Studying domestic violence in Chiapas, Mexico

Conjugal violence is common in the Border Region of Chiapas, Mexico, with serious repercussions for women's health and well-being. To understand local perceptions of and responses to violence, the authors conducted focused, open-ended ethnographic interviews with 40 nonindigenous, economically marginal women of the community. This article describes the data collection, analysis methodology, and findings concerning informants' concepts of the nature of this violence, its antecedent causes and consequences, and the strategies they employ to confront it. Such qualitative methods have advanced the authors' understanding of conjugal violence in this region, which they believe will lend to the development of appropriate interventions to ameliorate it and perhaps will prove useful in other regions sharing similar conditions of poverty, rural dispersion, and profound gender inequity.