Together We Fight - by Ñusta Carranza Ko

Book Synopsis

Disguised as a family planning program during Peru's internal armed conflict, a campaign was launched by the government of Alberto Fujimori that resulted in the forced sterilization of thousands of women of poor, rural, and Indigenous-language-speaking backgrounds. Together We Fight explores Indigenous and non-Indigenous women's brutal experiences of forced sterilizations and their subsequent activism for reproductive rights and justice. Drawing on a vast trove of first-person testimony, Ñusta Carranza Ko highlights the understudied voices of victim-survivors, unpacking their ideas of justice and examining the work of allies that have accompanied them in their activism. Focusing on the stories, struggles, and lived experiences of victim-survivors, Carranza Ko argues that the campaign was genocidal.

From the Back Cover

"Ñusta Carranza Ko offers a harrowing account of systemic obstetric violence in Peru, which she doesn't flinch from analyzing as genocide. Her work is also about the bonds built through resistance, activism, and the pursuit of justice. Together We Fight comes together as a work of brave, persistent, and probing human rights scholarship."--Ronald Niezen, author of The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity

"Over 250,000 mainly Indigenous women were affected by the shocking campaign of forced sterilization in Peru in the second half of the 1990s. In her passionate ethnography, Carranza Ko focuses on the victims to present a compelling story of survival and agency."--A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression

"Carranza Ko intricately weaves together the connections between public policies and biopolitical control, as well as the forms of resistance enacted by women often treated as a 'sacrificial population.' This book not only exposes the process of forced sterilizations but also examines the experiences of the victims and their strategies for achieving transitional justice."--Rocío Silva-Santisteban, author of Women and Ecoterritorial Conflicts

About the Author

Ñusta Carranza Ko is Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.