Geraldina Guerra: From Body to Territory, the Fight Against Gender-Based and Environmental Violence in Ecuador

^{Photo courtesy of Geraldina Guerra Garcés.} 

In 2022, Geraldina Guerra Garcés was recognized by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women in the world. Her voice is widely acknowledged as one of the clearest in the struggle against femicide in Ecuador. 

Geraldina presides over Fundación ALDEA, an organization that coordinates a broad effort to, among other actions, map, collect data, and prevent femicide; Beyond these actions, the foundation focuses on accompanying the families of victims in their demands for justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition. When she speaks, she does so with the gravity that her commitment demands.

She has worked in shelters, support services for survivors of violence, and participatory processes to strengthen women’s leadership and organizations. Along this path of defending human rights and women’s lives, she now also incorporates the defense of the land as one’s own body. 

“I began to reflect on the link between violence against women and environmental violence or degradation when I lived in Saraguro thirty years ago,” says Geraldina, “and today I am more certain than ever that this link is absolute.”

Saraguro is an Indigenous community in the province of Loja, in southern Ecuador, where she conducted an initial gender-perspective assessment of the situation of Indigenous women at the beginning of her professional career.

Her experience in both rural and urban areas allowed her to notice that “women repeated the same discourses; they used the same words to describe what was happening to them, both in the countryside and in the city. Violence cuts across all women regardless of who you are or where you live—the sensation and the impacts are the same.”

From there, her reflection deepened: how are gender stereotypes expressed in the countryside versus the city? Can the sexual division of labor be interpreted in the same way?

“When gender studies propose the sexual division of labor, I think about the differences between the rural and the urban, and my experience allows me to see that in the countryside, that boundary is very thin: women provide care (as they do in the city), but in the countryside, if I have chickens, they are for feeding and caring for my family, but they are also for sale. In this porous border, how do you explain this division?” 

Thus, beyond theoretical divisions, women in the countryside handle both productive and reproductive roles; there is a broader sense of daily tasks: care for family, animals, and the land. The purpose is to sustain life—socially, economically, and environmentally—because a woman who sows seeds in a violated, degraded, and eroded land will have to find other, not always safe, ways to sustain it.

“Fundación ALDEA developed a project called the Atlas of Rural Women in Ecuador, and, in that process, we were able to hear women reflect, basically, on how they perform care tasks and understand that if the river is contaminated, it is not possible to water the garden, wash clothes, or use the water for cooking. That reflection gave me the clarity that one cannot speak of women free from violence and the right to a life free from violence if you do not speak of the right to be free from environmental contamination; both are deeply linked,” says Geraldina.

The study Gender-based violence and environment linkages: The violence of inequality, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), establishes that these patterns of gender-based abuse are also observed in environmental contexts, affecting the security and well-being of nations, communities, and individuals. “Gender-based violence is used as a form of socio-economic control to maintain or promote unequal power and gender dynamics across sectors and contexts, including in relation to ownership, access, use, and benefits derived from natural resources” (IUCN, 2020). 

“With the implementation of projects, you enter a place where you see that the natural environment is protected; there is a greater awareness of the value of life, including that of women and girls. When you arrive in a community and observe that it is cared for, it doesn’t mean there is no violence; it means you can seek support. A community that is cared for is a community that cares.”

Activist Adriana Guzmán explains very well the logic that may lie behind the overexploitation of resources and bodies of water: women’s bodies are the first territories we learn to exploit. Since we are children, we demand from the women around us—to the point of exhaustion—food, care, and attention; in adulthood, the same is demanded of women, to the limit. Their bodies, their hands, and their time are overexploited.

This same logic is reproduced with the earth, also conceived as a feminized body: there are no limits; we extract everything from it. We impose chemicals on it, extract minerals, and destroy water sources, because that is how we have learned to treat women’s bodies.

Geraldina reflects on women, their knowledge, and the way their voices express what their hands experience every day: the color of the river, the smell of the earth, the seeds that germinate, but also the signs of deterioration, such as the smell of a river carrying pollutants or seeds that do not thrive in gray, degraded soils. Women know the land they inhabit as deeply as they know their own bodies and territories, through a daily relationship that integrates knowledge, care, and constant observation of the environment. 

^{RRI Regional Meeting, Chocó Andino, 2024. Photo courtesy of Geraldina Guerra Garcés.} 

Geraldina is part of the core group of the Network of Women and Diversities of the Chocó Andino, in the territory of the Chocó Andino Model Forest, located in northwestern Pichincha. This ecosystem, which ranges from 4,480 to 360 meters above sea level, is one of the main biodiversity hotspots in the country and the world, and is home to more than 116,000 people, as well as 270 species of mammals, 210 of reptiles, 200 species of birds, and 130 of amphibians.

The Chocó Andino Model Forest is located two hours from the city of Quito. In this territory, women leaders from different parishes organize to understand and defend their environment against extractive violence, which is often linked to organized crime. Simultaneously, they promote processes to address the forms of violence affecting their lives, including physical, sexual, and symbolic violence, promoting an integral approach that links environmental sustainability with the sustainability of life. In this context, Geraldina Guerra’s experience is also articulated through her work in civil society. Fundación ALDEA developed the Flores en el Aire platform within the framework of the Spotlight Initiative in Ecuador, and Geraldina has served as part of the Civil Society Advisory Group for the UN Women office in the country, contributing to positioning the eradication of violence against women as a central pillar of sustainable development and strengthening community networks and responses to these forms of violence. 

^{Photo courtesy of Geraldina Guerra Garcés.}