Brainstorm #5 II Week 5 - Pavithra Prabhu

My name is Pavithra Prabhu.

‘Senorita Extravida’ tries to represent these young women not as victims nor as weak, dependent people, but as resilient women who are capable of demanding their rights. They showcase these young women as strong and independent, contradictory to how their society portrays them.

Lisa Cacho’s concept of “social death” refers to the idea that groups which “in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on capitalist and hetero patriarchal measures of worth.” (Summary, Social Death by Lisa Marie Cacho). In this case, young women are considered to be socially inferior, so it is difficult for them to obtain the same opportunities and treatment as males. They are socially disadvantaged and every day is a struggle for equal rights, exemplifying Lisa Cacho’s idea of “social death”.

The poor mothers and families have banded up together to form an agency that searches for their missing daughters and sister by looking through the desert for bodies and identifying remains. Furthermore, they look into how state agents are perpetrators of the murders, and how the current state favors patriarchy and sexual politics practices (Fregoso, 27), thus holding these authorities accountable for their actions.

The end of “Toward a Planetary Civil Society" (Fregoso, 28-29) refers to artwork of the Black Cross on the Pink Background. It creates a symbolism of how the pink background is representative of women and feminism, while the black cross is symbolic of a greater power that is able to see all of the unjust things happening to the women, thus exemplifying how art serves as a witness.