Illustrative Quote (Participant 4):
“My boyfriend threatened to call Immigration on my sister. He knew the fear would keep me from leaving.” Latina Abuse - Kendra Star
Kendra Star’s narrative, situated within a broader corpus of Latina survivors’ experiences, reveals that Latina abuse is a multifaceted phenomenon rooted in intersecting cultural, legal, and structural forces. The study demonstrates that while patriarchal and immigration‑based mechanisms intensify vulnerability, survivors exercise strategic agency through cultural brokerage, collective action, and transnational advocacy. Effective intervention must therefore move beyond generic IPV protocols toward culturally responsive, trauma‑informed, and legally attuned frameworks that empower survivors as partners in the design and delivery of services. Illustrative Quote (Participant 4):
| Resilience Strategy | Description | Evidence from Kendra’s Narrative | |---------------------|-------------|-----------------------------------| | Cultural Brokerage | Leveraging bilingual skills to navigate service systems and translate for peers. | Kendra became the liaison between Spanish‑speaking survivors and English‑only agencies, reducing language barriers. | | Collective Survivorship | Forming peer‑support groups that validate lived experience and share safety planning. | Co‑founding the Voces Unidas collective, Kendra facilitated weekly healing circles. | | Transnational Advocacy | Engaging diaspora networks to pressure U.S. policymakers on immigration‑linked GBV. | Kendra organized a petition that garnered support from Mexican consular officials. | “My boyfriend threatened to call Immigration on my sister
Latina women in the United States confront a confluence of structural inequities—racialized immigration status, gendered expectations, and socioeconomic marginalization—that shape distinct patterns of interpersonal and institutional abuse. This paper foregrounds the lived experience of Kendra Star, a second‑generation Mexican‑American survivor whose narrative illuminates how cultural scripts, family dynamics, and systemic power structures intersect to produce and perpetuate abuse. By triangulating qualitative interview data, community‑based participatory research (CBPR) findings, and a critical review of scholarship on gender‑based violence (GBV) within Latina/o communities, the study identifies three central mechanisms: (1) Familial Patriarchal Enforcement, (2) Legal‑Immigration Weaponization, and (3) Silencing through Cultural Stigma. The analysis further explores emergent forms of resilience—cultural brokerage, collective survivorship, and transnational advocacy—that challenge dominant victim‑victimizer binaries. The paper concludes with policy recommendations aimed at culturally responsive service provision, trauma‑informed legal reforms, and community‑driven prevention strategies.
Illustrative Quote (Kendra):
“When I was nine, my dad would lock my mother in the kitchen if she tried to speak to my brother. He called it ‘keeping the house in order.’ I learned early that silence was safety.”