejía’s Public Rebellion and the Formation of Transnational Latina/o Identity

Coda

Notes

Works Cited

Preface

This book project began as an exploration into the intersections between U.S. Latina/o literature and transnational activism, focusing exclusively on Latina/o cultural production in response to the Central American revolutions. As I have reoriented the project to one that investigates U.S. military intervention and expanded the scope to include Iraq, I have often found myself remarking that I began by studying revolution but ended up studying war. I now feel that this remark is accurate in some ways but inaccurate in others. On the one hand, I did have to let go of some of my youthful, naïve romanticization of twentieth-century revolutionary movements in order to more fully confront the harsh realities of war and militarism. On the other hand, and despite my explicit criticism of U.S. militarism and growing suspicion of any military endeavor, I continue to be inspired and humbled by the expressions of solidarity and commitment to justice exhibited by the authors and activists that are the subject of this study. More than anything, I have become convinced of the power of art, and especially the written word, to change people’s lives and of the possibility for change inherent in the coming together of committed, loving people. It is my hope that this book honors the work of the artists and activists who have come before and makes some small contribution to our shared vision of justice.

Throughout the course of drafting, rethinking, and revising this manuscript, I have benefited from the time, thoughtfulness, criticism, and compassion of many, many people. Friends and colleagues have provided everything from academic advice to political analysis, sympathetic ears, and friendly homes. All of you have demonstrated unwavering confidence in my own abilities to complete this project and a sincere commitment to my own health, happiness, and success. I remain honored and humbled by your support.

I would like to thank Mary Pat Brady, Debra Castillo, Sofia Villenas, and Helena María Viramontes. Mary Pat Brady especially has remained a stalwart mentor, a sharp critic, and a sincere ally. During my time at Cornell and in Ithaca I developed relationships with several people who have continued to foster my growth as a writer, scholar, teacher, and activist. Thank you Harley Etienne, Marlena Fontes, Nischit Hegde, Tony Marks-Block, Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, Blanca Torres, and Meg Wesling. Armando Garcia, mi querida, you remain the best reader of my work. Alicia Muñoz, you have been a friend, collaborator, editor, and taskmaster. Sonam Singh saw me through episodes of self-doubt and anxiety and offered invaluable editorial assistance. Thank you especially to Stephanie Li, my academic big sister, for years of advice, encouragement, and motivation.

I was fortunate to begin my academic career at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in a joint faculty appointment that was well-suited to my teaching and research interests. Research for this manuscript was supported by a semester of leave and a Faculty Seed Grant from UNL. Thank you to the faculty in the English Department, the Institute for Ethnic Studies, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and in particular Barbara DiBernard, Pete Capuano, Iker González-Allende, Chantal Kalisa, Emily Kazyack, and Julia Schleck. Marco Abel, Susan Belasco, and Ken Price read drafts of the manuscript and mentored me as I began corresponding with presses. Amelia M. L. Montes, una jefa maravillosa, ensured that UNL was a place where I could thrive. Eric González, Megan Peabody, and Morgan Watters provided warmth and humor through the long Lincoln winters.

The Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill welcomed me with open arms and made my pretenure move as easy as possible. Thank you Michele Berger, Jane Burns, and Joanne Hershfield for support and mentorship.

It seems that as soon as I set foot in the Triangle I found a friendly, energetic, and stimulating community. I so appreciate having friends and colleagues who share my sense of political outrage and commitment to creating a different academy and a different world. Thank you Andrea Benjamin, Jes Boon, Karen Booth, Lydia Boyd, Emily Burrill, Cristina Llopis Carrasco, Marta Civil, Altha Cravey, Elyse Crystall, Jean Dennison, Oswaldo Estrada, Priscilla Layne, Dave Pier, Michelle Robinson, Rebecca Walsh, and John Charles Williamson. I have felt particularly welcomed and inspired by my colleagues in U.S. Latina/o Studies, María DeGuzmán and Laura Halperin: working alongside you and with the first Latina/o Studies Program in the Southeast has been an honor. Thank you especially Jennifer Ho for your advice, compassion, humor, and understanding.

A stimulating and inspiring circle of friends and activists has led me to call North Carolina home; thank you Amy Glaser (my oldest friend in the Triangle!), Matthew Grady, Dan Guberman, Aisha Harvey, Josh Horton, Susan Kelemen, Jim Smith, Macanudo, and the PBC.

Kristin Herbeck, the other mother, there are no words; I miss you every day, and the completion of this book without you would have been impossible.

My academic career has been supported and fostered by mentorship, inspiration, and collaboration with scholars and activists from across the United States and Canada. Thank you Arturo Arias, Claudia Milian, Ben Olguín, and Dana Olwan. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, your analysis, energy, and generosity continue to amaze me. Sonia Saldívar-Hull supported this project since its earliest stages. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández and Ricky T. Rodríguez offered valuable criticism and feedback and helped shape this book for the better.

One explicit goal of this project has been to acknowledge and understand the important and ongoing contributions of Latina/o artists and activists. In the course of writing this book I was fortunate to meet and befriend many of you, and I am inspired and humbled by your work. Thank you Carlos Mauricio, Alejandro Murguía, Dolores Pérez Priem, Nina Serrano, and Mario Zelaya.

To those who have known me the longest and best—Estrella González, Rockie González, Adam Koehler, Eric Long, David Pearl, John Rachel, Leah Friedman Spohn, Reena Trapani, Cristina Tzintzún, Tane Ward, and Whichael—les quiero mucho.

Thank you to Katie Keeran and the staff at Rutgers University Press for your assistance and support.

And finally to my family: for tolerating years of stress, exasperation, and threats of giving up, for your humor, patience, and unconditional love. Thank you to the Blum, Hersch, Suen, Supan, Trejo, and Vigil families, but especially Vicki Blum Vigil, David Vigil, Kiva Vigil, and Rachel Vigil.

Introduction: Gender, War, and Activism in Contemporary U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production

Dear Jorge:

I came to the revolution by way

of poetry.

You can come (if you so desire,

if you feel you must) to poetry

by way of revolution.

—Roque Dalton, Dear Jorge

In October 2003 Camilo Mejía, the son of the well-known Sandinista sympathizer and internationally famous folk singer Carlos Mejía Godoy, became the first U.S. soldier to publicly refuse to redeploy as part of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The idea of the son of Sandinista revolutionaries fighting in an imperial invasion appears implausible, even unbelievable. However, Mejía’s trajectory, including his enlistment and subsequent antiwar activism, is indicative of how U.S. military intervention and responses to U.S. militarism have given rise to new kinds of U.S. Latina/o political, cultural, and social commitments and movements. Neither Mejía’s participation in the U.S. Army nor his later activism is accidental. Rather his story is rooted in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century U.S. political, economic, and military policies as well as ideas and articulations of gender and ethnic identity. More specifically, we can place Mejía within a context that includes U.S. military intervention post–Viet Nam, challenges to U.S. economic and military power, the relationship between gendered militarization and immigration, and changing Latina/o social and political realities.

While the origins of Mejía’s story can be traced to U.S. military intervention in Central America, it would be too simplistic to view his migration to Florida, which spurred his eventual enlistment in the National Guard, as nothing more than the consequence of U.S. imperialism. U.S. intervention in Nicaragua played a large role in his and his family’s mobility, but so too did the gender politics of Sandinista and post-Sandinista Nicaragua as well as transnational migration trends and, of course, personal circumstances. At the same time, the fact that a Nicaraguan-born immigrant and son of Sandinista revolutionaries became the first officer to publicly refuse service in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq anticipates two important threads of the larger narrative with which this book is concerned. The first thread involves the trajectory and scope of post–Viet Nam U.S. military intervention. Although this history is by no means singular or linear, this book contributes to our understanding of this period by connecting U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s to U.S. intervention in the Middle East in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first. The United States has practiced policies of military and political intervention in one region and applied them in another; therefore Mejía’s location in Iraq in 2003 illustrates the relationship between U.S. intervention in Central America and the Middle East from the 1950s through the present day.

This book does not seek to tell a simple story of unwitting participants in empire or simplistic reactions to U.S. policies. Rather, via a second thread, I seek to offer a more complex account of the ways U.S. Latinas/os have participated in, protested against, and formed relationships with U.S. militarism. Mejía’s transformation from a member of the U.S. Armed Forces to a conscientious objector exemplifies the transformation of U.S. Latina/o engagements with U.S. militarism in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first explored in the following pages. This transformation involves movement from a stance that sees armed warfare as a mode of political engagement to one that finds no redeeming qualities in war. Mejía’s position as an antiracist, antiwar, antisexist, and queer-inclusive political activist also encompasses the shifting trajectories of Latina/o cultural and political work. Mejía’s memoir, Road from Ar Ramadi, presents and re-presents his own formation as a writer and activist and illustrates the nexus of militarism, political engagement, and cultural production in which this project is situated.

Mejía’s story and the differing circumstances of these conflicts and time periods helpfully put into question accepted definitions of war and war stories. The historical parameters of this project, 1979 to 2005, grant much needed attention to post–Viet Nam conflicts, while the term militarization indicates the inclusion of conflicts in which the United States was heavily involved but which lacked a formal declaration of war. A consideration of works that take up militarized endeavors, as well as a consideration of the larger context of organizing in response and opposition to armed conflicts, calls for a more expansive understanding of war. In this regard, this project considers institutionalized violence and militarism not just on the battlefield but also within the family, the nation, and the community. This questioning of the spatial and temporal parameters of war acknowledges how individuals and communities far removed from the front lines are nonetheless impacted by armed conflict. In this way War Echoes calls attention to the space in which the majority of individuals experience violence while insisting that we recognize the myriad ways in which war comes home, particularly for women and communities of color in the United States. The book thus concurs with Cynthia Enloe’s (1993, 2) assertion that wars don’t just end and illustrates how U.S. Latina/o texts offer a unique perspective on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and militarism.

The plurality inherent in the phrase war echoes reflects the book’s multifaceted approach to militarized violence as well as its situation at the intersection of discourses of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, militarism, and cultural production. Foregrounding war, I view warfare (and militarization more broadly) as a significant catalyst for social, political, and artistic developments. Specifically the texts studied here evidence how war and militarization prompt the rejection of a singular national context on the part of U.S. Latinas/os. Moreover they illustrate how the avowal of militarized force in differing national and transnational contexts contributes to the avowal of articulations of national belonging as well as the rejection of institutionalized violence within multiple places—including the nation and the home. The multiplicity of this rejection—captured by the plural echoes—indicates that this contribution can be adequately understood only by taking into account issues of nationalism and citizenship but specifically discourses of gender and sexuality as well. Thus echoes captures both the multiplicity of effects that emanate from war as well as the ways these effects reverberate between and among one another. An attempt to listen to an echo requires us to appreciate multiple surfaces and locations simultaneously; similarly this book posits that we recognize the intersecting nature of issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Finally, just as echoes are transformed by their movement through time and space, War Echoes appreciates the dynamic nature of the processes, movements, and moments studied here.

Employing a gendered and raced perspective allows us to understand how militarization involves intra- and international processes and is both representative and productive of the relationship between nation-states and national subjects. Military service and national identity have historically been constitutive of one another; those who serve do so as recognized members of a national community, while those excluded from service understand this rejection as a commentary on their lack of full citizenship rights. At the same time, the use of militarized violence within particular communities speaks to the extent to which armies do not only use force over there. When young men of color are asked to sacrifice their lives for a state that offers little in return and female soldiers and civilians are assaulted by their own soldiers, we can appreciate the extent to which military conflicts lay bare the racial and gendered contradictions at the heart of national projects. Within the United States such contradictions have given rise to calls for expanded definitions of both soldiers and citizens. For example, when Mexican Americans returning from Viet Nam protested the lack of civil rights they experienced within the United States, they did so by reiterating the relationship between citizenship and military service: just as they served as Americans, so too should they be treated as such. We can see a similar rhetoric employed in more recent demands for the rights of gays and lesbians and women to serve. Thus participation in the military—even when such participation is contested—has historically served to strengthen nation-based identities.

In contrast, through a set of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Latina/o cultural works, this book shows how engagements with U.S. militarism have served to disrupt and alter nationalist expressions of social and political commitments. Each of the five chapters looks at a distinct moment of U.S. military intervention in four different nations: Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Iraq. In each instance, characters and texts must negotiate their relationship to their familial, ethno-nationalist, and/or national communities in light of the military conflicts in which they have become involved. As the works and my analysis demonstrate, the assertion of a completely nation-based identity fails to adequately reflect or account for the kinds of alliances, affinities (affective and political), and political movements in which authors and characters participate. Rather characters, authors, and texts consider and articulate transnational affiliations. As a whole, the book coincides with assertions concerning the productive nature of military service; however, I focus on how armed conflicts give rise to nonnational political and ethnic positions and relations. Authors utilize various mechanisms to articulate these positions while also searching for a means to reject particular kinds of relations and create new ones. These mechanisms echo how military conflicts provide the impetus for reconsiderations of national ties, but cultural products are the vehicles through which such considerations can take place and new kinds of ties can be expressed and strengthened.

To this end, I propose the term glocal to describe the social, political, and personal perspective enacted by these narratives. Glocal captures the relationship between national and state-bound subjects and extra- or transnational ones. The term is preferable to the descriptor transnational because it forces us to consider not only multiple national contexts but also events and processes at the level of the family and ethnic community. Joining a glocal perspective with a focus on a more expansive consideration of military conflicts locates violence within traditionally patriarchal and oppressive institutions—including the family, the military, and the state—as well as within everyday acts and practices.

The terms glocal and glocalization emerged in the early twenty-first century as descriptors of how globalization is experienced and manifest at the local or micro level. Likened by some to internal globalization, glocalization describes how a large-scale phenomenon—for example, the growth and influence of the Internet—can affect a discrete group of people, such as neighborhood residents or coworkers (Hampton 2010, 1113; Roudometof 2005). I acknowledge the history of and scholarship on this terminology and practice while suggesting that the term’s application to a new field—that of cultural production—offers the opportunity for fruitful, and necessary, analysis. As I use it here, glocal calls attention to the tension between global and local developments and movements and establishes the necessity of teasing out these tensions rather than accepting glocalization, or glocality, as static or discrete processes.

The concept of a glocal war narrative similarly builds upon scholarship surrounding globalization and localization. Globalization arose as a term to describe ostensibly new kinds of capitalist processes, among them flexible specialization and flexible accumulation.¹ Localization was viewed as a corollary or challenge to globalization; depending on one’s perspective, localization reflected the possibilities for greater local cultural and economic autonomy made possible by the diversification and borderlessness of global capital or was the byproduct of capitalist excess that nonetheless enabled an elaboration of diverse cultures of resistance to or difference from capitalism (Joseph 2002b, 73).² Recognizing the history of the term while remaining skeptical of the newness of frameworks of localization and globalization, I apply the descriptor glocal to narratives that were written during and emanated from historical periods somewhat prior to the rise to prominence of discourses of globalization. In doing so I acknowledge that both capitalism and opposition to capitalism have operated at the global level and suggest that artists and activists writing and working far in advance of the turn of the twenty-first century recognized the interplay among militarism, capitalism, and imperialism and responded by creating and engaging in work that similarly mounted local, national, and transnational critiques of these interlocking systems. Thus in applying the term glocal to some of the earlier narratives, War Echoes contributes historical depth to this concept and suggests that the interconnectedness and transnationalism so often discussed today was in fact thoroughly discussed by Latina/o artists and activists in the mid- to late twentieth century.

My use of the term glocal also troubles the relationship between the global and the local, just as I seek to trouble aspects of Latina/o identity. While the somewhat narrow focus of this book, which considers only works by and/or about Latinas/os, does privilege a particular ethnic and geographic community, I do not uncritically laud local communities or local activism. To do so would be to fail to see how local communities and movements are in fact formed through global processes and, as such, cannot provide an easy solution to global problems.³ Rather I look at global and local processes and the ways they impact each other. In structuring this project as one that looks at how Latina/o artists and activists work and organize transnationally in response to U.S. militarism, I take seriously how military projects that emanate from one nation-state not only impact many nations and communities but provoke a similarly varied response.⁴

Violence, Subject Formation, and Art

Just as I eschew a perspective that seeks to draw a straight line from global to local processes or vice versa, I do not suggest a crude relationship between the various kinds of violence that this book examines. That is, while I seek to place violence in domestic and national spaces in relation to transnational and extranational violence, I do not draw a causal relationship between the two. Yet the prevalence of military rape and sexual assault and the alarming number of assaults and murders that take place at the hands of returning veterans means that these spheres of violence are not disconnected. Rather than make a causal claim, my study makes a correlative one, emphasizing the prevalence of violence. Furthermore War Echoes analyzes how the fight against violence must not be simplistic but must necessarily understand the interconnections between violence as it takes places in distinct geographical and historical time periods and how violence impacts and is impacted by issues such as identity and social position.

In engaging with articulations of nationalism and transnationalism, I pinpoint the role that states and state violence play in shaping identities and movements. My perspective attends to the creative activities of cultural workers and political activists while also taking seriously the contingencies of circumstance and state power, reading activists and their work as involved in a contingent relationship between character, action, and circumstances (Scott 2004, 167). As such, I search for a perspective that remains both respectful toward and realistic about the ability of subjects to form themselves in light of extraneous and state-backed pressures and violence. As Saidiya Hartman (1997) emphasizes, subjects are constituted in response to and also through violence. For minority communities, violent processes such as slavery, forced migration, and genocide contribute to their very construction as subjects and groups. At the same time, victims and survivors of racial and sexual violence continue to assert their ability and autonomy and their own subjectivity in ways we cannot ignore. Exploring cultural and political expressions via creative works allows us to remain cognizant of the relationship between state violence and subject formation while nonetheless privileging self-conscious and self-directed representations and articulations. Creative works allow us to appreciate the extent to which subjects—in this case ethnic minority subjects—create, respond to, contend with, and at times acquiesce to the situations in which they continue to be found and formed. The book’s focus on cultural production further captures this tension. I see cultural production as a dialectic through which we can view how state-backed violence produces subjects as well as how such subjects engage with violence and their own subjectivity through art. The cultural works considered here function as means through which subjects both reflect and articulate particular identities and affiliations. The repeated engagement with issues of U.S. military intervention marks these works as performances that are enactments of social struggle and contending articulations of racial meaning (Hartman 1997, 57). Hence I use the word production rather than products to emphasize continual processes of creating and enacting. The productive process implicates and involves not only the artists themselves and viewers or readers of any given piece of art but also a larger community of receivers, including critics.

I argue for the importance of studies of militarism and U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Middle East in particular to the field of Latina/o studies. The attention given to U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador—and the solidarity movements that arose to counter this intervention—underscores the salience of Central American and Central American–American studies to current articulations of U.S. Latina/o culture and politics. Moving (chronologically and geographically) from Central America to the Middle East allows us to connect U.S. foreign policy and opposition to such policy in both regions. The exploration of these particular issues through cultural works speaks to the continuing relevance of the artistic and creative as sites of reflection and theory.

Transnational Feminism

In seeking to explore the ways Latina/o artists and activists engage with U.S. military intervention from classed, raced, gendered, and sexualized positions, this study also embodies a transnational Latina feminist approach. I use the term transnational feminism while recognizing the dangers of employing such a concept uncritically. M. Jacqui Alexander (2005, 186) explains, The long-standing challenge for imperialism to be made integral to the political and cultural lexicon of U.S. feminism is still very much in place. As such, my perspective relies on developments within transnational feminist literary and cultural studies as well as scholarship that theorizes the global position of the United States and specifically work that approaches the United States as an imperial power.

Transnational feminism pays attention to the intersections of race, gender, nation, sexuality, and economics in relationship to the movement of individuals, ideas, and concepts between and outside of national contexts as well as relations of power between peoples and states. In this instance, global feminism stands in opposition to transnational feminism, as the former has elided the diversity of women’s agency in favor of a universalized Western model of women’s liberation and stood for a kind of Western cultural imperialism (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 17). Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003, 19) clearly lays out the problems in the global feminist approach in her seminal essay Under Western Eyes, in which she warns that exclusively examining sexual difference leads to a reductive, monolithic understanding of both patriarchy and Third World difference. Rejecting this kind of global feminism, I look at the situations and experiences of women and men from diverse national backgrounds without ignoring local factors or the situation of individuals within a larger capitalist system—in other words, I take a glocal perspective. I take seriously the relations of power between and among women and remain skeptical about the possibility, or even political efficacy, of establishing a common ground. In placing the notion of common ground to the side, I follow the lead of Chela Sandoval (2000), who suggests that women of color theorize from multiple sites and positions simultaneously.

Deploying a transnational feminist analysis within a study of militarization allows us to explicitly question the relationship between women and domestic, national, and international violence while bearing in mind how armed conflict both produces and reproduces particular gendered identities, norms, and values. Looking at gendered violence within and outside of war suggests continuity between temporal and geographic spaces of both war and peace while also highlighting the ways that practices of violence and gender are mutually constitutive. Just as violent practices associated with war occur with increasing frequency in supposedly nonmilitarized spaces, so too do apparently domestic and/or cultural constructions of gender find expression in ideas about and deployments of military violence. For example, the prevalence of sexual assault against women in the United States and the use of rape as a tool of war complicate the ability to distinguish between wartime violence and peaceful violence or, by extension, between wartime and peace. At the same time, the rate of sexual assault against women within the U.S. Armed Forces is a reflection of the larger epidemic of sexual assault within U.S. society as well as a means of institutionalizing and normalizing sexual violence. Similarly when Enloe (1994) speaks of masculinity as foreign policy, she calls attention to the ways gender norms are deployed in