Victims and Perpetrators

Interpersonal violence should be incorporated into analysis of the poor’s daily strategies. Chapter 6 provides the long “crónica” of violence victims and perpetrators. Family relations are a place for caring, protection, and physical harm. The chapter presents the stories of Eliana and Damián. Delving into the interactions and biographies of those who simultaneously exercise and suffer violence—victims and perpetrators—the chapter illustrates in fine-grained detail the complex relationship between subsistence strategies and forms of domination and violence at home and in the neighborhood. We show how family relations can serve as a support for obtaining material resources (either licitly or illicitly) and as a place for caring and protection. We also show how those close relationships can be the locus where violence and physical harm are produced and reproduced.