AustLit

'Seven-year old Jakelin Caal, a Maya Indigenous girl from Guatemala, died in the custody of the US Border Patrol after she and her father crossed the southern US border into the United States. Results of her medical autopsy have not yet been made public but if we excavate the historical and politico-economic circumstances that culminated in her untimely death, we get a picture that implicates many more actors and conditions than those that an individualised medical examination can reveal.

'Indeed, if we follow the lead of the authors in this special section of the Australian Humanities Review, we can begin to untangle the deep and broad structural links that result in the physical death of many or in the ‘slow death’ (Galtung 1969) of millions of vulnerable individuals, especially women, around the world. We can begin to understand that the precarity of life in remote corners of the world is intimately linked to the tastes and lifestyles of the inhabitants of wealthier societies, as extractive industries are eroding subsistence agriculture and amplifying the vulnerabilities of rural (and urban) dwellers.' (Introduction)