Carceral intimacies: Family, racialization, and El Salvador’s carceral state under authoritarian politics

My dissertation follows female relatives associated with a growing movement of families of incarcerated people as they navigate heightened carceral politics under authoritarianism in El Salvador. My research examines how women are forced to take care of their incarcerated family members while being racialized as gang collaborators. In this process, my research sheds light on the racializing politics of El Salvador’s carceral state. In 2022, El Salvador resurfaced globally after the government of Nayib Bukele imposed an (ongoing) state of exception, suspending constitutional protections under a war on gangs. Through an unprecedented politics of mass incarceration, the police and military have arrested over 80,000 alleged gang members (Ministry of Justice and Public Security 2024) without access to due process—amplifying twenty years of punitive, iron-fist policies against gangs in El Salvador. My dissertation argues that families of incarcerated people have become instrumental to El Salvador’s carceral project in racializing ways. As gang racialization extends to families of incarcerated people, I unpack this process, showing how a two-fold racial logic seeks to eliminate these family ties while using them to sustain the material and social reproductive costs of carceral politics. I seek to capture this process through the notion of “carceral intimacies.” My dissertation builds on two years of ethnographic research in El Salvador, between 2021 and 2022, at the gates of prisons, courtrooms, and family homes. By bringing two feminist traditions for abolition in the U.S. and against the crisis of social reproduction of life in Latin America, my research shows how the politics of family and the social reproduction of life have become unevenly imbricated with El Salvador’s carceral state.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Grimaldi Calderon, Grazzia

Contributors dc:contributor

• Moodie, Ellen
• Greenberg, Jessica
• Martin, Jeffrey
• Smalls, Krystal
• Velásquez, Elizabeth
• Manalansan, Martin

• Carceral State
• Abolition Theory
• Racialization
• Family
• Intimacy
• El Salvador

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Grazzia Grimaldi Calderon

Language dc:language

es, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125818

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F125818