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Indigenous and Latina Women & Children's Human
Rights News from the Americas |
¡Feliz Día
International de la Mujer 2012!
Happy International
Women's Day 2012!
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Indigenous Women, Children at Risk |
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This
Section Last Updated May 24, 2010 |
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1 - Overview |
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2 - Special Coverage of
Guatemala |
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3 - Indigenous Women in Brazil |
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4 - Indigenous Women in Peru |
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5 - Indigenous Women in El
Salvador |
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6 - Indigenous Women in Mexico |
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7-
Indigenous Women's Issues in
Colombia |
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8- More Indigenous Women's
Issues |
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Guatemala, The United States
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Esperanza Arreaga, age 62,
lost two small daughters and 14 other family members
when they were murdered by Guatemalan soldiers in the massacre of Las Dos Erres.
In this picture,
Arreaga looks at the
remains of massacre victims uncovered by forensic archeologists.
Photo: Larry Kaplow - GlobalPost |
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Ramiro Cristales, then age 5, witnessed Guatemalan special forces
soldiers murder his family and rape and murder the 10 and 12-year-old girls from
his village of Las Dos Erres, in 1982.
From a
video statement by Ramiro Cristales, and a
collage of photos, by GlobalPost. |
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Ramiro Cristales, after he was abducted by soldiers who murdered his
family |
U.S. rounds up Guatemalans accused of war crimes
Washington - U.S. federal agents are today closing in on
four former Guatemalan soldiers accused of taking part in a 1982 massacre, which
one law enforcement official called "the most shocking modern-day war crime
American authorities have ever investigated."
One former soldier alleged to have taken part in the massacre of 251 villagers
in the rural Guatemalan hamlet of Las Dos Erres is already in custody in Texas.
Another former soldier in Florida and two more in California are under active
investigation.
Law enforcement officials close to the case acknowledged the four men are part
of a probe by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into immigration
violations aimed at rounding up suspects named in a recently revived, landmark
human rights case in Guatemala. If found in violation of U.S. immigration laws,
the men would likely face deportation to Guatemala and a possible prosecution
there for war crimes.
For years these men, who are all accused of serving in a notoriously brutal
Guatemalan military unit, have lived in America, blending in to communities in
Florida, California and Texas. One is a popular karate teacher. One is a cook.
The man in custody is a day laborer who had allegedly abducted and then adopted
a boy who was orphaned in the slaughter 28 years ago.
That boy, Ramiro Cristales, who was 5 years old at the time, is now a key
witness in the case in Guatemala against the former soldiers and against the man
who raised him.
In an exclusive interview with GlobalPost, Cristales, one of only two known
survivors of the massacre, saw his entire family murdered. He said he was
frustrated it has taken so long for the men to be brought to justice. But he
said he hoped U.S. and Guatemalan officials might work together to make that
happen.
"They have to do something... The only thing I ask is justice," said Cristales,
who is now hiding in an undisclosed location. One former soldier alleged to have
taken part in the massacre of 251 villagers in the rural Guatemalan hamlet of
Las Dos Erres is already in custody in Texas. Another former soldier in Florida
and two more in California are under active investigation.
Law enforcement officials close to the case acknowledged the four men are part
of a probe by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into immigration
violations aimed at rounding up suspects named in a recently revived, landmark
human rights case in Guatemala. If found in violation of U.S. immigration laws,
the men would likely face deportation to Guatemala and a possible prosecution
there for war crimes.
For years these men, who are all accused of serving in a notoriously brutal
Guatemalan military unit, have lived in America, blending in to communities in
Florida, California and Texas. One is a popular karate teacher. One is a cook.
The man in custody is a day laborer who had allegedly abducted and then adopted
a boy who was orphaned in the slaughter 28 years ago.
That boy, Ramiro Cristales, who was 5 years old at the time, is now a key
witness in the case in Guatemala against the former soldiers and against the man
who raised him.
In an exclusive interview with GlobalPost, Cristales, one of only two known
survivors of the massacre, saw his entire family murdered. He said he was
frustrated it has taken so long for the men to be brought to justice. But he
said he hoped U.S. and Guatemalan officials might work together to make that
happen.
"They have to do something... The only thing I ask is justice," said Cristales,
who is now hiding in an undisclosed location.
The massacre in Las Dos Erres, where a total of 251 men, women and children were
killed, is widely considered one of the darkest chapters of Guatemala's 36-year
civil war that claimed some 200,000 lives, and in which the U.S. military played
a shadowy role.
One month after allegedly raping young girls and women
during the massacre, one of the men under investigation, Pedro Pimentel Rios,
began work as an instructor at the School of the Americas, the Pentagon-run
training school for Latin American militaries, then located in Panama...
Because the alleged crimes occurred before the passage of war crimes laws in the
United States, prosecutors are not legally permitted to charge the men under any
of those laws. This limitation in U.S. law has long frustrated federal
prosecutors, who have only... been able to denaturalize and deport even
suspected Nazi war criminals living in the United States.
U.S. officials began their investigation after the Inter-American Court on Human
Rights decided last year that Guatemala's 1996 amnesty agreement does not apply
to serious human rights violations, including the massacre at Las Dos Erres.
Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Justice
who monitor cases involving foreign-born human rights abusers decided to see if
any of the accused killers were living in the United States...
U.S. involvement
Human rights groups have long criticized the involvement of the American
government and military in Guatemala. The Las Dos Erres case reveals several
connections between the two countries.
The U.S. government knew the Guatemalan army was probably responsible for the
massacre at Las Dos Erres, yet the School of the Americas began to welcome new
instructors and students from the army only days after the killings...
In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter had introduced a ban on cooperating with
the Guatemalan military. But President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban and the
School of the Americas began admitting Guatemalan soldiers, including Rios, one
of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre...
Just as the massacres were intensifying, Reagan re-established military and
political cooperation with the Guatemalan government. Reagan saw [Guatemalan
president Efrain] Rios Montt as a useful ally against leftist guerrillas and
maintained friendly relations in the face of evidence that Rios Montt's
government was responsible for increasing numbers of civilian massacres. (In
July 1982, Amnesty International published a report listing more than 50
massacres of non-combatant civilians by the military.)
On Dec. 4, 1982, when the massacres in the Guatemalan countryside were fully
under way, Reagan met with Rios Montt. Reagan publicly described Rios Montt as
"a man of great personal integrity…[who] wants to improve the quality of life
for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice." Reagan said that Rios Montt
had received a "bum rap" from human rights groups.
It was an inauspicious day to make such a show of support. On the same day
Reagan spoke, the 17 members of the Kaibiles [counter-insurgency rangers] squad
arrived at a military base near Las Dos Erres. On Dec. 7, the massacre started.
Over the following two days, the men are alleged to have killed 251 residents of
Las Dos Erres. "Everything that moved had to be killed," one of the soldiers
later wrote in a sworn statement.
Last month archaeologists began exhuming the mass grave and DNA testing is now
underway to confirm the identities of those killed.
"I lost everything"
The Kaibiles tortured the men first. They then began
throwing children alive into the village well. Women were shot or beaten to
death with a sledgehammer and then thrown in. Men were then shot and dumped on
top. One of the Kaibiles abducted a 5-year-old boy [Ramiro Cristales]. Another
boy escaped. They may be the only surviving witnesses...
Matt McAllester
Minnpost.com
May 06, 2010
LibertadLatina
Commentary
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Chuck Goolsby |
Genocide, Femicide and Human
Trafficking in Guatemala All Grew From the Same Roots of Wartime Impunity
The mass murders (genocide) suffered by the Mayan majority
population of Guatemala during the 1980s took place with the complicity of the
U.S. Government, especially during the administration of President Ronald
Reagan. Some 200,000 innocent civilians, including 50,000 women, were murdered
by government military forces during the civil conflict.
While the International Court in the Hague and other
international human rights courts have aggressively prosecuted, or at least
charged suspects in cases of genocidal mass murders in Bosnia, Sudan and other
equally notorious cases, the largest act of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the
modern history of the Americas, carried out during the Guatemalan Civil War, has
until recently been off limits to effective prosecution.
We thank the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for laying the
groundwork for permitting renewed judicial action in important cases such as
that of
the Las Dos Erres Massacre. Many other cases have
yet to be investigated.
In all, some 440 Mayan villages, located mostly in Guatemala's
northwestern highlands region, were completely destroyed by Guatemalan soldiers
who were supported with military training and equipment by the United States,
Argentina and Israel.
The mass murderers in Guatemala thought that they would have a
lifetime of protection in regard to their crimes, because past conservative U.S.
presidential administrations lead them to believe that was the case. Thanks to
the changing political and legal landscape in the Americas, serious prosecutions
of these criminals may finally occur.
In the mid 1980s myself and many other activists in Washington,
DC and across the Americas worked hard to publish and broadcast news about the
ongoing massacres of innocents in Guatemala. We also protested in front of
Congress and organized to do everything we could to save the lives of
Guatemalans from the murderous hands of these cruel perpetrators.
Today in 2010, Guatemala's postwar culture has the highest rate
of femicide murders in all of the Americas. Several thousand women have been
murdered during the past several years with almost total impunity. The rate of
femicide murders, which typically include act of rape, torture, mutilation and
dismemberment (echoing the behavior of military forces during the civil war), is
ten time higher than the rate of gender-based murders in Mexico's infamous
Ciudad Juarez..
These femicides, and Guatemala's inability to investigate the
rape/ torture killings of so many women and girls, as well as that nation's
serious problems with the mass sex trafficking of women and girls today are all
direct outgrowths of the impunity that the world community ALLOWED to exist in
Guatemala during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Effectively, these crimes were never
prosecuted because past conservative U.S. administrations were passively
and actively complicit, and the world community simply stood silently by.
A nexus with the anti-trafficking movement
During the early 2000's, I joined the anti human trafficking
listserv (email-based private forum) of Dr. Donna Hughes, who was then and is
today Professor and Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair of the Women's
Studies Program at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Hughes is one of the
original pioneers of the modern U.S. movement against human trafficking, and she
deserves all of the honors that she has received over the years for those
efforts.
Dr. Hughes' listserv, which was made up of many notable names in
the anti-slavery movement across the globe, including names that many followers
of the movement today would recognize, totaled about 400 members. Simultaneous
to her work with this listserv, Dr. Hughes was also writing for the conservative
National Review Online.
The majority of U.S. listserv participants were conservative
women. I educated that community of professionals and activists about the
dynamics of the Latin American crisis in human trafficking at a time when few
were aware of the issues.
As part of that work, I discussed the mass rapes and murders of
innocent Mayan indigenous women and girls (among others) during the Guatemalan
Civil War. I also discussed Mayan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Rigoberta
Menchu, who fled into the jungle to avoid becoming another victim of government
massacres. Several of Dr. Menchu's relatives died at the hands of soldiers.
Conservative members of the listserv became so infuriated with my
simple and truthful educational postings, that several of them quit the
listserv. Dr. Hughes told me by phone, almost apologetically, that she had to
ban me from the listserv to prevent her conservative followers from leaving.
In an earlier email conversation, Dr. Hughes had rationalized the
human rights abuses in Guatemala by stating that some victims supported
communist insurgency.
What Mayans actually supported was building a future for
themselves that was free from the 500 years of peonage (slavery) that Spanish
descendants had subjected them to.
During this online debate, an anti-trafficking activist from the Salvation Army
wrote to emphasize that the group was not denying the events that took place in
Guatemala (but only she expressed that view, not the other listserv members).
U.S. Conservatives had long supported the efforts of former
President Ronald Reagan and others to back often brutal right wing dictators in
Latin America. Any mention of the mass murders of Guatemalan innocents,
including women and children, was considered to be an unacceptable abomination.
In the late 1995, for example,
former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich denounced
then-Democratic Representative Robert G. Torricelli, who, like
Speaker Gingrich, was also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, for
having publicly exposed information about the atrocities in Guatemala followed
by a demand for congressional hearings.
Speaker Gingrich also demanded that the Public Broadcasting
Service (PBS) not air a documentary on the massacres of Mayan peoples in the
Guatemalan Civil War. He only relented and allowed the program to be broadcast
after his demand for adding 'alternative views' to the program's content were
agreed to by PBS.
How do you provide an alternative view about multiple
acts of racially motivated mass murder of innocent children, women and men?
This truthful account of one part of the history of the
Guatemalan Genocide also sheds light on aspects of the modern U.S. response to
the human trafficking crisis in Latin America.
The U.S. based anti-trafficking movement is a unique social space
where conservatives, liberals and others (and I am 'other') may join in common
purpose to save human lives. Unfortunately, politics has often been played with
the issue of Latin American human trafficking.
In the early 2000s, conservatives such as Dr. Donna Hughes and
her followers shunned any discussion of the important gender related human
rights issues (specifically, the Guatemalan Genocide) that were closely
associated with the modern human slavery issue in Latin America.
During the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, I
was present at one major public speech each, given by the two first
directors of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
at the U.S. Department of State - Ambassador John R. Miller, and
Ambassador Mark P. Lagon. Latin America’s human trafficking crisis
was never mentioned during those presentations, despite what we know
today, that Latin American human trafficking generates an estimated
$16 billion per year, perhaps half of all world income from human
slavery.
When, on May 27, 1994,
I gave a presentation on Latina women and exploitation to
the Montgomery County, Maryland Commission for Women, I mentioned the
mass rapes and murders of women in the Guatemalan conflict, several conservative
women commission members shook their heads and declared that the genocide never
happened. Notably, a Cherokee indigenous woman commission member, and a
Panamanian woman physician who was also a member, acknowledged the fact of the
Guatemalan genocide as well as the other issues that had I raised for their
consideration.
A failure to acknowledge the problem of Latin American
human trafficking during the administration of President George W. Bush (as a
byproduct of conservative politics) effectively allowed the region's billion
dollar cartels and other criminal elements free reign to grow their now $16
billion per year human slavery 'industry' (IOM figure) without any visible U.S.
opposition.
On the other end of the political spectrum, some liberals,
including, perhaps, influential members of the administration of President
Barack Obama, also politicize human trafficking, from a leftist perspective.
It does not add to Obama administration strategy to have any
highly visible discussion of human trafficking and the mass rape and enslavement
of women and girls in Mexico and Central America, when such visibility would
raise doubt in Congress, and among the public, as to the value of continued
funding of the war on drug traffickers, given that Mexican soldiers deployed in
the conflict have been the culprits in many rapes and murders of indigenous
women with total impunity.
Open discussion of the severe levels of human trafficking and the brutal sexual
exploitation of women perpetrated by some Latino immigrant men in U.S. community
settings is also an uncomfortable topic for progressives as they market
Comprehensive Immigration Reform to the people and Congress of the United
States.
That concern does not justify remaining silent about the growing humanitarian
emergency of mass gender atrocities that is taking place in Mexico, throughout
the rest of Latin America and, increasingly, in U.S. Latino immigrant population
centers.
Progressives who favor the legalization of prostitution also
apparently have strong influence in the Obama Administration, leading to a
diminished focus on sex trafficking while labor trafficking takes center stage
in U.S. anti-trafficking efforts.
By justifying the genocide of Mayan indigenous peoples during the
Guatemalan Civil War (a mentality that is consistent with excusing the mass
murder of U.S. indigenous peoples in the past), U.S. conservatives, together
with their allies in Guatemala, succeeded in setting-up the circumstances that
lead not only to the anti-Mayan genocide, but also to the largest crisis of
ongoing murders of women in the Americas, the current Guatemalan femicide.
A similar conservative-lead environment of social and
governmental tolerance for mass gender atrocities also exists in neighboring
Mexico.
We assert that the lack of willingness of the U.S. government and
of some U.S. NGOs to fully engage the issue of human trafficking in Latin
America (where half of the world's estimated $32 billion of human trafficking
apparently takes place) during the George W. Bush administration and beyond had
its roots in conservative unwillingness to acknowledge the serious human
consequences of their past support for murderous dictators such as Guatemalan
president Efrain Rios Montt.
To be clear, U.S. conservatives cannot declare their opposition
to modern day human trafficking and slavery on the one hand, and on the other,
declare that the genocide in Guatemala, or Mexico's current repression of
women's rights (and until recently, intentional inaction on human trafficking)
all orchestrated by the ruling National Action party (PAN), are justifiable
expressions of conservatism.
You just can't have it both ways.
The left, which has often been indifferent to the issue of human
trafficking bears a similar responsibility for condoning inaction... because
human trafficking is, for some of them, a round peg that will not fit into the
square holes of their personal ideologies.
Shame on those who politicize human trafficking, be they from the
right or the left!
The victims, and those who are at-risk, await our effective and
hurried efforts to protect and rescue them.
Public servants, put the politics aside, and get to work! There
is no time to waste.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
May 23/25, 2010
See also:
Guatemala
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An indigenous woman walks by a street poster
of Guatamala's most brutal president, Efrain Rios Montt.
In the words
of a poem by Pablo Neruda: 'For the one who gave the order of agony,
I ask for punishment.' |
Guatemala: Massacre investigation breakthrough
Recently declassified documents from US archives have shed further light on the
extent of US complicity in Guatemalan human rights crimes, one of Latin
America’s most brutal examples of population control.
The hard-working farmers of Dos Erres, in Peten department, had never asked for
much — just a few acres of recently-cleared land from which to scratch a meager
living in a country racked by violence.
When armed guerrillas cut across their land six months prior to December 7,
1982, community leaders had done everything possible to placate the national
army, even inviting the soldiers in for inspections.
They had nothing to hide, they said. But a psychopathic military killing machine
had already condemned them to death on the grounds that they were the soil in
which the seed of resistance grows.
Acting on orders issued by the US-backed regional command, a death squad of army
Kaibiles (counterinsurgency rangers) entered the peaceful hamlet early that
morning, smashing in doors, killing livestock, starting fires and rounding up
groups of men, women and children.
Hours of rape and torture ensued, followed by execution in small groups. After
being shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, the victims were
hurled into a village well or left in nearby fields.
By nightfall, more than 250 were dead - almost the entire population. There were
two child survivors - one who escaped and one, Ramiro Cristales, who was spared
by his parents’ murderer only to be subsequently raised as a domestic slave
(reputedly an army custom). Cristales, now aged in his 30s, has recently come
forward at considerable risk to his own life as an eyewitness to the horror at
Dos Erres.
His testimony to the Guatemalan truth commission has been corroborated by
previously classified material obtained by the National Security Archive’s
Guatemala Documentation Project under the US Freedom of Information Act...
David T. Rowlands
Green Left (Australia)
May 22, 2010
See also:
Former Guatemalan Soldier Arrested for Alleged Role in Dos
Erres Massacre
Washington, D.C. - Following this week's arrest of a former
Guatemalan special forces soldier, the National Security Archive is posting a
set of declassified documents on one of Guatemala's most shocking and unresolved
human rights crimes, the Dos Erres massacre.
On May 5, 2010, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) arrested Gilberto Jordan, 54, in Palm Beach County, Florida,
based on a criminal complaint charging Jordan had lied to U.S. authorities about
his service in the Guatemalan Army and his role in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre.
The complaint alleges that Jordan, a naturalized American citizen, was part of
the special counterinsurgency Kaibiles unit that carried out the massacre of
hundreds of residents of the Dos Erres village located in the northwest Petén
region. Jordan allegedly helped kill unarmed villagers with his own hands,
including a baby he allegedly threw into the village well.
The massacre was part of the Guatemalan military's "scorched
earth campaign" and was carried out by the Kaibiles ranger unit. The Kaibiles
were specially trained soldiers who became notorious for their use of torture
and brutal killing tactics. According to witness testimony, and corroborated
through U.S. declassified archives, the Kaibiles entered the town of Dos Erres
on the morning of December 6, 1982, and separated the men from women and
children. They started torturing the men and raping the women and by the
afternoon they had killed almost the entire community, including the children.
Nearly the entire town was murdered, their bodies thrown into a
well and left in nearby fields. The U.S. documents reveal that American
officials deliberated over theories of how an entire town could just
"disappear," and concluded that the Army was the only force capable of such an
organized atrocity. More than 250 people are believed to have died in the
massacre...
The National Security Archive
George Washington University
May 7, 2010
See also:
LibertadLatina
Note
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An indigenous woman in Guatemala holds a sign saying,
WANTED: Jose Efrain Rios Montt (the unseen part says, "for genocide") -
during the 2008, 28th anniversary of the
Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala
City, Guatemala.
General José Efraín Ríos Montt is best
known for heading a military dictatorship from 1982–1983 that was
responsible for some of the worst atrocities against civilians in the
36-year Guatemalan civil conflict.
Photo: MiMundo |
My observations about the only human trafficker I have
ever met.
...To further tie together these linked issues, I know victims of
that genocide, and I have met a perpetrator, through one of his family members.
This family member talked to me at length about this perpetrator’s activities in
Guatemala. I will refer to him here as ‘Juan.’
Juan’s grandfather owned a large ranch in Guatemala, and when he
was feeling especially angry, he would go to the Mayan village at the far-end of
his ranch and "shoot a few Indians" (a direct quote). During the time of the
1970s-1980s Guatemalan Civil War, Juan was a member of the Guatemalan
president's security detail, the Presidential Guard. This security unit had a
secondary task, aside from protection, of receiving a daily hit list from the
president’s palace, finding these persons and murdering them for being suspected
‘subversives.’
The bodies of the victims were typically left laying in the
street as a message to the population. Juan stated to his family: "Me daba mucha
lastima tener que malograr a las mujeres" - that is: "it really saddened me to
have to tear-up the women [on the hit list]." In other
words, he supposedly felt sad for having willfully kidnapped, tortured,
gang-raped and finally murdered his mostly Mayan women and girl victims over a
number of years...
During the mid 1990s, before I even knew what sex trafficking
was, Juan’s family member explained to me that Juan was engaged in smuggling
people into the United States under peculiar circum-stances, and that he had
ties to Colombian mafias. Today, I understand that what was being explained to
me was the fact that Juan, a former mass rapist and murderer of women, had
'graduated' to sex trafficking women into the U.S. while living a comfortable
and otherwise 'normal' life in Washington, DC.
It was also explained to me that Juan would travel to Guatemala
City, place an add in a local paper seeking young girls to work as escorts, and
that 13 and 14-year-old girls would gleefully respond. Juan then 'trained' these
girls as prostitutes, and sent them out as escorts for wealthy businessmen.
In Washington, DC, Juan, when working in the role of office
building cleaning crew manager, imposed quid-pro-quo sexual demands upon the
Latina women who applied to work at his office building.
The world's past denial of the Guatemalan Genocide plays into the
world's current lack of attention to the ongoing femicide, mass kidnappings of
babies for illegal adoptions and prostitution, and to the mass
trafficking of Guatemalan women into the brothels of southern Mexico...
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Ashoka anti-trafficking competition entry
June 18, 2008
See also:
LibertadLatina
Note
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Mayan women and supporters gather to
protest a then-recent massacre in Quetzaltenango,
Guatemala - 1978
Photo: El Gráfico |
In the early 1980's I lived in a house in Washington, DC where a couple who had
fled Guatemala were invited to stay. The husband was an agronomist from Spain.
His wife was a white U.S. citizen from the Midwest. They told me how they were
saved from a death squad execution in Guatemala.
A Guatemalan woman friend had told the couple that her boyfriend, a high-ranking
Guatemalan military officer, had told her one night while he was drunk that the
couple had been put on the to-be-murdered list that was printed nightly in the
presidential palace (using a computer system set up by the Israeli military).
Having been warned by their friend, the couple and their young child immediately
fled Guatemala.
What was their crime?
The husband taught people in rural Mayan communities how to grow food better and
improve their nutrition. For the Guatemalan military, anything that benefited
the Mayan population was subversive, and deserved a murderous response. Any
arguments that the Mayan majority was subversive fly out the window when one
understands that the goal of the genocide was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
May 23, 2010
See also:
Israel and Guatemala
The history of Israel's relations with Guatemala roughly parallels that of its
ties with El Salvador except the Guatemalan military was so unswervingly bloody
that Congress never permitted the ... Reagan Administration to undo the military
aid cutoff implemented during the Carter years.
Weaponry for the Guatemalan military is the very least of what Israel has
delivered. Israel not only provided the technology necessary for a reign of
terror, it helped in the organization and commission of the horrors perpetrated
by the Guatemalan military and police. And even beyond that: to ensure that the
profitable relationship would continue, Israel and its agents worked actively to
maintain Israeli influence in Guatemala.
Throughout the years of untrammeled slaughter that left at least 45,000 dead,
and, by early 1983, one million in internal exile - mostly indigenous Mayan
Indians, who comprise a majority of Guatemala's eight million people - and
thousands more in exile abroad, Israel stood by the Guatemalan military. Three
successive military governments and three brutal and sweeping campaigns against
the Mayan population, described by a U.S. diplomat as Guatemala's "genocide
against the Indians," had the benefit of Israeli techniques and experience, as
well as hardware...
...It does not take convoluted reasoning to conclude that "both the U.S. and
Israel bear rather serious moral responsibility" for Guatemala.
See also:
May 26, 2009
More about Former Guatemalan president Efrain Ríos Montt
In 1978, [Efrain Ríos Montt] left the Roman Catholic Church and became a
minister in the California-based Evangelical / Pentecostal Church of the Word;
since then Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have been personal friends [both
reverends Falwell and Robertson had publicly defended Ríos Montt's human rights
abuses].
Ríos Montt's brother Mario is a Catholic bishop, and in 1998 succeeded the
assassinated Bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the human rights commission
uncovering the truth of the disappearances associated with the military and his
brother.
About Efrain Ris Montt
Wikipedia
See also:
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Bill Clinton during his presidency |
Clinton says U.S. did
wrong in Central American Wars - March 10, 1999
... President
Clinton admitted Wednesday to Guatemalans that U.S. support for
"widespread repression" in their bloody 36-year civil war was a
mistake.
"For the United States, it is important
that I state clearly that the support for military forces or
intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread
repression ... was wrong," Clinton said as he began a round-table
discussion on Guatemala's search for peace.
"The United States must not repeat that
mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace
and reconciliation process in Guatemala," he said on the third day
of a Central American tour.
CNN
March 10, 1999
See also:
LibertadLatina
Read our special section of the crisis of sexual
exploitation and femicide facing women and girls in modern Guatemala.
See also:
LibertadLatina
Raids and Rescue
Versus...?
Read our special
section on the human rights advocacy conflict that
exists between the goals of the defense of
undocumented immigrants from the threat of
deportation on the one hand, and the urgent need to
protect Latina sex trafficking victims through law
enforcement action, on the other hand...
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Dec. 18, 2008
Added:
Nov. 30, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
 |
|
UNIFEM and CICIG
officials sign letter of understanding with
the participation of Mayan congressional
deputies Beatriz Concepción Canastuj
Canastuj and Elza Leonora Cu Isem. |
Firman Carta de Entendimiento Entre CICIG y UNIFEM
Guatemala - Con el fin de establecer los parámetros de cooperación
interinstitucional entre CICIG y UNIFEM para apoyar y fortalecer a las
instituciones del Estado de Guatemala encargadas de velar por la defensa
de los derechos de las mujeres, adolescentes y niñas; Carlos Castresana,
Comisionado de la CICIG y Gladys Acosta, Jefa para América Latina y el
Caribe del Fondo de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas para la Mujer
(UNIFEM), firmaron una carta de entendimiento entre ambas instituciones
(se firmó el día miércoles 25 de noviembre)…
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|
Mayan women and supporters gather to protest
a then-recent massacre in Quetzaltenango - 1978
Photo: El Gráfico |
CICIG and UNIFEM Sign Letter of Understanding
Guatemala City - In order to establish the parameters of interagency
cooperation between
the
International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala
(CICIG) and
the
United Nations Development Fund for Women
(UNIFEM) to support and strengthen the institutions of the State
of Guatemala for upholding the rights of women, adolescents and
children, Carlos Castresana, CICIG Commissioner and Gladys Acosta,
UNIFEM’s director for Latin America and Caribbean – have signed a letter
of understanding between the two institutions.
Honorary witnesses who attended
the signing, which took place in the Guatemalan Congress, included:
Roberto Alejos,
the President of Congress;
Rebeca Grynspan,
the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) Regional Director for Latin
America and the Caribbean, and Delia Back, president of the Commission
for Women . Federal
congressional deputies Beatriz Canastuj and Elsa Leonora Cu, as well as
UNIFEM Coordinator
for Guatemala
Rita Cassisi, also attended the signing ceremony.
According to the text of the letter of understanding, "the parties will
collaborate to implement actions to strengthen women's access to
justice, especially the recording and collation of data to analyze the
impact of organized crime in the violence and the impunity of crimes
against women. The parties agree to generate quarterly reports
reflecting the results of these actions and promote its dissemination in
the appropriate spaces..."
UNIFEM's Gladys Acosta said: "We discussed with [CICIG]Commissioner
Castresana the fact that one of the key issues that needs to be
understood is the nature of the link between the organized crime
organizations that span our region, especially in Central America and
more specifically in Guatemala, and violence against women. Clearly the
primary responsibility for protecting women lies with the state, but
what happens when non-state actors have even more power than the state
itself and can not be controlled?
Society needs to react very strongly, and that's what we're doing today.
It is a justified, and very strong reaction, [insisting] that the high
levels of violence against women not be tolerated any longer, and that
once and for all, we have an answer."
Rebeca Grynspan, UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the
Caribbean stated: "This is a very important moment, because not only
must we fight against violence, but we must also fight against impunity.
We must say no to violence, and we must say no to impunity. Paraphrasing
Commissioner Castresana:
‘Violence plus justice equals less violence. But
violence plus impunity equals more violence.' "
The union of the efforts of UNIFEM, a United Nations organization that
fights tirelessly for the rights of women, and the Committee Against
Impunity in Guatemala [CICIG], is exactly what we need to carry this
agenda forward...
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala
Nov. 26, 2009
Added:
Nov. 29, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala, Honduras, Latin America
Mujeres Guatemaltecas: Entre la Vulnerabilidad y la
Violencia de Estado
“Rescatemos el derecho a tener derechos”: Feministas en Resistencia
En Guatemala, de 2005 a 2008, 2 mil 680 mujeres fueron asesinadas, de acuerdo
con datos de la Policía Nacional Civil, el Organismo Judicial y el Instituto
Nacional de Ciencias Forenses (Inacif); de estos crímenes, únicamente dos por
ciento –43 casos– ha sido resuelto.
Lo anterior fue comentado por Carlos Castresana, presidente de la Comisión
Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG) y uno de los expertos de
la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos que realizó el peritaje de tres
casos de feminicidio ocurridos en un campo algodonero en Ciudad Juárez, México;
actualmente se espera la sentencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos
Humanos (CoIDH)...
Guatemalan Women: Stuck Between Vulnerability and State
Violence
“We are rescuing our right to have rights” - Feminists in
Resistance of Hunduras
In Guatemala, from 2005 to 2008, 2,680 women were killed, according to data from
the National Civil Police, the Judiciary and the National Institute of Forensic
Sciences (INACIF); of these crimes, only two percent - 43 cases - have been
solved.
The above figures were announced by Carlos Castresana, president of the
International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and one of the
experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which conducted a
survey of three cases of femicide that occurred in a cotton field in Ciudad
Juarez , Mexico. [Having found in favor of families of the victims against the
Mexican state] Everyone is currently waiting for the sentence in the case to be
announced by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
To date in 2009 there have been 602 murders of women, with a rate of impunity of
98 percent, according to data from the Panel Study of Guatemala.
With these facts as a backdrop, today on the International Day for the
Elimination of Violence against Women, a campaign initiative by United Nations
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, "Unite to end violence against women" was
launched in a ceremony at the National Palace of Culture. The event was attended
by the President of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, and representatives of UN
agencies...
A significant role in the campaign launch was offered to activist Daysi Flores
of the Feminist Resistance of Honduras, a nation which, sine June 28th
2009, has lived through a coup d’etat, and which is a few days away from holding
elections.
Flores, who won the applause of the audience, narrated the story of the violence
that women and men are living through since the coup. She said that
325 [Honduran] women have been murdered, and that other women have been
repressed, raped and harassed.
Flores declared that the right of women to live a life free of
violence has so-far existed only in words, and that it takes more than that to
fully exercise those rights. Flores said that practical responses from
governments are needed, such as policies, budgets, access to resources of all
kinds and state secularism.
We need, emphasized the Honduran feminist, to "rescue our right to have
rights"...
Full English Translation
Lourdes Godinez Leal
CIMAC Noticias
Nov. 25, 2009
See also:
Comisión Internacional Contra la
Impunidad en Guatemala
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala
Added:
Nov. 29, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
Campaign Is Launched To Combat Violence Against Women.
On this International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,
Guatemala holds a week of activities to inaugurate the United Nations program
against violence against women, with headquarters in Guatemala. Yesterday,
participants from the UN and Latin American Countries discussed five themes:
legislative and judicial advancements; prevention strategies, plans and
programs, information and training systems; access to justice; and armed
conflict and displacement. On Nov. 23, there was an event held in Guatemala City
to emphasize the extremes of violence against women and femicide. Names were
placed under shoes to symbolize the missing people who no longer fill those
shoes.
Prensa Libre - Guatemala
Translated abstract by the Guatemala Human Rights
Commission USA
Nov.
25, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
 |
|
United Nations and Guatemalan
officials participate in the launch of the
Unite Campaign in Guatemala City on Nov. 25,
2009
More photos at
Prensa Libre
- Guatemala City |
"Unite To End Violence Against
Women"
Un Secretary General's
Campaign To Be Launched From Guatemala - NOV. 23-30,
2009
On November 25th in Guatemala, the United Nations
[launched] Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's campaign
“Unite to End to Violence Against Women” for the region
of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The campaign focuses on strategies to counter violence
against women at the regional, national, and local
levels. At the Board of Directors 41st Regional Reunion
Conference about Women in Latin American and the
Caribbean, the Secretary General proposed an agreement
to formally initiate the campaign, and many UN
organizations have committed to lead campaign activities
in the region.
The regional efforts are focused on ending impunity for
the crime of violence against women and girls through
the implementation of international and national legal
mechanisms; the increased commitment of governments to
fulfill their promises to put and end to violence
against women and girls; and the mobilization of
key actors working for the empowerment of women and
their communities.
Women’s organizations have been invited to be part of
the campaign with the understanding that they are the
key actors in this international and national effort...
Why Guatemala?
Guatemala has been chosen as the focal point of this
effort because of the escalation of violence against
women in the country, a level of violence which has yet
to be fully recognized by the international community.
In 2007, Guatemala was ranked third highest in death
rates in Latin America resulting from violence against
women. In 2009, Guatemala has moved quickly to
first (depending on the method of classifying causes of
death). Between January and May of 2009, 265 femicide
(murder of women for being women) cases were recorded.
Between 2005 and 2007, there were 19,600 women murdered;
however, only 43 of those responsible for the deaths
were sentenced. A factor that explains the
increase of assassinations in 2009 is that, in the
previous three years, 1,912 murders were never
prosecuted.
Since the law against femicide took effect in May of
2008, only two offenders have been sentenced, although
722 women have been killed by violence. (Fundación
Sobre-vivientes (the Survivors' Foundation)...
Violence in Guatemala generates a cost of more than $300
billion annually, equivalent to 7% of the GDP.
...Women's
organizations and the specialized programs that they
have created for the promotion of their rights in
Guatemala reflect a strong measure of resilience and
resistance, as well showing the infinite creativity
possessed by these women as they organize, prepare, and
mobilize for the struggle against adverse conditions of
social devaluation, misogyny, and ethnocentrism. The UN
campaign supports these efforts by promoting solidarity
among regional and international organizations and
initiatives in order to share knowledge, strength, and
resistance...
María Suárez Toro
Feminist International Radio Endeavour
(RIF/FIRE)
Translated by Hannah Powell Losada
Edited by Ross Ryan & Margaret Thompson
Oct. 20, 2009
Added:
Nov. 28, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
 |
|
Mayan Women from
TRAMA
Textiles, which was
born out of the most desperate
and devastating times of the
Civil War in Guatemala when most
of the men -- grandfathers,
fathers, brothers, and sons,
were murdered by soldiers and
paramilitary forces, and the
women were forced to find a way
to survive and support their
households and communities.
Photo:
Rai |
Guatemala: donde la justicia para las
mujeres no llega
Guatemala -
A trece años de la firma de los Acuerdos de
Paz en Guatemala, las mujeres sobrevivientes
y víctimas de la violencia sexual ejercida
por militares y paramilitares entre 1981 y
1983 continúan exigiendo al Estado
guatemalteco la reparación del daño, la
restitución de sus propiedades y de sus
derechos, y esperando una justicia que no
llega…
Indigenous Women Victims of Rape During the
Civil War Break Their Silence
Guatemala: where justice for women
never arrives
Guatemala - Thirteen years after the signing
of the peace accords in Guatemala, the
surviving women victims of the sexual
violence perpetrated by military and
paramilitary forces between 1981 and 1983
[during the most intensive period of
anti-Mayan ethnic cleansing massacres
carried out by government forces] continue
demanding restitution of their property
rights and other reparations from the
Guatemalan State. They have been waiting for
a justice that never arrives.
These women came together in the plaza Justo
Rufino Barrios, in the historic center of
Guatemala as an activity to commemorate the
25th of November [International
Day Against Violence Against Women]. These
surviving victims of rape during the armed
conflict decided to break their silence for
the first time.
The majority of these women are widows, as
their husbands were murdered during the
civil war. The women denounced the lack of
support and aid on the part of the
Guatemalan government who, they said, had
made false promises to repair the damage
caused to the victims.
According to the report “Guatemala, the
Legacy of the Violence”, by Amnesty
International (AI), during the four decades
[1960 to 1996] that the conflict armed in
this Central American country lasted, around
200,000 people became victims of homicide or
forced disappearance. Some 400 communities
[actually 440 Mayan villages and towns -LL]
were destroyed.
Sexual violence against women and children
was in-fact generalized during the entire
conflict. At the event, 4 women narrated how
they were abused, separated from their
husbands and had their land and homes stolen
from them during the civil war.
Petrona Cucul is a surviving woman of the
conflict. She remembered how the soldiers
burned their house and killed their husband.
She was left alone in charge of her four
children. After burning the house and the
harvest and killing all of their farm
animals, the soldiers raped her. Till this
day Cucul continues to demand justice and
aid from the government so that their
children can continue their studies.
Germana Lucas was also raped by soldiers.
Like Petrona, she had her land, her house,
and all of her belongings stolen from here.
She has never been repaid for these actions
by the State.
Isabela Méndez related how, before the
conflict, “there were good crops” of beans
and corn. Later everything changed. : Méndez
fled to the border and left her home. Who
will repay the damage that we suffered, the
pain, the sentiments?, she asked.
Illiterate and monolingual, Isabela was
forceful and, in her Mayan language, she
said: “I do not know how to read nor to
write, I do not speak Spanish. But I have
learned and recognize that I have rights and
that I am citizen of Guatemala. We want to
live peacefully and with justice.”
In a ritual ceremony, the indigenous women
gave to one ear of corn to the women victims
of sexual violence, as a symbol of
solidarity and cleansing.
The women stated that, even [now] when there
is no war, women continue to be
discriminated against, raped, excluded and
murdered for the single reason that they are
women.
We recall that, during the visit to
Guatemala in 2004 of the special
representative for women’s rights of the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission
(CIDH), was informed about the increase in
the number of murders against women; a
situation that is at its most serious when
indigenous women are the victims. For them,
justice simply does not exist.
The AI report on this subject makes
reference to a report by the Guatemalan
Truth Commission, which recognized that
during the armed conflict, the bodies of
women were used [by government forces] to
destroy and to intimidate the enemy [that
is, the entire Mayan population]. Rape
became one of the cruelest and degrading
ways to violate a woman’s rights during this
period.
The Truth Commission report notes that the
majority of victims of rape were young Mayan
indigenous women.
According to the document [and other
reports], in March of 1982 at least 140
women and children of Negro River were
forced to march up a mountain, where they
were [raped and then] murdered, some to
machete blows and others by strangulation.
Shortly after, 79 people, in their majority
women and children, were massacred in the
neighboring town of the Encounter.
As a result of the massacres and other
killings during the armed conflict, widowed
women, many with five or more children, were
forced off of their lands. They did not know
how to read, and they lived with the traumas
caused by the sexual assaults.
Without support from their government, these
women had to begin to help each other. They
began to weave alliances to talk, and to
fortify themselves by means of self-help
groups.
For that reason, on this commemoration of
this International Day for the Elimination
of Violence against the women, they decided
to speak up, and to continue demanding
justice. They conclude by stating, “although
they cut even the stem off of us, we bloom
again.”
Lourdes Loyal Godínez
CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Nov. 27, 2009
See also:
Guatemala: No
Protection, No Justice: Killings of Women in
Guatemala
Amnesty
International
June 9, 2005
Guatemala
The Truth Under the
Earth: The Relationship Between Genocide and
Femicide in Guatemala
The war in Guatemala has never ceased. While
the Peace Accords signed in 1996 demobilized
some combatants and weapons - the killing,
raping and torturing continues unabated. In
2009 the homicide rate for Guatemala, with a
population of 13 million, is about 8,000 per
year. Of these 8,000 murders approximately
10 percent are women and girls.
According to figures from Guatemala City
based women’s group Grupo Guatemalteco de
Mujeres (GGM) between January 2002 and
January 2009 there were 197,538 acts of
domestic violence, 13,895 rapes and 4,428
women were murdered. What is perhaps even
more disturbing is that for this tsunami of
violence there is a 97 percent impunity
rate. One of the main reasons for near total
impunity in the Guatemalan context is that
the people responsible for the genocidal
civil war against indigenous people in which
200,000 people were murdered and 50,000
disappeared have never, nor are they ever
likely to be held accountable.
In August and September of 2009 I visited
Guatemala, at least in part, to examine how
the civil war has been superseded by an as
yet undeclared social war, part of which is
an ongoing femicide...
I visited Finca Covabunga, which is just up
the road from Chul, a bumpy, dusty, windy
three hour trip through the mountains on the
back of a pick up, north of Nebaj. On
December 9, 1982, 75 men, women and children
were massacred by the Guatemalan army...
I talked and recorded survivors of the
massacre. Margarheta lost her husband,
animals, land and all her possessions on
that day. She spent the next ten years
living in the mountains running from the
army. Digging up the bodies was painful for
her as it brought back a flood of painful
memories...
The next day Nicolas and I and a couple of
other activists visited a community on the
outskirts of Nebaj. It is named June 30th
which commemorates the date in 2006 in which
the community reclaimed land from the army -
who had stolen it after eradicating the
owners - and started growing food, teaching
their kids and various other projects of
self-determination...
While at the community I met a young woman
of sixteen who had a six month old baby, the
father is a soldier and the conception
method was rape. Nothing has ever happened
in regards to this rape. In June of 2009 a
woman who had five young children, was
raped, murdered and cut up by soldiers.
Nothing will likely ever happen to the
person/s who committed this heinous act -
impunity for such crimes is total in
Guatemala...
Colm McNaughton
UpsideDownWorld.org
Oct. 22, 2009
See Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
About the crisis of
anti-Mayan genocide and femicide in
Guatemala
Added:
Nov. 28, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
ONU: Lanza en Guatemala una Campaña
Latinoamericana Contra la Violencia de Género
La Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU)
lanzó hoy en la capital guatemalteca una campaña
latinoamericana que durará hasta 2015 con el
objetivo de unificar esfuerzos entre diferentes
sectores y fortalecer legislaciones para poner
fin a la violencia en contra de las mujeres…
The United Nations Kicks-off Regional Campaign
Against Latin American Gender Violence in
Guatemala
Guatemala City - The United Nations (UN) chose
the capitol of Guatemala [Guatemala City] to
launch is continent-wide campaign against gender
violence. The effort will continue until 2015
with the objective to unify efforts between
different sectors of society, and to fortify
legislative efforts to end violence against the
women in the region.
The campaign “Latin America, Unite to End
Violence Against Women," will involve efforts by
all of the agencies in the UN system. It is an
initiative of its UN Secretary General Ban
Kin-moon.
The launch was celebrated in the presence of the
president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, and the
core UN officials working across Latin America.
The November 25th event coincided
with the celebration of the the International
Day of Non Violence Towards Woman.
The director of the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Alicia
Bárcena, stated during the presentation that the
various activities to be carried out through
this UN campaign will attempt to reduce the
levels of violence against the women.
A study by CEPAL of conditions of violence
facing women in the region was presented during
the event. CEPAL indicates that 40% of women in
the region are victims of physical violence, and
that the 60 percent suffer from psychological
violence.
The report “ Not Even One More! From Words to
Facts: How Much Farther Until We Get to This
Goal? declares that the many forms of violence
facing women in the region include domestic
violence, murder, sexual harassment and sexual
violence.
Latin American women also suffer from sex
trafficking, institutional violence,
discrimination against immigrants, and
race-based gender violence that targets
Indigenous and Afro-descendent women [and
girls].
The regional director for Latin America and the
Caribbean of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), Rebeca Grynspan, explained
that by means of this campaign, the UN will
collaborate, together with the countries of the
region, in efforts to fortify legislation in
nations of the region regarding the protection
of the rights of women.
In addition, the campaign will advance a
“multisectorial plan”, that promotes the
prevention and eradication of
machista violence,
campaigns of sensitization, and development of
national capacities for data collection.
With this campaign, it needed Grynspan, “we will
revitalize the fight and the commitment of the
UN tp put an end to violence against women, an
urgent task that must be accomplished to prevent
the continuation of the sentence of violence
that generations of women have faced, which many
women have paid for with their lives."
President Colom of Guatemala emphasized the
importance of the United Nations’ choice of
Guatemala as the launch-point of this campaign.
Colom assured that “this constitutes a
commitment” by his government to eradicate the
evils that afflict Guatemalans women.
President Colom added that in Guatemala, most
women are targeted for violence because they are
poor, indigenous, young and women.
In this Central American country, one of most
violent of Latin America, and where the greatest
amount of violence against women occurs, two
women are murdered every day, often by men known
to them.
According to the International Commission
Against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN agency, 94%
of murders committed against women between 2001
and 2009 have remained [unsolved and] in
impunity.
EFE
Nov. 25, 2009
See Also:
"Unite To End Violence
Against Women"
United Nations Secretary General's campaign to
be launched from Guatemala
Feminist International Radio
Endeavor (FIRE)
Nov. 25, 2009
Central America
Central America: Gender-based
Violence, the Hidden Face of Insecurity
Managua - Gender-based violence and sexual abuse are
serious public security problems in Central America, and
Nicaragua is no exception, according to reports by
United Nations agencies and women’s organizations.
The Central American Human Development Report 2009-2010,
released on Oct. 20 by the United Nations Development
Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Latin America and
the Caribbean, says violence against women, adolescents
and children is the "hidden" and "most invisible face"
of public insecurity in the region.
According to the study, entitled "Opening Spaces for
Citizen Security and Human Development", two out of
three women murdered in Central America are killed for
gender-related reasons, a phenomenon that is known as
femicide.
Gender violence, however, remains largely concealed by
prevailing social attitudes that condone it and by the
victims’ reluctance to report abuse...
The women who pressed charges had suffered the worst
abuse, including sexual assault, bodily injuries,
mutilations and torture, Granera said. More
specifically, 4,129 were cases of domestic violence,
2,253 were cases of sexual assault, and 8,645 were cases
of physical and psychological harm, such as threats,
blackmail and verbal abuse.
"The rest of the victims kept quiet. This shows that
even though it is the leading public security problem
(in Nicaragua), it is the least reported crime, and,
therefore, the one with the greatest impunity," Granera
said.
The UNDP report, which assessed levels of public
insecurity in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, reported that
Central America has become the
region with the highest levels of non-political violence
worldwide.
However, the report clarifies that while the countries
of Central America's so-called
"northern triangle" have homicide rates five to seven
times higher than the global average of nine per 100,000
people - 48 per 100,000 in Guatemala, 52 per 100,000 in
El Salvador and 58 per 100,000 in Honduras -
Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama to the south are
significantly safer, with murder rates of 11 per 100,000
population, 13 per 100,000 and 19 per 100,000,
respectively.
Women, adolescents and children, ethnic minorities and
groups with alternative sexual orientations are the main
victims of what the study refers to as the region’s
"phenomenon of 'invisible' (or rather 'invisibilized')
insecurities," whereby certain groups are "exposed to an
exceptional disparity between the risk of violent or
predatory crimes they face and the protection they
receive." ...
Bautista noted that the report presents at least six
atrocious forms of "invisible crimes" that plague
children in Central America: murder, forced
participation in criminal activities, police brutality,
domestic abuse, sexual abuse and assault, and forced
labor and prostitution...
In Nicaragua, one out of three women married or living
with a man has been subjected to physical violence,
including sexual abuse, at some point in her life. Half
the victims report that they first suffered abuse before
the age of 15.
"According to the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), in 2008 alone there were 1,400 pregnant girls
under the age of 15. Most of these pregnancies were the
result of rape," Millón said, citing a study published
in Managua in June by the multilateral agency.
...Violence against women - like
violence against children or ethnic minorities - "is
almost totally excluded from the official debate on
public insecurity in the region," said Millón...
José Adán Silva
Inter Press Service
Nov. 16, 2009
Guatemala
Guatemala: Where Sexual
Exploitation of Minors Is Not a Crime
Guatemala City - Sexual
exploitation of minors is not classified as a crime in
Guatemala, where activists say child sex tourism is on
the rise, and the toughest penalty for "corruption of
minors" and "aggravated procuring" is a 400 dollar fine.
"I had problems at home, and
a girlfriend took me to work with her in a bar." That is
how Alba, at the age of 14, began to be sexually
exploited in a brothel on the outskirts of the
Guatemalan capital. Her mother was demanding that she
bring money home, and she saw it as a way to earn an
income.
For Alba's family, which is
poor, the 160 dollars a month that she brought home was
an important source of income.
Alba was the only underage
girl in the bar where she worked, which attracted a
relatively upscale clientele. She was also the most
popular, to the point that she was the target of envy on
the part of her fellow sex workers.
But hers is not an isolated
case. Although no precise figures are available, in 2002
it was estimated that 2,000 minors were sexually
exploited in Guatemala City alone, according to a report
by Casa Alianza (the Latin American branch of the New
York-based Covenant House, a child advocacy
organisation) and ECPAT (an international NGO working to
end child prostitution, child pornography and the
trafficking of children).
Of those 2,000 minors, 1,200
were from El Salvador, 500 from Honduras and 300 from
Guatemala itself. María Eugenia Villarreal, ECPAT
director for Latin America, says Central America is a
hub for trafficking in minors, child pornography and sex
tourism...
Villarreal told IPS that
"the problem continues to grow." She put the number of
victims as high as 15,000 nationwide, the majority of
them girls between the ages of 15 and 17, who are mainly
exploited in brothels in the capital and in border and
port areas.
The Guatemalan Congress is
studying a draft law that would classify sexual
exploitation as a crime, which would be punishable by
six to 12-year prison sentences. Guatemala is the only
country in Central America that has not yet updated its
laws in this area, and according to experts, the
political parties are in no hurry to do so.
"I do not see any hope that
Guatemala's penal code will be reformed in the short
term, because that would touch the interests of people
with political and economic clout," said Héctor
Dionisio, coordinator of Casa Alianza's legal programme
in Guatemala.
Doria Giusti, a United
Nations children's fund (UNICEF) representative in
Guatemala, told IPS that "children are not given high
priority in Congress, and the sexual exploitation of
minors is a taboo issue. Besides, most of the lawmakers
are men, so a sexist viewpoint prevails." ...
Alberto Mendoza
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Oct. 13, 2009
|
Guatemala
Guatemaltecas Son
Madres Desde los Diez Años
Incesto, violación
y falta de educación sexual, las causas
Las niñas
guatemaltecas suelen tener hijos más
temprano de lo que mudan dientes. Desde los
diez años de edad ellas ya conocen una sala
de parto y saben lo que significa
recuperarse del dolor de una cesárea...
Guatemalan Girls
Become Mothers From the Age of Ten
Incest, Rape and a
Lack of Sex Education are the Causes
Guatemalan
girls have children sooner than they loose
all of their baby teeth. From the age of ten
they know what a delivery room is, and they
know what it means to recover from the pain
of a cesarean section.
Human
rights advocates see this social phenomenon
as a problem that occurs behind closed
doors, and involves abuse by the father, an
uncle or a grandfather within the home.
Prosecutors and the Public Ministry are
convinced that the statistics are an
indication of a high incidence of rape in
this nation.
Experts on
sex education perceive the problem as
resulting from poor knowledge about sex and
its consequences, which leads to a state of
social disorder.
In this
Central American country of 14 million
inhabitants, with a population of five
million children, girls menstruate between
the ages of 10 and 13. According to the
Maternal and Child Health Survey of 2006, 26
of 100 girls have their first sexual
experience between the ages of 13 and 15.
These teens
typically have their first relationship with
a friend, a boyfriend or a partner. But in
many cases their first experience is a
result of rape.
Two out of every ten
girls have been raped before finishing
elementary school. Frightened,
rejected and discriminated against by their
families, these girls accelerate their
sexual maturation by [an average of] 5
years. By the time they reach age 20,
according to the National Statistics
Institute, they often have two or three
children.
A study
conducted in 2006 by the Guttmacher
Institute, entitled "Early Childbearing: A
Continuing Challenge," in Guatemala there
are 114 births per thousand women, while in
the rest of the region, the figure is 80
births per thousand women...
However,
pregnancies in girls are not only related to
a lack of sex education. According to Ana
Gladys Ollas of the Prosecutors Office for
Human Rights for Women, pregnancies are also
the result of incest and emotional blackmail
exerted by gang members and gangs of
teenagers who sometimes rape girls
collectively.
The
official noted that the neighborhoods where
poor pregnant girls live are also places
where gangs abound. And the situation is
repeated in prisons.
Girls are brought to
prisons to be raped as a result of acts of
extortion committed against their families.
In this
country, the poorest are also the most
vulnerable citizens. With just a [pennies]
to survive, a [typical] household with five
children must also submit to the extortion
of gangs that require them to pay fees of
$50 to $ 1,000...
Spanking,
scolding, beating, burning, being locked in
a room and [extreme] prohibitions are the
forms of violent punishment that girls
suffer on a daily basis. Some 22 of every
100 Guatemalan girls have been beaten by
their parents before age 15. These forms of
violence drive young girls to seek affection
from teens and men who end-up deceiving
them.
Leonel
Dubon, who heads the Foundation for the
Girl, explains that families get rid of
the babies of young girls through the use of
clandestine abortions. According to Zenaida
Escobedo, in charge of gender affairs in the
judiciary, in Guatemala around 65,000
illegal abortions are performed each year.
Often,
after giving birth, these girls sell their
babies for up to $600 to clandestine human
trafficking operations...
Mayan women
are the poorest, and often have up to 10
sons and daughters, as within indigenous
culture, condom use among men and
contraceptive use by women is often frowned
upon.
Full English
Translation
CIMAC / SEMIlac
Oct. 30, 2009
LibertadLatina
Note:
The above
story states that the rate of childbirth in
Guatemala is 114 births per thousand women.
In the surrounding region the birth rate is
80 births per 1,000 women.
Here are
comparable rates for young women between the
ages of 15 and 19 in the United States:
-
All races and origins, 42
-
Asian/Pacific Islander, 17
-
White (including Hispanic), 38
-
American Indian/Alaska Native, 55
-
Black (including Hispanic), 65
-
Hispanic, 83
Source:
U.S. Centers for
Disease Control (CDC)
- 2006
LibertadLatina
Note:
The targeting of
ten-year-old girls by teen and adult Latino
gang members for rape with impunity
described in the above story occurs not only
in Guatemala, by across the Americas.
See also:
A Washington, DC- Latina Social Worker and
Community Center Director's Letter - 1999
EXCERPT
"Over the past two years, I have been
observing a systemic pattern of violence
committed against girls and young women in
our community. This violence involves the
sexual abuse/assault against girls as young
as 10 years old...
...There
have been incidents of date rape, gang rape,
abductions, drugging, threats with firearms,
etc. The incidents are just as you
described in
your
[Mr. Goolsby's letter on
the subject to the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children]
letter
and have been met with the same level of
indifference and dismissal of legal (never
mind moral) responsibility on the part of
civil institutions -- the police
department, public schools, etc."
...While some do say this is culturally
accepted behavior, the reality is that many
families -- mothers and fathers alike -- are
enraged and wanting to pursue prosecution of
the perpetrators, but they find themselves
without recourse when the police won't
respond to them, when they fear risking
their personal safety, and/or when their
legal status (undocumented) prevents them
from believing they have rights or legal
protection in this country. Many girls and
young women's families are threatened and
harassed by the perpetrators when it becomes
apparent that the family is willing to press
charges for statutory rape/child sexual
abuse.
...The use of intimidation and violence to
control girls and their families results in
the following: 1) parents/guardians back off
from pressing charges, 2) relatives do not
inform the police or others of sightings of
girls and young women who have been
officially reported as "missing juveniles,"
and 3) the victims of sexual violence refuse
to participate as "willing witnesses" in the
prosecution/trial process.
When this sexual violence occurs within the
context of a seemingly permissive public
environment -- indifferent civil
institutions, forced silence and complicity
of families, gang culture, a society that
explicitly promotes the sexualization and
exploitation of children through media --
its criminal and immoral nature goes
unquestioned. My question is how and where
do we create the public environment that
allows us to voice our disapproval and to
hold the implicated adults accountable for
their negligent care of our children?
...We're also looking at the rate of
incidence among black and Asian girls and
young women to document that this is not
merely a culturally accepted behavior, but
rather a complex and systemic form of
violence carried out against poor girls and
young women of color.
- From a
letter by a Latina Social Worker
and girl's community center director working
with young Latina girls in Washington, DC's
largest Latino neighborhood.
LibertadLatina
Note:
Although this serious, truthful, accurate
and poignant letter was written in
1999, from my observations, the same
conditions exist today in 2009. Nothing has
changed for the better, while the code of
silence in the barrio and the extending
tentacles of criminal networks have made the
violence worse, resulting in a permissive
environment in the Washington, DC, Maryland
and Virginia region.
End impunity now!
- Chuck
Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Nov. 03, 2009 |
Added:
Oct. 24, 2009
Guatemala, Mexico
|
 |
|
Jacqueline
Maria
Jirón Silva,
who was kidnapped at age 11 at a beach in Nicaragua, is one
thousands of children who have been prostituted in the city of
Tapachula, Mexico.
The NGO Save the Children has identified southern
Mexico as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual
exploitation of children (CSEC) in the entire world. The lawless
city of Tapachula is the epicenter of that crtisis of
impunity. |
Buscan rescatar a niños
guatemaltecos explotados en Tapachula
El Gobierno mexicano pondrá en marcha un programa de
sensibilización denominado “Los Hijos del Águila y
el Quetzal”, que tiene como objetivo rescatar a
niños en riesgo de calle, en su mayoría indígenas
guatemaltecos, que son víctimas de explotación
laboral y de prostitución en Tapachula, Chiapas…
Authorities Seek to Rescue Guatemalan Children
Exploited in Tapachula, Mexico
The Mexican government will launch an awareness
program called "The Children of the Eagle and the
Quetzal, which aims to rescue street children at
risk. Most of these children are indigenous
Guatemalans who become the victims of labor
exploitation and prostitution in Tapachula, Chiapas.
Moises Sanchez Lopez, head of Human Rights for the
city government of Tapachula, explained that the
first phase of the project is to raise awareness
with messages through the media, including that
adults not give money to street children, because
that money is destined for the pockets of the
criminal networks that exploit them.
Sanchez added that the second phase is to rescue the
street children. They have sought support from the
consulates of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,
the National Human Rights Commission, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the
International Organization for Migration (IOM), the
National Migration Institute, the Special Prosecutor
for Attention to Crimes Against Migrants, and the
Catholic Church affiliated NGO Defenders of the
Human Rights of Migrants and Entrepreneurs.
Sanchez said the program seeks to prevent children
from becoming victims of sexual and labor
exploitation.
In Tapachula, dozens of children, mostly indigenous
Guatemalans, are forced to work in begging, selling
candy and cigarettes, shining shoes, cleaning
windshields and as clowns.
These children, who average 13 years-of-age, work as
many as 12 hours a day for negligible wages, and in
some cases, without pay. They are forced to live in
overcrowded conditions and are only given one meal a
day.
According to the complaint by Guatemala’s diplomats,
the majority of children living in villages on
Mexico’s border are sold by their parents to be
exploited in Mexico. Children with disabilities are
sold for higher prices, and are taken to the cities
of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Tapachula and Huixtla.
The the program "The Sons of the Eagle and the
Quetzal," has been developed by the state government
of Chiapas, through its Secretary for Southern
Border Development, Secretaria de Desarrollo de la
Frontera Sur, working together with the DIF
[Integral
Family Development] social services agency.
Prensa Libre
Oct. 22, 2009
Added:
Sep. 23, 2009
Guatemala
 |
|
Jesús Tecú Osorio at the site
of the Rio Negro (town of Black River) massacre.
Photo:
Renata
Avila |
The Activism of Massacre
Survivor Jesús Tecú
Maya
Achí activist Jesús Tecú Osorio is a survivor. When
he was a child, he witnessed the Río Negro Massacre,
one of the most horrific massacres of Guatemala's
armed conflict. Many of his friends, his 2-year-old
brother, and his young parents were murdered. He
spent some time forced to work, along with 17 other
child survivors, doing domestic work for the man who
killed his brother.
Years later, after he was released into the custody
of his older sister, Tecú began to work to exhume
the mass grave of those killed in the Massacre.
Eventually, this work led to the conviction of 3 of
the men who took part in the killings. This work has
been crucial in the pursuit of justice and the
preservation of the historical memory on local and
international levels.
Tecú
wrote a book called “Memory of the Río Negro
Massacres” that tells his experience as a homeless
child who survived the war. Tadeo explains more
about the story that Tecú tells:
|
The military and paramilitary forces
rounded up all of the women and children
and accused them of collaborating with
the guerrillas. Together they proceeded
to rape, torture, and murder everyone.
Some 177 human beings, including 107
children, were massacred on the 13th of
March, 1982, in Rio Negro. The few
survivors, mostly young boys, were
forced into slavery. |
In
The Massacres of Río Negro, survivor Jesús
Tecú described being enslaved by a leader of the
Xococ PAC, a man who ripped his youngest brother out
of his arms and swung him by his feet, smashing his
brains against rocks in front of his eyes because
his wife was “not used to caring for [such] a small
child.
Tecú's case is different from many others, because
he stayed in his community helping... to fight for
their human rights. He is leading a Legal Clinic to
help poor and under-educated people to fight for
their rights. This struggle by Tecú and other
survivors of Guatemala's civil war led to the
creation of the New Hope Foundation (FNE). Their
mission can be found on their
blog...
For
his work, Tecú was awarded the Reebok Human Rights
Award...
Despite the progress made by Tecú and the Achí
community, the work continues. Survivors are still
pressing the Guatemalan government to convict those
responsible for the massacres, as shown by the
Colectivo Guatemala Blog.
Some of these individuals are being intimidated for
their work.
Recently, Tecú has received threatening phone
calls...
Global Voices
Sep. 22, 2009
Added:
Sep. 11, 2009
Guatemala
 |
|
Closeup of a community mural scene, showing a 1980's military
massacre of women and children in the Mayan town of Comalapa,
Guatemala.
From a short film by
Ian Ramsey North |
Guatemalan Soldiers Sold Children in War -
Government
Guatemala City - At least 333 children and probably thousands more
were taken by Guatemalan security forces and sold abroad during the
country's 36-year civil war, a government report said on Thursday.
Soldiers and police killed children's parents, lied about how they
had been found and handed them to state-run homes for sale to
adoptive parents in the United States and Europe, said the report,
which was based on government archives.
The archives in the Guatemalan presidency's social welfare
department show hundreds of children whose parents were killed by
the army or who were forcefully taken from their families and were
put up for adoption with false papers.
"Some of the people involved in organizing these adoptions made the
process into a very lucrative business for themselves, and with that
in mind they gave priority to international adoptions," Marco Tulio
Alvarez, the report's author and the director of the archives, told
a news conference.
By the end of the war in 1996, Guatemala was the second largest
source of children adopted internationally after China, but numbers
have dropped after the government tightened regulations in 2007...
Around 250,000 people, mostly indigenous Mayan Indians, died in the
war between successive right-wing governments and leftist
insurgents, which ended with the signing of UN-backed peace accords
in 1996.
Human rights groups hope that dozens of people could be prosecuted
based on the new report. There may be thousands more cases but
little paperwork survives as proof...
|
Sarah Grainger
Reuters
Sep. 11, 2009
|
 |
|
Photo: Prensa Libre |
Condenan a 150 Años de
Prisión a Ex Comisionado Militar
El
primer juicio por desaparición forzada en el
país concluyó ayer con la condena de 150 años de
prisión contra el ex comisionado militar Felipe
Cusanero Coj, hallado culpable de la
desaparición forzada de seis personas...
Aura Elena Farfán, de Familiares de
Detenidos-Desaparecidos, expresó: “En el país
hay 45 mil personas desaparecidas, y esta
condena es un precedente para continuar la lucha
en busca de nuestros seres queridos”.
En el juicio estuvieron presentes los
embajadores de Holanda y de Chile, quienes
expresaron su beneplácito por la sentencia.
The
first trial involving a case of forced
disappearance in Guatemala [during the
1980's-1090s civil war] has concluded with a 150
year prison sentence for former military
commissioner Felipe Cusanero Coj, who was found
guilty of causing the forced disappearances of 6
people...
Aura Elena Farfán, from the group Families of
the Detained and Disappeared, stated, "In our
nation there are 45,000 disappeared persons.
This sentence sets a precedence for continuing
our struggle to find our loved ones.
The
Ambassadors of Chile and Holland to Guatemala
were present at the trial, and expressed their
approval of the conviction and sentence...
Prensa Libre
Aug. 31, 2009
See also:
Added:
Sep. 11, 2009
Guatemala Sees Landmark
Sentence
A
Guatemalan court has sentenced an ex-paramilitary
officer to 150 years in prison for the forced
disappearance of civilians in the civil war.
Felipe Cusanero, found guilty over the disappearance
in the 1980s of six indigenous Maya farmers, is the
first person to be jailed for such crimes.
Human rights groups have hailed the verdict as a
breakthrough in the fight against impunity in
Guatemala.
Some
250,000 people were killed in the 36-year conflict,
which ended in 1996.
The
court in Chimaltenango, about 40km (25 miles) west
of Guatemala City, was packed as the judges read
their verdict and sentence - 25 years for each
victim.
Cusanero was found guilty in connection with the
disappearances of six people in the Chimaltenango
region between 1982 and 1984.
At
the time, which was the height of the long-running
civil war between government forces and left-wing
guerrillas, he was a military commissioner, a
civilian working with the army.
"We
weren't looking for vengeance but for the truth and
justice," Hilarion Lopez, whose 24-year-old son was
taken by soldiers in 1984 and never seen again, told
Reuters news agency.
Rights groups believe Cusanero was involved in the
disappearances of more people but only six families
came forward to testify against him.
A
UN-backed truth commission found that between 1960
and 1996 some 200,000 people were killed and more
than 45,000 [were] disappeared.
Most
of those who died were civilians.
BBC
Sep. 1, 2009
Guatemala
Guatemala’s Neglected Story: Continued Disregard for
Indigenous Autonomy
Indigenous peoples are still violently suppressed
when they voice any opposition to foreign
multi-national investment operations
Gaining strength, the country’s Indigenous
movement is a much needed tool for securing equal
rights
…Continued Repression and
Impunity
In 1996, the Guatemalan government and the combined
guerrilla forces functioning under the moniker,
Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (UNRG),
signed the Peace Accords that brought an end to more
than 30 years of a bloody civil war. Guatemala’s
internal conflict resulted in the death of close to
200,000 people, many of whom were indigenous
campesinos caught in the crossfire of the warring
factions’ violent ideologies. Many more were
kidnapped, tortured and never heard from again.
Claims that indigenous communities were easily
manipulated and recruited by leftist guerrillas were
used as excuses for the systematic ethnic cleansing
by rightist death squads in what the Guatemalan
Commission of Historical Clarification (set up by
the UN as part of the Accord of Oslo ) deemed to be
genocide. Those who participated in creating the
infrastructure which indirectly led to the
indiscriminate killings in indigenous communities
did not only include Guatemalan authorities, but
also foreign entities with roles to play in the
country, such as the World Bank and the
Inter–American Development Bank.
In the 1980s, civilian
paramilitaries, sanctioned by the government,
cleared the way for the construction of the World
Bank-financed Chixoy Dam by eradicating the
indigenous opposition it had attracted. This has
become known as the Rio Negro massacre, a tragedy
that left hundreds [of women and children raped and]
dead…
Today, indigenous leaders and local activists are
routinely faced with threats of assassination and
cases of intimidation that are met with inadequate
investigations or total indifference by the
authorities. Death squads have re-emerged, which are
hired to survey indigenous lands scheduled for
exploiting by foreign enterprises. The 1996 Peace
Accords set the international community at ease by
declaring an end to the civil war that had decimated
the Central American country for over three decades,
but it became obvious that such optimism was
unwarranted and that the treaty did not bring an end
to the violence…
…In Guatemala, hostility and racism towards
indigenous groups is manifested by political
exclusion. The unvoiced consensus among the powerful
Europeanized minority remains that although the
indigenous population is substantial, its political
representation should remain marginalized…
Research Associate Billy Lemus
Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)
June 9th, 2009
Guatemala
Dos décadas de violación a las normas laborales y Derechos Humanos
Guatemala -
En las maquilas está prohibido embarazarse, orinar más de dos veces
al día e incluso tomar agua durante la jornada de trabajo. También
esta vedado quejarse o faltar un solo día por enfermedad.
Estas razones son justificantes de despido para las guatemaltecas
que laboran en la industria textilera de este país centroamericano,
en establecimientos dirigidos, en su mayoría, por coreanos...
Maquilas in Guatemala, slavery and discrimination against women
Foreign-owned textile industry has two decades
of violating labor and human rights standards
Guatemala - In the maquilas [low wage foreign-owned
factories], women [who are the great majority of workers] are
prohibited by their employers from getting pregnant, urinating more
than twice a day, and to drink water during the workday. It is also
forbidden to complain or miss even a single day because of illness.
Within Central America’s textile industry, which is run mostly by
[South] Koreans, breaking these rules will get you fired.
These factories also practice age discrimination. If you are older
than age 35, you are immediately rejected for employment. Successful
applicants for work are typically between the ages of 16 and 30.
Those who want to work must be willing to put up with inhumane
conditions.
Women workers are packed into over-crowded, poorly ventilated
production lines where as many as 350 people work in one area. The
work areas often lack proper ventilation and access to potable water
and sanitation.
At
the end of each month, these workers receive a paycheck that is less
than a living wage. Men earn more for doing the same work, and are
not forced to work under such cruel conditions. According to
Guatemala’s Ministry of Labor, women receive an average salary
equivalent to $ 110 per month, while that of men is $ 125...
Moreover, women maquila workers are subjected to sexual harassment,
according to the 2007 report, "We Only Ask that You Treat Us as
Humans," developed by the Foundation for Peace and Democracy
FUNPADEM.
A survey implemented between 2005 and 2006 by the FUNPADEM of 516
maquila workers in the capital and rural areas determined that
persistent sexual harassment and abuse exists, but that the
employees do not complain about it.
They reported that the manager of the factory routinely hires
teenage girls, with whom he maintains a sexual relationship [as a
condition of employment].
Many give in to the unwanted touching, indecent proposals and
quid-pro-quo relationships because they need the work. Otherwise
they would be fired, adds the report. The vast majority of these
women have from one to five children, and are single mothers and
heads of household. So they need to feed their families...
According to the
National Survey of Commerce and Housing 2006, these women are part
of a segment of six million people living in poverty, who live on
one a dollar a day. One million of those live in extreme poverty.
This is not surprising in Guatemala, which has the second highest
rate of female illiteracy in Latin America - 34.6 percent. The
Presidential Secretariat for Women (SEPREM) reports that
approximately half a million girls between seven and 14 years of age
are not enrolled in primary school.
They, says Solis, are the ideal niche for the Koreans to seek to
produce in their factories.
Velasquez, of the organization Atrahdom notes that these employees
are treated so badly that they are not allowed to go the the
bathroom to change their menstrual pads...
Alba Trejo
CIMAC / SEMlac
June 11, 2009
Guatemala
Guatemala’s Femicide Law: Progress Against
Impunity?
Excerpt form the Executive Summary
Guatemala ranks among the most dangerous places in
Latin America, especially for women. While crime and violence
affects everyone, particularly community leaders, indigenous rights
representatives, judges, and human rights defenders, violence
against women and girls has escalated markedly in the past ten
years…
With a population under 14 million, Guatemala
registered over 4,300 violent murders of women from
2000 to 2008, and shockingly 98% of the cases
remained unsolved. The majority of murders are
committed by firearm in and around Guatemala City,
and are preceded by rape or torture…
The internal armed conflict, classified as genocide
by the United Nations, contributed heavily to the
legacy of violence in Guatemala, including violence
against women. With torture regularly used as a
military technique, the torment that women faced was
of a particularly sadistic nature. Two comprehensive
reports document the extent of the sexual abuses
carried out against women during the war. The vast
majority who suffered sexual violence were of Mayan
descent (88.7%). It has been estimated that 50,000
women and girls were victims of violence.
The suffering endured by women during the internal
armed conflict did not end with the signing of the
Peace Accords in 1996. Organized crime, gangs, drug
trafficking, and human trafficking have become part
of daily life both in the capital city and also
throughout the countryside. A lack of rule of law,
including corruption, gender bias and impunity in
law enforcement, investigations and the legal system
have also had an adverse effect on women…
Impunity in cases of violence against women and
femicide is staggeringly high. Dr. Carlos
Castresana, Commissioner of the International
Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG),
has identified impunity as the overwhelming factor
in the femicide crisis…
The Guatemalan National Police force is
understaffed, lacks training on how to approach
female victims of violence, and is notoriously
corrupt. Domestic violence continues to be dismissed
as a “private” matter, despite legislation to the
contrary, and gender bias permeates the
investigative process and judicial system. In many
femicide cases victims are initially dismissed as
prostitutes, gang members, or criminals…
Guatemala Human rights Commission / USA
2009
Guatemala
 |
|
Gladys Monterroso |
Feministas exigen cese de la violencia sexual contra las
mujeres
Integrantes de
organizaciones de mujeres, de derechos humanos y
feministas, exigieron al Estado guatemalteco que
implemente medidas efectivas para erradicar la
violencia sexual contra la población.
De acuerdo con un
comunicado de prensa, el reciente caso de secuestro,
tortura y violación que sufrió Gladys Monterroso,
esposa del Procurador de los Derechos Humanos,
Sergio Morales, un día después que se dio a conocer
el primer informe de los archivos de la Policía
Nacional implicada en crímenes de guerra, es un
hecho indignante...
Feminists demand an
end to sexual violence against women
Members of women's organizations, feminists and
human rights groups have issued a press release
demanding that the Guatemalan government implement
effective measures to eradicate sexual violence
against women.
The
groups site the recent case of the abduction,
torture and rape of Gladys Monterroso, wife of the
the nation’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Sergio Morales.
The attack came one day after the Human Rights
Commission released the first report analyzing the
recently discovered archives of the National Police.
The report stated that the archived files implicate
the National Police in war crimes [from the
Guatemalan Civil War / Mayan genocide]...
The
activists blame the police and military, in
collusion with the Guatemalan oligarchy, which
through criminal intimidation is trying to protect
those who are guilty of war crimes and especially
sexual crimes against women in Guatemala.
What
happened to Monterroso is exactly what thousands of
Mayan and Xinca (Indigenous), mestizo (mixed
Indigenous and European), and Garifuna
(Afro-Guatemalan) women have suffered in the various
areas of daily life. It is part of a continuum of a
systematic exercise of patriarchal, misogynist and
racist violence that has been used by men to
dominate and exploit Guatemala’s female citizens,
stated the press release...
CERIGUA
April 18, 2009
See also:
Guatemala
 |
|
A
photo taken
of underage Mayan girls participating in a community
ceremony during Guatemala's civil war. At the time
this photo was taken, the girls were surrounded by
Army troops, who were also their serial rapists.
From
Guatemala - Land of Eternal
Spring - Land of Eternal Tyranny,
by Jean Marie Simon - 1988
Note: I first read this
book around 1988. In it, I learned that Guatemalan
Army officer cadets from the Army Academy were
required by their commanders to bring back the
panties of victims after weekend furloughs as proof
of their acts of rape.
Raping women was a requirement of their
military training.
-
Chuck Goolsby |
|
Llaman a romper el silencio de crímenes
sexuales cometidos durante la guerra
Integrantes de diversas organiza-ciones,
que velan por la vigencia de los derechos de las guatemaltecas,
hicieron un llamado a la población para que rompa el silencio que
impide que los crímenes sexuales cometidos durante el conflicto
armado interno sean llevados a la justicia.
De acuerdo con un comunicado, 10 años
han pasado desde que la Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico
(CEH) presentó el Informe “Memoria del Silencio”, que documenta las
violaciones a los derechos humanos, entre ellas crímenes sexuales
ejecutados por el Ejército y las patrullas de autodefensa civil,
masivamente contra mujeres mayas.
La información señala que la violación
sexual fue sistemáticamente utilizada como arma de guerra en el
marco de la política contrainsurgente del Ejército y como
constitutiva del genocidio y el feminicidio, sin embargo, una
cultura de silencio ha rodeado ese tipo de casos...
Civil organizations call on the population to break the wall of
silence about sex crimes committed during the civil war
Guatemala City - Members of human rights organizations have called
upon the people of Guatemala to break the wall of silence that has
prevented discussion of bringing those responsible for sex crimes
committed during the internal armed conflict to justice.
According to a press release, 10 years have passed since the
Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) presented its report
entitled "Memory of Silence," which documented the human rights
violations perpetrated during the war, including
mass sexual
crimes carried out by Army units and civilian self-defense patrols
directed against Mayan women.
The
information indicates that rape was systematically used as a weapon
of war under the Army's counterinsurgency policy and as an element
of genocide and femicide. However today, a culture of silence
surrounds these cases.
Despite the gravity of such crimes, the justice system has failed to
address the demands of thousands of victims, and to date not one
trial has been held related to acts of sexual violence carried out
against women during armed conflict…
The
Center for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), the Women's Earth
Viva (AMTV), the National Union of Guatemalan Women (UNAMG), the
Human Rights Office of the Archbishop (ODHAG), the Maya Waqib ' Kej
National Convergence and the Association of Families of the
Detained and Disappeared of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA), among others,
signed the declaration.
Cerigua
Feb 25, 2009
Guatemala, Mexico
Rigoberta Menchú denuncia
venta de niñas indígenas Centroamérica y México
Mayan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu
denounces the sale of indigenous children into
sexual slavery
[Mayan human rights
leader] Rigoberta Menchú, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, during a visit to Veracruz, Mexico, has
denounced the sale of indigenous girls in Mexico and
Central America, in which traditional indigenous
marriage customs are perverted by criminal gangs to
force underage girls into sexual slavery.
According to information
from Prensa Libre, Menchu said that the trade in
minors involved organized mafias, doctors, lawyers,
legislators and local authorities.
Menchu regretted that
the sale of children, mainly girls, occurs with the
knowledge of officials within indigenous
communities.
Menchu protested the
fact that in Guatemala, there is an extensive,
underground trade in boys and girls, which
authorities find hard to detect.
Menchu stated that many
nongovern-mental organizations have denounced this
situation, and that they are mainly concerned by the
fact that families 'sell' [underage] girls to older
men to become wives. In reality, the girls
[typically in the age range of 11 to 13] are resold
[to child sex traffickers and pimps] for sexual
exploitation. she noted.
The Nobel laureate said
that in southeastern Mexico and across Guatemala
this practice is common, and asked that the public
report these sales of children.
Finally, Menchu
announced that the Rigoberta Menchu Foundation has
signed an agreement with the Government of Veracruz
[Mexico] to perform various prevention measures in
rural [indigenous] communities.
- CERIGUA
Guatemalan Human
Rights News
June. 27, 2008
See also:
Launch event for the book
‘Mirame,’ shining a light on challenges facing
indigenous girls in Guatemala
Manuel Manrique,
UNICEF Represent-ative in Guatemala:
“Indigenous people in general are discrimin-ated
against, the indigenous child doubly
discriminated against, [and] the indigenous girl
triply discriminated against.” “If you
review the life cycle from birth until 18 years
of age, the situation of the indigenous girl is
worse than that of others...”
'Mirame is a project of UNICEF
and the Office of the Public Defender of Indigenous
Women in Guatemala.
- UNICEF
Guatemala City
Aug. 22, 2007
LibertadLatina
About the crisis of sexual
exploitation facing indigenous women and children
in Guatemala - including the
history of Mayan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Rigoberta Menchu.
Guatemala
Las agresiones contra las
mujeres demuestran la vulnerabilidad que viven
Assaults Against Women Shows their Vulnerability
[Machismo Fuels Impunity Against Women]
A wave of assaults
against women in Baja Verapaz Department [state]
demonstrate the vulnerability of women and the
persistence of machismo, with its implicit
expressions of domination and subordination,
decalred Vilma Oxlaj, a representative of the office
of the Public Defender of Indigenous Women (DEMI).
According Oxlaj, in the
municipalities of Rabinal, San Miguel Chicaj and
Cubulco reported several cases of sexual assaults
against young women and despite the fact that the
scourge is on the rise there is little willingness
to report these crimes because of a culture of fear
of the aggressors and a knowledge that victims will
receive superficial treatment from the authorities.
Oxlaj is saddened by the
vulnerability in which these women live, a condition
that is based upon the patriarchal construction
[within machismo] that women's bodies belong to men.
Fresia Palomo, a
psychologist of Office of Public Prosecutions (MP),
stated that controlling the sexuality of women by
men and the right of their access to our bodies are
the main reasons for acts of domination by men
towards women.
Palomo said that rape
was shielded by impunity because of [the code of]
silence, negligence and poor the poor attitude shown
by the authorities responsible for preventing and
responding to these aggressions.
Palomo emphasized that
the most reprehensible cases involve acts of rape
and aggression towards women by persons who have the
consent or complicity of state agents.
Finally, Palomo said
that male violence targeting the female population
demonstrated the macho and savage attitudes of men
who have no respect for life and the dignity of
women.
- CERIGUA
Guatemalan Human
Rights News
June. 27, 2008
See also:
DEMI, velando por los
derechos de las mujeres indígenas.
Guatemala
Justice is Bittersweet as
Killers are Sentenced for 1982 Massacre
Salamá, Guatemala - The five former paramilitaries
shuffled into the courtroom in this small country
town, convicted of participating in one the most
notorious massacres in Guatemala's 36-year-long
civil war. Now they awaited a sentence.
The hearing, which took place on May
28, has been graphically portrayed in the blogs of
Heidi McKinnon, a
Peace Fellow from The Advocacy Project (AP). Ms
McKinnon is volunteering this summer with the
Association for the Integral Development of the
Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achí
(ADIVIMA), a group which represents massacre
survivors and brought the charges.
The Río Negro massacre occurred after
an indigenous community at Río Negro refused to
relocate and make way for the Chixoy Hydroelectric
Dam, a massive government energy project supported
by The World Bank. After 74 villagers were killed in
February 1982, most of the men fled to the hills.
Early on March 13, 1982, army soldiers and a civil
patrol from the nearby village of Xococ arrived at
Río Negro, and murdered 177 women and children. Many
of the victims were raped and tortured...
Ms McKinnon: "What I witnessed was a
historic event in Guatemala. It was a victory for
every survivor." But she also concedes that the
victory was bittersweet: "When you are seated a few
feet away from a murderer who is over 70, speaks no
Spanish and has trouble even walking, it can make
one pause and wonder whose definition of justice is
being served by such a sentence. Who is more
culpable, the man who pulled the trigger or the man
who bought him the gun and told him who he should
kill if he wanted to stay alive and keep his family
safe?"
-
AdvocacyNet News
Bulletin 143
June
16, 2008
LibertadLatina
The invisibility-of, and the
lack of aggressive advocacy-for indigenous victims
of mass gender violence and its resulting slavery is
similar, as a pattern of collective behavior, to the
world's silence and inaction during the 1970s and
1980s when 200,000 Mayans were murdered in
Guatemala, an act of ethnic cleansing that was
rationalized by the Cold War concept of 'draining
the pond' of [innocent] humanity in which a few
thousand leftist rebels lived.
To understand the context surrounding the
reasons why a public service such as
LibertadLatina.org is needed, I will relate the
following factual account, as one slice through
this 'complex universe' of embedded gender
oppression...
The invisibility-of, and the lack of aggressive
advocacy-for indigenous victims of mass gender
violence and its resulting slavery is similar,
as a pattern of collective behavior, to the
world's silence and inaction during the 1970s
and 1980s when 200,000 Mayans were murdered in
Guatemala, an act of ethnic cleansing that was
rationalized by the Cold War concept of
'draining the pond' of humanity in which a few
thousand leftist rebels lived. The United
Nations Truth Commission for Guatemala and other
international bodies don't deny that this
genocide occurred, and that 50,000 innocent
women and girls were murdered. The nation's
Supreme Court has officially determined that
200,000 orphans resulted from the events of this
civil war. Some 440 Mayan towns were destroyed
in the mountainous northwestern highlands of the
country.
Under the terms of the 1996 Peace Accords,
perpetrators of these atrocities were given
amnesty. They still roam the streets of the
Americas.
Is the late 20th Century Guatemalan Genocide
relevant to the topic of human trafficking
today? Yes.
The men of the government security forces who
carried-out these mass rapes and murders did not
just go away. They remain among us. Their past
criminal behavior expresses itself today, and
has actually been passed-on to younger
generations of men.
Over 500 women are murdered in Guatemala each
year. Only 2% of those cases have ever been
investigated by police. This rate of female
murders is 10 times higher than the rate in
Mexico's infamous Ciudad Juarez. In a typical
Guatemalan case, the murdered woman has suffered
35 violent attacks in her home or community
prior to death, with no law enforcement
intervention whatsoever. The victim, at the time
of her death, usually has been raped and
tortured first, and then dismembered after the
fact. These patterns of behavior were learned by
the ‘perpetrators’ during the Guatemalan Civil
War. Activists in the region understand that
today's femicide is a legacy of the nation's
Civil War.
To further tie together these linked issues, I
know victims of that genocide, and I have met a
perpetrator, through one of his family members.
This family member talked to me at length about
this perpetrator’s activities in Guatemala. I
will refer to him here as ‘Juan.’
Juan’s grandfather owned a large ranch in
Guatemala, and when he was feeling especially
angry, he would go to the Mayan village at the
far-end of his ranch and "shoot a few Indians"
(a direct quote). During the time of the
1970s-1980s Guatemalan Civil War, Juan was a
member of the Guatemalan president's security
detail, the Presidential Guard. This security
unit had a secondary task, aside from
protection, of receiving a daily hit list from
the president’s palace, finding these persons
and murdering them for being suspected
‘subversives.’
The bodies of the victims were typically left
laying in the street as a message to the
population. Juan stated to his family: "Me daba
mucha lastima tener que malograr a las mujeres"
- that is: "it really saddened me to have to
tear-up the women [on the hit list]." In other
words, he supposedly felt sad for having
willfully kidnapped, tortured, gang-raped and
finally murdered his mostly Mayan women and girl
victims over a number of years.
Almost all Mayan women, and girls of all ages,
were raped by soldiers, policemen and 'civil
guards' during this war. Mayans are 40%, and
mixed-race indigenous people are 56% of
Guatemala's population.
During the mid 1990s, before I even knew what
sex trafficking was, Juan’s family member
explained to me that Juan was engaged in
smuggling people into the United States under
peculiar circumstances, and had ties to
Colombian mafias. Today, I understand that what
was being explained to me was the fact that
Juan, a former mass rapist and murderer of
women, had 'graduated' to sex trafficking women
into the U.S. while living a comfortable and
otherwise 'normal' life in Washington, DC.
It was also explained to me that Juan would
travel to Guatemala City, place an add in a
local paper seeking young girls to work as
escorts, and that 13 and 14-year-old girls
gleefully responded. Juan then 'trained' these
girls as prostitutes, and sent them out as
escorts for wealthy businessmen.
In Washington, DC, Juan, when working as in the
role of office building cleaning crew manager,
imposed quid-pro-quo sexual demands upon the
Latina women who applied to work at his office
building.
The world's past denial of the Guatemalan
Genocide plays into the world's current lack of
attention to ongoing femicide, mass kidnappings
of babies for illegal adoptions and
prostitution, and the mass trafficking of
Guatemalan women into the brothels of southern
Mexico.
Compounding the complexity of addressing the
realities of the Guatemalan crisis for women is
the fact that followers of some political
philosophies cannot bring themselves to support
this politically neutral analysis, because these
conclusions clash with a their particular view
of the role of the U.S. and its close allies in
supporting Guatemala's dictatorships during the
time of the genocide. Discussion of Guatemala
was censored from one important anti-trafficking
forum in the early 2000s because of this
conflict.
So the anti-trafficking movement, to be
effective, must move beyond partisan politics.
Are movement activists of a particular political
view, who are otherwise some of the strongest
supporters of the goal of ending sex
trafficking, really willing to suppress
discussion of Guatemala, limit U.S. support for
ending femicide, and simply not deal today with
the sex trafficking of an entire generation of
our young Mayan girls and boys, just to make a
political point? We hope not...
The above true story is but one example of the
invisibility of indigenous victims, who
effectively have no civil or human rights under
the laws of Guatemala, nor in most Latin
American nations where we are a major segment of
the population. The problem is also especially
grave today in Mexico and Colombia.
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Changemakers Competition Application
Global Solutions to Human
Trafficking
June 18, 2008
California, USA
Man Pleads Guilty to
Conspiracy to Engage in Sex Trafficking and
Transporting Illegal Aliens in Los Angeles
Washington, DC -
Pablo Bonifacio pleaded guilty today in federal
court in Los Angeles, to conspiracy to commit
sex trafficking and transporting [undocumented]
aliens in the pending case of United States v.
Vasquez-Valenzuela, announced Grace Chung
Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for
the Civil Rights Division and Thomas P. OBrien,
U.S. Attorney for the Central District of
California. The remaining eight defendants are
scheduled for trial on Sept. 2, 2008, in Los
Angeles.
During the plea
today, Bonifacio admitted to conspiring with
multiple co-defendants and others in a scheme to
bring young Guatemalan women and girls into the
United States illegally for purposes of
prostitution, and to hold and harbor them in the
Los Angeles area for the same purposes. As he
admitted during the plea hearing today,
Bonifacio was paid for his role in transporting
young females to different locations within the
Los Angeles area to engage in prostitution. In
addition, the defendant acknowledged that
co-defendants arranged for young females to be
recruited from Guatemala -- often on the promise
of legitimate jobs -- and were then smuggled
into the United States illegally for
prostitution. The young women and girls were
then forced to engage in prostitution to repay
their smuggling fees...
Mr. Bonifacio has
admitted his role in a scheme that lured young
girls into the United States with promises of a
better life, said U.S. Attorney OBrien. But the
American dream turned into a nightmare when
those children were forced to work as
prostitutes...
-
PRNewswire-USNewswire, U.S. Department of
Justice
May 8, 2008
Guatemala
|
(Who is not part
of this story)
|
Guatemalan
Mayan Leader
and Nobel
Peace Prize
Laureate
Rigoberta
Mench u
|
Madres que reclaman
devolución de sus hijas siguen en huelga de
hambre
Mothers Hold Hunger Strike to Demand the Return
of their Kidnapped Children
Four Guatemalan
mothers whose babies were kidnapped to be sold
in foreign adoption are continuing a hunger
strike in front of the National Palace of
Culture. The women started the protest on April
28th.
Norma Cruz, director
of the Survivors Foundation, which assist women
victims of violence, stated that representatives
of the National Council on Adoptions, and the
federal Attorney General's office have expressed
interest in assisting the families.
Nonetheless, Cruz
lamented, we don't see real, concrete action,
and the investigation has not brought-about any
positive results.
The mothers have
vowed to continue their protest until there are
clear signs that authorities are taking these
cases seriously.
Raquel Par, an
indigenous woman of the Kakchiquel Mayan ethnic
group, told of how on April 4, 2006, her
daughter, Heidi Saraí Batz, was drugged and then
kidnapped by a woman in the Villa Hermosa
neighbor-hood on the south side of Gauatemala
City.
Ana Escobar, another
victim, related how on March 26, 2006 an armed
man entered the shoe repair shop where she
worked, attempted to rape her, locked her in a
bathroom, and then kidnapped her 6-month-old
daughter Esther Zulamitha.
Olga López, whose
daughter Arlene Escarleth disappeared on
November 27, 2006, and Loyda Rodríguez, mother
of Angielyn Lisset Hernández, kidnapped on
November 3, 2006, also discussed their
tragedies.
According to Cruz,
these are just four of the hundreds of cases in
which young, poor and unprotected [and mostly
indigenous] women become victims of organized
criminal gangs whose business it is to rob
children to sell to foreigners [mostly from the
United States] in adoption.
Cruz: "We have
denounced dozens of adoption lawyers. The
authorities take this information, but they
don't do much to stop these crimes."
In December of 2007,
the Guatemalan Parliament adopted the Law of
Adoptions, authored by the National Council on
Adoptions, an organization representing diverse
sectors of society.
Guatemala's
government was pressured into enacting the law
after the
Hague Conference on
Private International Law declared in
July, 2007 that Guatemala was the number one
source country in the world for children given
in adoption, where the legality of these
adoptions are not guaranteed.
- Actualidad -
Terra
Spain
May 5, 2008
See also:
LibertadLatina
note:
Indigenous women and girls in
Latin American countries face extreme violations
of their human rights and dignity due to the
continuation of 500 years of feudalism based on
their sexual and labor exploitation.
Few human rights efforts address
the dynamics of racism and sexism facing
indigenous and African Descendent women in Latin
America. At
LibertadLatina,
active advocacy against such modern impunity
is a large part of the focus of our work.
We remember them and all women
and children facing oppression!
Happy Mothers Day!
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
May 11, 2008
Added Nov. 24,
2006
Guatemala, United States
The
killings of women and girls in Guatemala are rising
at an alarming rate yet actions by the Guatemalan
government to bring those responsible to justice are
insufficient. A U.S. House Resolution condemning
these brutal killings has been introduced... urging
both the United States and Guatemalan Governments to
do more to bring an end to this human rights scandal
(H.RES.1081). Urge your Representative to sign on to
this important resolution.
Take action »
- Amnesty International
11-23-2006
See also:
Added Nov. 24,
2006
Background
information on the murders of women in Guatemala
Excerpt:
Background Information on Murders of
Women in Guatemala
The
prevalence of violence against women
in Guatemala today has its roots in
historical and cultural values which
have maintained women’s
subordination and which were most
evident during the 36-year internal
armed conflict that ended with the
signing of the United
Nations-brokered Peace Accords in
1996. Of the estimated 200,000
people who "disappeared" or were
extra-judicially executed during
Guatemala’s internal armed conflict,
a quarter of the victims were women.
The
consequences of the internal armed
conflict in terms of the destruction
of communities, displacement,
increased poverty and social
exclusion has a bearing on levels of
violence against women today as does
the failure to bring to account
those responsible for past human
rights violations.
The
majority of women killed in the past
few years in Guatemala were: living
in urban areas of the country, aged
18-30 and many were abducted in
broad daylight. Despite the
lack of detailed forensic
information, there is significant
evidence to suggest that sexual
violence, particularly rape, is a
strong component characterizing many
of the killings. The brutality
of the killings and signs of sexual
violence, and often mutilation, bear
many of the hallmarks of the
terrible atrocities committed during
the conflict that went unpunished
and reveal that extreme forms of
sexual violence and discrimination
remain prevalent in Guatemalan
society.
Facts
Guatemala has the highest murder
rate in Latin America with
approximately 44 murders per 100 000
inhabitants.
According to the Guatemalan Human
Rights Ombudsman’s Office no arrests
have been made in 97% of the
killings of women and more that 70%
of the cases have not been
investigated. |
- Amnesty International
|
|
Added
Jan. 29,
2006
Guatemala
Getting
Away With
Murder:
Guatemala’s
Failure to
Protect
Women
 |
|
A
Mayan
woman
and
girl
walk
on a
public
road
carrying
a
machete
in
Guatemala.
-
Hastings
Law
School |
The below
excerpts are
from a
report by
the Hastings
College of
Law of the
University
of
California.
This
information
describes
some of the
root causes
of the worst
environment
for gender
violence
(rape and
murder)
among all of
the nations
of the
Americas in
2006.
Excerpts:
A 36-Year
Legacy of
Violence
Against
Women
During the
[36 year
Civil War,
ending in
1996],
agents of
the state,
including
members of
the
Guatemalan
military and
the Civil
Defense
Patrols,
used sexual
violence as
a weapon of
war
systematically
and with
complete
Immunity.
Sexual
assaults
were so
widespread
in the
[Mayan]
highland
combat zones
that one
local
official
commented
that it
would be
difficult to
find a Mayan
girl of
eleven to
fifteen who
had not been
raped.
A generation
of young men
forcibly
recruited to
the army
were
indoctrinated
in the use
of sexual
violence as
a weapon.
While the
Peace
Accords are
long-since
signed, the
war against
women
seemingly
continues,
with the
attitudes
and
practices of
violence
against
women
developed
during the
conflict
persisting
nearly ten
years later.
Guatemalan
Law and
Crimes of
Sexual
Violence
Rape
occurring
within
marriage
is
currently
unrecog-nized
as a
crime.
Therefore,
spouses
and
live-in
partners
cannot
be
prosecuted
for
such
an
act.
This
serves
to
reinforce
the
idea
that
women
have
the
obligation
to
sexually
satisfy
their
husbands/
partners.
An
offender
is
released
from
criminal
responsibility
or
from
penalties
for
a
crime
of
sexual
violence
[rape]
if
he
marries
his
victim,
as
long
as
she
is
twelve
or
older.
The
stated
legislative
end
of
this
practice
is
the
restoration
of a
woman’s
honor.
Instead,
it
sentences
a
girl
or
woman
to a
lifetime
with
her
rapist.
*
Report
-
Web
Page
*
Report
-
PDF
File
- University
of
California
Hastings
College of
the Law -
Center for
Gender &
Refugee
Studies
November
2005
Added
Jan. 28,
2006
Guatemala
Guatemalan
Human Rights
Commission
-USA
Analyses
Femicide
|
|
|
Closeup
of a
community
mural
scene,
showing
a
1980's
military
massacre
of
women
and
children
in
the
Mayan
town
of
Comalapa,
Guatemala.
From
a
short
film
by
Ian
Ramsey
North
|
The
Guatemalan
Human Rights
Commission-USA
has
developed a
campaign to
end the
brutal
violence
against
women in
Guatemala.
The
Guatemalan
government
is doing
little to
stem the
violence, so
the
international
community
must make
its voice
heard...
The rule of
law in
Guatemala is
steadily
weakening.
The judicial
system
barely
functions;
the police
force is
underpaid
and under
trained.
Perhaps the
very horror
and the
astounding
scope of
[femicide]
murders
explain the
silence and
inaction of
the
Guatemalan
government
and the
international
community.
Hilda
Morales, of
Guatemala’s
No Violence
Against
Women
Network...
|
“Everyone
knows
about
the
murdered
women
of
Juarez
[City,
Mexico],
but
it’s
as
if
the
case
of
the
murdered
women
of
Guatemala
were
being
hushed
up.’’ |
The US
embassy [in
Guatemala],
for one, has
not
expressed
particular
concern.
Most women
are raped
and tortured
before being
killed, and
their
mutilated
bodies are
left in
public
places, to
be found by
members of
their
communities.
While about
a third of
the murders
are related
to domestic
violence,
investigations
suggest a
less
personal
pattern in
the other
cases.
Twenty-three
police
officers
have been
linked to
ten of the
murders,
fueling the
suspicion of
many
Guatemalan
analysts
that
clandestine
security
forces
linked to
the police
and to the
army are
murdering
women with
such
brutality to
foment
political
instability
and a
climate of
terror. This
intimidation
may lead
women to
retreat from
participation
in public
life, gained
with so much
effort, and
limit
themselves
again to the
private
world,
abandoning
their
indispensable
role in
national
development.
The
Guatemalan
government,
by omission,
is complicit
in the
terror. The
low priority
the
government
gives the
issue of
femicidio
is reflected
in the scant
resources it
allocates to
investigators
and the
almost
complete
absence of
prosecution.
- "For
Women's
Right to
Live
Campaign"
Guatemalan
Human Rights
Commission/USA
Washington,
DC
2005
 |
|
Another mural massacre scene
from Comalapa |
LibertadLatina
Commentary:
Over
500
women
and
young
girls
were
brazenly
murdered
in
Guatemala
in
2005.
Almost
nobody
has
been
prosecuted.
The
rate
of
female
murders
is
10
times
higher
than
the
rate
facing
femicide-burdened
Juarez
City,
Mexico.
The
Guatemalan
Femicide
represents
a
tragic
convergence
of
many
social
ills.
These
'ills'
include:
|
The
ongoing
legacy
of
the
mass
rape
and
murder
of
women
during
the
1980's-1990's
Civil
War,
when
50,000
women
were
murdered
and
most
Mayan
girls
over
age
7
were
raped
by
government
forces.
The
influence of out of control gangs, or maras, & other
criminals who run sexual slavery networks, who rape,
kidnap and traffic not just in local women and girls
but who also attack many of the thousands of Central
and South American women and girls who must cross
Guatemala while trying to reach 'economic and gender
safety' in the U.S.
The
existence
of a
historically
'traditional'
racial
hatred
and
apathy
toward
the
plight
of
the
mostly
Mayan
women
and
girls
victims,
who
have
been
sexually
violated
in
Latin
American
culture
for
5
centuries
as a
'matter
of
tradition.'
The silence in the face of these injustices by U.S.
political leaders, in regard to discussing
Guatemala's genocidal and femicidal past and
present, largely because the Guatemalan perpetrators
of mass-rape and mass-murder were strongly supported
and funded during the 1980's and 1990's by most
conservative U.S. leaders.
This
policy
of
silence
exists
in
stark
contra-diction
to
the
moral
values
professed
by
Christian
Conservatives,
who
are
the
strongest
leaders
of
the
modern
anti-slavery
movement. |
This
slow-motion,
largely
anti-Indigenous
and
misogynist
femicidal
massacre
must
be
responded
to
aggressively
by
people
of
moral
conscience
every-where,
regardless
of
political
persuasion.
Silence
is
also
violence!
-
LibertadLatina
Chuck
Goolsby
January 28,
2006
See Also:
The
untouchable
narco-state:
how
Guatemala's
military
defies the
U.S. Drug
Enforcement
Administration
(DEA).
- Texas
observer
Nov. 18,
2005
"Archives Of
Terror"
expose
details of
Operation
Condor -
In which 6
South
American
nations
coordinated
the torture
and murder
of their
opponents.
- BBC News
June 08,
2005
The women of
Rio Negro
[the town of
Black
River], some
of them
pregnant,
were dragged
from their
homes,
forced to
march to the
top of a
mountain,
and there,
along with
their
children,
were raped,
tortured and
killed.
Ana, a
survivor...
|
"The soldiers and (paramilitary civil
defense) patrollers started grabbing the
girls and raping us."
"Only two soldiers raped me because my
grandmother was there to defend me. All the
girls were raped." |
In total,
177 women
and children
died that
day [in
1982].
CERIGUA
Weekly
Jennifer
Harbury
DEC. 11,
1997
LibertadLatina
Note:
The
Guatemalan
Truth
Commission
found
that
this
nation's
military
had
committed
over
600
similar
massacres,
wiping
out
440
Mayan
towns
during
the
early
1980's.
These
acts,
for
which
virtually
nobody
has
gone
to
jail,
were
the
root
cause
of
today's
femicide.
Men
who
learned
to
kidnap,
rape
and
murder
women
with
complete
impunity
during
the
Civil
War
(when
50,000
women
were
murdered)...
continue
the
same
pattern
of
activity
today,
in
2006.
It is time
for the U.S.
Government
to come
clean, and
denounce
this
femicide in
the
strongest
terms, and
act with
conviction
to aid
Guatemala in
stopping
these crimes
against
humanity
now!
- Chuck
Goolsby
Jan. 29,
2006
Added
Jan.
28,
2006
Guatemala
Peasants
Wounded In
Confrontation
With
Landowners
Over The
Unsolved
Murder Of A
Farm Labor
Leader.
Protesters
at Nueva
Linda Farm
Shot and
Wounded.
Injusticia y
Represion en
Nueva Linda.
- Guatemalan
Human Rights
Commission/USA
Washington,
DC
Jan. 22,
2006
Added
Jan.
28,
2006
Guatemala
Forensic
Anthropologists
Receive
Threats For
Their Work
To Exhume
Murder
Victims
Fredy
Peccerelli,
head of the
Guatemalan
Forensic
Anthro-pology
Foundation
(FAFG), his
brother
Gianni
Peccerelli,
his sister
Bianka
Peccerelli
Monterroso
and brother
in law Omar
Giron de
Leon have
all received
death
threats in
recent days.
They may be
in grave
danger.
Fredy
Peccerelli
and other
members of
the FAFG
have been
subjected to
numerous
death
threats as a
result of
their work
to exhume
mass graves
of those
killed by
the
Guatemalan
military and
their
civilian
adjuncts in
the early
1980s. In
2002 the
Inter-American
Commission
on Human
Rights
(IACHR)
ordered that
FAFG stafff
receive
police
protection.
However,
such
protection
has been
inadequate,
and at times
non-existent.
Please send
appeals to
arrive as
quickly as
possible:
- expressing
grave
concern for
the safety
of the
director and
staff of the
FAFG.
- Guatemalan
Human Rights
Commission/USA
(And -
Amnesty
Int'l)
Jan. 13,
2006
Added
Jan.
28,
2006
Chule,
United
States
U.S.
Returns
Daughter Of
Chilean
Ex-Dictator
Agosto
Pinochet to
Argentina.
Washington,
DC - The
eldest
daughter of
former
Chilean
dictator
Augusto
Pinochet has
been sent
back to
Argentina,
two days
after she
arrived in
the United
States after
fleeing tax
charges in
Chile, a
U.S.
Homeland
Security
official
said. Shortly
after
withdrawing
her request
for
political
asylum in
the United
States,
Lucia
Pinochet,
60, was sent
to Argentina
-- the last
country she
was in
before
coming to
the United
States.
She and other family members were indicted Monday on
charges of tax fraud, including failing to declare
bank accounts overseas, and using false passports.
-
CNN
Jan. 28,
2006
Added
Jan.
27,
2006
Guatemala,
El Salvador
Central
American
Nations
Fight Youth
Gang
Violence.
 |
|
Guatemalan
President
Oscar
Berger |
Suman 350
muertos por
violencia en
Guatemala.
Guatemala
Guatemala's
wave of
violence
will be hard
to control,
stated the
nation's
president,
Oscar
Berger
in a recent
speech.
According to
President
Berger, 350
people have
been killed
during
January,
2006 alone.
During a
recent press
conference
President
Berger said
that youth
gangs
(maras) are
responsible
for the
violence.
President
Berger...
|
"There
is a
declared
war.
The
maras
are
better
organized
[than
state
security].
The
rivalry
between
gangs
is
causing
this
cruel
massacre
of
our
Guatemalan
brothers.
It
is
very
difficult
to
control." |
According to
reports by
rescue
squads and
the National
Civil
Police,
during the
weekend of
January
21-22, 2006,
21 people
were
murdered,
most of them
members of
the "Mara
18" gang.
In response
to the
violence,
President
Berger is
planning to
create
15,000 new
jobs for
youth.
Government
officials
will also
meet with
leaders of
the rival
gangs to try
to negotiate
an end to
the
violence.
President
Berger...
|
"Our
society
should
respond
by
offering
help
to
these
youth,
who's
maladjustment
causes
such
inhuman
acts." |
El Salvador
Conservative
Salvadoran
president
Elías
Antonio Saca
recently
held a press
conference
to announce
the arrests
of 9 of the
15 suspects
in the
January 22,
2006 murders
of 7 people
at a soccer
match.
Gang members
had ordered
6 soccer
players and
fans to lie
on the
ground, and
had shot
them at
point blank
range.
The seventh
victim was a
gang member,
who was
apparently
stabbed to
death by
angry
onlookers in
reaction to
the
massacre.
President
Saca...
|
"I
want
to
say
to
the
Salvadoran
People
that
my
fight
is
against
this
type
of
crime.
I
have
never
thought
to
let
our
guard
down
nor
declare
a
'vacation'
in
regard
to
the
maras.
We
must
continue
to
apply
the
'Super
Hard
Fist'
to
them." |
In August,
2004 the
National
Civil Police
developed a
tough policy
of
crack-downs
and long
jail
sentences to
fight gang
violence,
known as the
"Super Hard
Fist."
- La Opinion
Digital
Los Angeles,
CA
Jan. 24,
2006
|
|
|
|
Added
Jan.
20,
2006
Guatemala,
United
States
A Haverford
College
Student
produces an
Short Online
Film on the
Aftermath of
the
Guatemalan
Genocide
 |
|
Closeup of a mural scene of a
military massacre of women and children from
the Mayan town of Comalapa.
By Ian Ramsey North
Produced by dfelsen |
Film
description:
"Haverford
College
student Ian
Ramsey North
visited
Guatemala to
look at how
the country
and people
are coming
to grips
with
Guatemala's
brutal past
when
hundreds of
thousands of
people were
massacred
during the
civil war."
- Ian Ramsey North
Jan. 12,
2005
 |
|
Mayan
War
Widows
Activist
Carmen
Cumez |
LibertadLatina
Film Summary
A short film
by Haverford
College
student Ian
Ramsey North
has provided
insight into
how
Indigenous
Mayan
Guatemalans
are coping
with the
legacy of
genocide in
their
nation.
Ramsey North
interviewed
Carmen
Cumez,
founder of
the National
Coordination
of
Guatemalan
Widows (Conavigua)
- who's
efforts have
lead to a
promise by
the national
government
to make
payments of
$4 million
per year to
victims of
state
violence
during the
civil war.
Ms. Cumez
described
how her
husband
Felipe's
last words
to her in
1981 were,
"Good-bye
forever.
Take care of
the
children."
Felipe was
then lead
away by
soldiers to
by murdered.
Ms. Cumez
hopes to one
day locate
her
husband's
body, "to
give him a
Christian
burial."
Approximately
200,000
mostly Mayan
victims were
murdered,
mostly
during
between 1978
and 1983.
Approximately
50,000 of
those
victims were
women.
The work of
the Forensic
Anthropology
Foundation
of Guatemala
(FAFG), whch
works
closely with
Conavigua
was also
filmed.
An FAFG team
was followed
as they
excavated
the body of
a victim
who's hands
were still
tied behind
their back.
The body was
found on an
abandoned
military
base.
Excavations
around the
country are
continuing.
A FAFI
volunteer
explained
forensic
evidence
regarding a
woman
victim, who
was forced
to her knees
and was then
shot in the
head.
Evidence of
her torture
was also
apparent.
FAFI has
found 4,000
bodies, and
has
identified
60% of them
through
teeth and
clothing
being
recognized
by family
members.
Many
military and
political
officials
continue to
deny the
facts of the
genocide in
Guatemala.
Ian Ramsey
North's
short film
accurately
portrays the
trauma that
continues to
haunt the
survivors of
genocide in
post-war
Guatemala.
-
LibertadLatina
Film Summary
by
Chuck
Goolsby
Jan. 21,
2006
See also:
Added
Jan.
22,
2006
"Over the
past four
decades
state
sponsored
terror left
200,000
people dead,
...200,000
orphans, and
40,000
widows.
According to
the Truth
Commission,
the army was
responsible
for 626
massacres."
-
Global
Visionaries
Added
Jan.
22,
2006
The
[Guatemalan]
Maya are
insisting on
a proper
accounting
of what many
consider an
attempted
genocide by
the army and
its
paramilitary
allies. They
are also
claiming a
place at the
political
table and
reasserting
the validity
of Mayan
culture and
languages.
- Business
Week
Jan. 15,
2001
Added
Jan.
14,
2006
Guatemala
 |
|
Mayan woman grieves during
the exhumation of victims of the 1970's
through 1980's genocide and femicide in
Quiche province, Guatemala |
Viudas de
Guatemala
piden
dignificar a
víctimas de
guerra.
The National
Coordination
of
Guatemalan
Widows ( Conavigua),
who's
members
survived the
Guatemalan
Civil War,
will
initiate its
2006
activities
with the
exhumation
of a
clandestine
cemetery in
the Mayan
town of
Joyabaj,
where they
expect to
find the
remains of
15 people.
Conavigua is
asking the
residents of
Joyabaj to
attend the
exhumations
in
solidarity
with the
families of
those who
murdered at
this site.
Conavigua
asks that
the national
and
international
communities
join with
them to
pressure the
Guatemalan
govern-ment
to address
the need for
justice of
the victims
of the mass
murders that
took place
during the
36 year
civil war.
Conavigua
and demands
that law
enforcement
act to
protect the
lives of its
members and
the families
of all
victims of
war related
mass-murder,
especially
women, many
of who have
received
death
threats and
mistreatment
from forces
that oppose
their work.
- CIMAC
Noticias
News for
Women
Mexico
City
Jan. 12,
2005
LibertadLatina
Note:
These burial
sites were
created by
Guatemalan
Army
soldiers and
death squads
to hide the
victims of
mass
torture,
rape and
murder in
the 1960's
to 1980's
'civil' war.
Government
soldiers,
police and
'death
squads'
murdered
200,000
mostly Mayan
victims,
including
50,000
women,
during the
civil war.
See also:
Native Guatemala -
Femicide
&
Genocide
"During
the last forty years, the [Guatemalan] military has
been levying a campaign of terrorism and genocide
against... Mayas, in order to distribute native
peoples' land among plantation owners."
|
|
|
Book
section January 1st, 2006
|
Books on the Guatemalan Genocide |
Guatemala -
Eternal Spring - Eternal Tyranny
- by Jean-Marie Simon
W. W.
Norton & Company (December, 1987)
From a reviewer on Amazon.com:
|
"I ran across a used copy of
this book before my first
trip to Guatemala, and it
radicalized me, preparing me
for the devastating effects
of the country's
35-year-long civil war.
While the war is officially
over, this book still has
relevance to the plight
Guatemala's indigenous
population -- 90% of its
people. It is remarkable
that the author -- a woman,
a photographer, a human
rights activist, and a
foreigner -- was able to get
as close to her subjects as
she did. This extremely
moving photo-and-text essay
is not for the faint of
heart, but if you want a
taste of what present-day
Guatemalans have lived
through, this book delivers
it." |
LibertadLatina
commentary:
I first read
"Guatemala - Eternal Spring -
Eternal Tyranny" in the late 1980's.
I had worked with
advocacy groups in the U.S. to
protest the mass-murder, mass rape
and ethnic cleaning of the Mayan
majority population in Guatemala for
several years. I highly
recommend this book's powerful
photography and story.
The Mayan girls
pictured on the cover were
participating in a Mayan cultural
event. What this close-up (of
a larger picture shown within the
book) does not show is the rows of
heavily armed Guatemalan soldiers
who lined the road that these girls
walked on, grinning with their
perverse smiles.
The Guatemalan
military forces targeted almost all
Mayan girls over the age of 7 for
rape during the 1980's (see the
below accounts).
In this book, author Jean-Marie
Simon writes in this book that
Guatemalan military cadets were
REQUIRED, when going on leave in the
capitol (Guatemala City) to bring
back a woman's used underpants.
That is, these army officer corps
cadets were encouraged by their
superiors to commit rape while on
leave.
- Chuck Goolsby
January 1st, 2006
|
|
Orbis Books releases English version
of report on Guatemalan atrocities
By Barb Fraze - Catholic News
Service(CNS)
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Orbis Books has
released its English translation of
last year's church-produced report
documenting atrocities during
Guatemala's civil war.
``This
book is like a Holocaust Museum for
the people of Guatemala,'' said
Michael Leach, executive director of
Orbis Books. At a Washington press
conference Oct. 26, Leach said the
book, "Guatemala: Never Again!''
documented ``a war of genocide
against the Mayan people.'' The
one-volume English translation is
taken from four volumes issued by
the Archdiocese of Guatemala human
rights office's Recovery of the
Historical Memory Project.
``We
don't expect `Guatemala: Never
Again!' to be a best seller,'' Leach
told reporters gathered at the
Longworth House Office Building.
``It wasn't written by Stephen King,
but it's more horrible than anything
he could write.'' The book,
published in cooperation with the
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center
for Human Rights, was abridged from
the original Spanish and addresses
the suffering of the population, how
repression functioned, the
consequences of repression, and
demands for the future. It documents
more than 400 massacres, thousands
of murders, rapes and cases of
torture.
The book
is based on information gathered
during the historical memory
project. It is based on interviews
with survivors, witnesses and even
perpetrators of the abuses, most of
which were carried out by the
Guatemalan military. Roberto
Cabrera, who coordinated the
historical memory project, said that
although ``presenting a work of
literature is something that often
is a work of joy,'' for his
colleagues presenting ``Guatemala:
Never again!'' was ``a moment of
reclaiming the rights of the victims
of Guatemala.'' One victim, Adriana
Portillo-Bartow, who now lives in
Chicago, told reporters at the press
conference that her father,
stepmother, sister-in-law, baby
sister and two daughters were
kidnapped and disappeared in 1981.
Portillo-Barlow said that in 1997
she told her story to the
archdiocesan project and to
Guatemala's Historical Clarification
Committee. ``I was in pain, and I
was in fear, because I grew up in
fear,'' Portillo-Barlow said,
describing her testimony. ``Impunity
runs rampant in my country,'' she
said.
The
former coordinator of the
archdiocesan human rights office,
the late Auxiliary Bishop Juan
Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala City,
issued the four Spanish volumes of
``Guatemala: Never Again!'' April
24, 1998, two days before he was
bludgeoned to death outside his
parish home.
Two
prosecutors and a judge have
resigned from the murder case, which
remains unresolved. Bishop Gerardi's
successor as head of the human
rights office,
Auxiliary Bishop
Mario Enrique Rios Mont of
Guatemala City, said the bishop's
murder and other crimes will not be
solved until there is ``absolute
independence for this work'' and
``security for those involved.''
After
the press conference, Bishop Rios
told Catholic News Service that to
resolve the case, Guatemala needed
``independence of the different
powers in government.'' He said that
with publication of ``Guatemala:
Never Again!'' he hoped ``the entire
world will become familiar with our
reality.'' However, he added that he
was ``a little fearful of what will
happen'' now that the book has been
released in English. ``Every action
that we take always has its
consequences,'' he said.
Adriana
Portillo-Bartow
is Director of the
"Where Are the
Children" project,
which seeks to
discover the
whereabouts of
Guatemalan children
who disappeared
during the war. In
1981,
Portillo-Bartow's
father, sister and
two young daughters
vanished without a
trace.
|
|
|
Books on the Guatemalan genocide
available from Amazon.com:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Added
Dec. 25,
2005
Bolivia,
Guatemala
and the
'Native
Americas'
|
|
|
Bolivia's president-elect: Evo Morales |
LibertadLatina
commentary:
We, the
80
million
Native
peoples
of the
Americas
have,
since
the
European
conquest
500
years
ago,
never
had the
right to
govern
ourselves.
Democracy
has not
existed,
and in
most
countries
Native
people
are seen
as a
justifiably
exploitable
group of
inferior
second
class
citizens.
The
impunity
that
Native
women
face
across
the
region
is at
the
heart of
much of
today's
crisis
of mass
sexual
exploitation
&
slavery.
In Mayan
Guatemala,
for
example,
there
had
never
been
even one
decade,
between
1522 and
1992,
without
a
massacre.
Over
50,000
mostly
Mayan
women
were
murdered
(out of
a total
of
200,000
such
victims),
and most
Mayan
girls
were
raped,
by
government
forces
in
Guatemala
during
the
1970's
and
1980s
'civil'
war,
with
U.S.
military
support.
I
personally
know
victims
of this
genocide,
and I
worked
actively
to stop
it
during
the
1970's
and
1980's.
The wife
of one
of the
perpetrators
(who now
traffics
in women
and
underage
girls
from
Guatemala
to the
U.S.),
told me
that her
husband,
a former
member
of the
presidential
guard
[which
doubled
as
the
government
death
squad],
said to
her:
|
"Me daba lastima tener que malograr a las mujers"
(I felt bad to have to damage the women [that is, kidnap, rape, torture and murder innocent women by the hundreds]). |
(This
murder's
grand-father,
a white
land-owner,
would go
out and
'shoot a
few
Mayans'
in the
village
at the
edge of
his
ranch
lands
when-ever
he got
mad and
wanted
to let
off some
steam.
Such is
the
power of
impunity
in
racist
Guatemala.)
Unlike
the
cases of
mass-rape
and
murder
in
Bosnia,
Kosovo
and
Rwanda,
no World
Court
ever
took
action
in the
case of
the
1980's
genocide
in
Guatemala,
and
nobody
ever
went to
jail, as
if these
Native
lives
were
explicitly
less
human
and thus
not
deserving
of
justice.
The
current
crisis
of
femicide
in
Guatemala,
which
claimed
more
than 500
female
lives in
2005
(which
murders
are
rarely
investigated),
is a
direct
outgrowth
of the
government's
past use
of
femicide
and
mass-rape
as tools
of state
terrorism
aimed at
preventing
the
Mayan
majority
from
exercising
their
political
rights.
Guatemala's
population
is 60%
Mayan.
 |
|
Bolivian Teens rescued from prostitution. |
Bolivia
is even
more
heavily
indigenous
than
Guatemala.
Although
Bolivia
has
avoided
genocidal
massacres,
labor
and
social
protesters,
such as
those in
the
Christmas
Massacre
in 1996,
and the
Cochabamba
Water
Revolt
in
1998-2003,
have
routinely
been
killed
in
confrontations
with
authorities.
Like
Guatemala,
Bolivia
has not
allowed
the
Indigenous
majority
to rule
for over
400
years.
About
85% of
Bolivia
is of
Native
ancestry,
with 55%
being
purely
Aymara
or
Quechua,
descendents
of the
empire
of the
Inca.
Bolivians
deserve
self
determination,
and
their
democratic
process
has
provided
that,
finally,
to them.
President
Morales
is
joined
in his
unique
status
by his
neighbor,
Peru's
president,
Quechua
tribal
member
Alejandro
Toledo,
who
describes
himself
as the
first
Native
president
in the
Americas
in last
500
years.
We
encourage
President
Morales
to
accelerate
Bolivia's
efforts
to
expand
opportunities
for
women
and
girls,
and to
remove
machismo,
sexual
exploitation
and
trafficking
as
dangers
to
women's
lives.
Campesino
liberation
must
mean
women &
girl's
liberation
too.
We fully
expect
that,
despite
disagreements
with
President
Morales'
views,
the
Western
Powers
will
respect
democracy
and
Native
political
self
determination.
We will
not
tolerate
violations
of our
basic
human
rights
of self
determination
and
human
dignity!
Five
hundred
years of
disenfranchise-ment,
racial
genocide
and
femicide
is
enough!
- Chuck
Goolsby
Dec. 25
- Jan.
1, 2005
Added
Dec. 18,
2005
Guatemala, Peru,
Argentina
Guatemala
- For the first time DNA
testing will be used on
a broad scale to help
solve the [mass] murders
that took place during
the "dirty wars" in
Central and South
America.
The
researchers at the
Forensic Anthropology
Foundation of Guatemala
hope the testing will
provide key pieces of
evidence needed to
punish those responsible
for massacres during the
armed conflict there,
that claimed some
200,000 lives.
The U.S.
Senate Appropriations
Committee has ear-marked
$3 million for DNA
analysis of skeletons
exhumed from clandestine
grave sites in
Guatemala, Argentina and
Peru.
Sen.
Patrick Leahy, a
Democrat from Vermont
who spearheaded the
effort to fund the DNA
testing...
|
"This is
important for
the families of
those who were
killed or
disappeared, as
well as for the
cause of
international
justice."
"By exposing the
truth about what
happened we can
help prevent
future
atrocities."
|
Many of
the dead were massacred
in [Mayan] villages. The
majority were victims of
government forces
according to the
country's Truth
Commission report, which
was released after the
war ended with
U.N.-brokered peace
accord in 1996.
Fredy
Peccerelli, the director
of the Forensic
Anthro-pology Foundation
of Guatemala has
received death threats
because of his work.
He
hopes the
new genetic testing
initiative will lead to
more rigorous
investigation of crimes
past and present [that
is, femicide] in
a nation with one of the
highest murder rates in
Central America.
Peccerelli
|
"Only about 5
percent of
homicide
investigations
in Guatemala use
scientific
evidence.
I hope this
begins to show
prosecutors and
judges that to
catch those
responsible, we
now have better
tools." |
-
Reuters
Dec.
14, 2005
Added
Dec. 04,
2005
 |
|
Femicide in
Guatemala
Photo: BBC, UK |
Guatemala
“¡Cuidado: zona de
peligro para las
mujeres!”
En
Guatemala, cuando
cientos de activistas
iniciaban una marcha de
protesta contra la
violencia sexista, en el
marco del Día
Internacional “No Más
Violencia Contra las
Mujeres”, apareció el
cuerpo de una mujer
asesinada. Las
organizaciones de
mujeres han reprobado a
las instituciones de
justicia, acusándolas de
ser cómplices de estos
asesinatos.
“Warning! Danger Zone
for Women!”
In Guatemala, when
hundreds of activists
initiated a protest
march against sexist
violence, to mark the
International Day
Against Gender Violence,
the body of yet another
woman victim appeared.
Women's
groups have reproached
the criminal justice
system, accusing them of
being accomplices in
these murders.
According
to women's networks,
580 women have been
murdered in [the first
11 months of] 2005.
The government puts the
figure at 474 victims.
Police
Impunity
An
investigation conducted
by the Guatemalan
Institute for
Comparative Penal
Sciences, in
collaboration with
international
organizations, studied
the cases of 154 women
in Santa Teresa Prison,
which houses 90% of all
female inmates in
Guatemala.
The
study found that 99% of
the women interviewed
had been raped, sexually
harassed and/or tortured
by officers of the
National Civil Police
(PNC).
Some 84%
of these women were
detained without an
arrest warrant,
according to Lucía
Morán, coordinator of
the study.
More
information on this
penal study is available
from Lucía Moran
via e-mail at:
moranvas@hotmail.com.
-
MujeresHoy.com
Dec.
01, 2005
The 'femicide' murder
rate in Guatemala is 10
times higher than the
rate of femicide murders
in the Mexican border
city of Juarez.
Government apathy, and
police / military
participation in rape,
torture and Femicide
began during the
Guatemalan Civil War in
the 1980's, when
approximately 50,000 of
the 200,000 civilian
victims of state
condoned murders were
women. Most Mayan
girls over age 7
were raped by government
forces.
Today's violence is an
aftermath to the 1980's
anti-Mayan genocide /
femicide.
Amnesty International
on the
1980's civil war:
|
|
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LibertadLatina
|
 |
|
Photo:
Reuters |
Sección Especial de
Nóticias Sobre el
Disastre del Huracán
Stan.
Special Section on
Hurricane Stan Disaster
News
October, 2005
Guatemala, El
Salvador, Southern
Mexico
Early October, 2005
Recent floods from
Hurricane Stan, a level
5.8 earthquake and a
volcanic eruption have
disrupted the lives of
over 2 million people in
Central America and
Mexico.
Indigenous
communities in Chiapas,
Mexico and in Guatemala
have been especially
hard-hit by the effects
of Hurricane Stan.
They need our help
today!
|
Guatemala
|
 |
|
Stan
Aftermath:
A man
carries
his
daughter,
who died
from a
lack of
medical
attention.
Photo:
AP |
Guatemalan Mayan
woman leader and
Nobel Peace
Prize laureate
Rigoberta
Menchu, who has
been appointed
as Guatemala's
Goodwill
Ambassador by
President Oscar
Berger, has just
finished a tour
of the United
States.
She
spoke
seriously
about
the
genocide
that
occurred
there in
the
1980s
leaving
200,000
dead and
many
more
tortured,
raped,
homeless,
orphaned
or
illegally
imprisoned.
Now,
Guatemalans
are
coming
together
in a new
time of
tragedy,
as
torrential
rains
and
flooding
connected
to
Hurricane
Stan
have
caused
devastating
mudslides
throughout
the
country.
-
University of
Wisconsin at
Milwaukee Post
Oct. 19, 2005
See also:
Menchú: Society
is ailing
-
Rigoberta Menchu
speaks at
Cosumnes River
College.
Sacramento Bee
California
Oct. 22, 2005
Guatemala's
government
failed to plan
for Stan floods.
Also,
Guatemala's Army
was barred from
providing rescue
aid by Mayan
residents of the
mudslide
affected town of
Panabaj, which
suffered
massacres during
the 1980's
anti-Mayan
genocide.
-
AlertNet.org
Oct. 17, 2005
See also:
A Guatemalan
Indian
community,
haunted by a
government-sponsored
massacre during
the country's
brutal civil
war, refused
soldiers' help
in recovering
those killed in
a week of
flooding and
mudslides and
conducted its
own searches
instead.
-
Associated press
Oct. 10, 2005
Nils Kastberg,
director
regional para
América Latina y
el Caribe del
Fondo de
Naciones Unidas
para la Infancia
(UNICEF), visitó
varias zonas
devastadas por
el Huaracán Stan
en Guatemala.
Nils Kastberg,
Latin American
and Caribbean
representative
for UNICEF,
visited areas of
Guatemala
affected by
Hurricane Stan.
Kastberg
emphasized the
importance of
providing
psycho-social
services to
children, who
after Stan are
extremely
vulnerable.
-
PrensaLatina.com
Oct. 17, 2005
- Washington Post
Oct. 17, 2005
Disease
threatens
survivors of
Guatemala
mudslide.
-
Reuters
Oct. 16, 2005
La mitad de los
damnificados que
dejó el huracán
Stan en su paso
por Guatemala
son niños.
Half of those
left homeless
and in need by
Hurricane Stan
in Guatemala are
children.
-
BBCMundo.com
Oct. 15, 2005
Las lluvias
dejaron 1,200
huérfanos.
1,200 children
have had one or
both parents
killed as a
result of
Hurricane Stan.
-
ElSalvador.com
Oct. 15, 2005
Food crisis
feared in
rain-battered
Guatemala.
-
Reuters
October 13, 2005
Casa Alianza
rescues a young
Guatemalan girl
twice: first
from sexual
exploitation and
then from the
dangers of
Hurricane Stan.
Casa Alianza:
|
"This
situation
is
expected
to
worsen
the
problems
of crime
and
violence
in
Guatemala.
...As is
always
the
case,
the most
vulnerable
population
is
children." |
-
Casa Alianza
October 13, 2005
See Also:
Crisis-Guatemala |
|
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|
Guatemala
More Impunity!
|
© AFP |
Two
Indigenous Children Grieve Upon
Learning of Their Mother's Murder.
Guatemala's population is 60% Mayan. |
Added Sep. 21 2005
Se incrementa
feminicidio en Guatemala.
Femicide Continues to Rise in Guatemala.
The latest
statistics regarding the femicide in
Guatemala indicate that as of September,
2005, the female murder rate jumped 26.3%
from 2004 levels.
From January to September of 2004, 336 women
were murdered. During the same period
in 2005, the figure was 458 victims killed.
Andrea Barrios, of the Center
for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH)
said:
|
"The state has not provided an
environment of safety for women,
which is reflected in these high
rates of murder." |
Soraya Long, the director of
The Center for Justice
and International Law (CEJIL)
indicated that 'it is important that women's
rights groups keep up the pressure on the
Guatemalan government, which has been
dismissive of the issue of femicide.'
Long:
|
"Impunity in government entities has
caused the Citizenry to loose faith
in the system of justice." |
Hilda Morales, ambassador of
conscience of Amnesty International stated:
|
"The
indifference
of the state in the face of this
outrage defiles the memory of the
victims and affects the dignity of
their families, who have to face the
corruption of government agencies
when they seek justice." |
According to
monitoring of press reports on murders by
the
Cerigua
agency, femicide victims are most often
shot, and they are typically between 18 & 40
years old.
-
CimacNoticias
Sep.14, 2005 |
|
|
|
Added Sep. 17
2005
Foto - Paco Rodríguez-VDG
Diputada Guatemalteca
denuncia situación de la mujer.
Galicia ['Spain'] - During a Sep. 13, 2005 visit to
the headquarters of the Galician National Block
(BNC),
Guatemalan
Congressional Deputy Alba Maldonado denounced
conditions for women across Latin America.
Since 1960 Deputy Maldonado has been an leader
in activism against murder and for human rights.
Accompanied by Ana Miranda, European
spokes-person for the BNC, Deputy Maldonado stated
that between 2001 and August 15, 2005, 1,897 women
have been murdered in Guatemala. Only 5 cases had
been resolved by the government. According to
the National Police, 436 women have been murdered to
date [in the first 9 months] of 2005.
Maldonado explained the historical context of
the problem:
| "We freed
our-selves of a [civil]war that lasted 36
years; the peace accords were never honored
by the government; nobody [human rights
violators] ever went to trial; and we
continue with the 'culture of death' - which
is reflected by these statistics."
|
Maldonado went on to state that there are
differences in how women and men are murdered in
Guatemala:
| "Women are
murdered after being tortured, dismembered,
and, of course, raped." |
Maldonado's political party, the Guatemalan
National Revolutionary Unity attributes weak
government investigations to the continuing wave of
impunity.
On September 15 Deputy Maldonado presented a
complaint against the Guatemalan government's
inaction to a meeting of Spain's parliament in
Madrid. Its essence:
| "It isn't
logical that, in a nation of 12 million
inhabitants, 2 million are armed." |
LibertadLatina
Note:
Deputy Alba
Maldonado's analysis is a 100% accurate description
of the root causes of a femicide that today causes
10 times more deaths of women than the Juarez,
Mexico femicide crisis.
See Also:
Juarez
Femicide
|
|
Added Oct.
15, 2005
Published
June 17,
2005
Niñas
continuan
siendo
víctimas de
Explotación
Sexual.
Casa
Alianza:
Esta vez
fueron
rescatadas
dos niñas
Guatemaltecas
y una
Hondureña,
en un bar en
la zona 12
de la ciudad
de
Guatemala.
(Thre young
girls are
rescued by
Casa Alianza
from a
bar/brothel
in Guatemala
City.)
|
|
|
|
June 20 2005
Florida
A
16 Year Old Mayan Girl from Guatemala,
Previously Freed by Police From
'Coyotes' (People Smugglers) Who Had
Kidnapped Her... Hung Herself at Her Family
Home in Boynton Beach. She Could Not Stand
Her 'Torment,' Which She Had Not
Shared with Family Members.
June 20 2005
Guatemala
A
Coast Guard Patrol Detained 17 Female and 65
Male Migrants from Ecuador. 182
Ecuadorian Migrants Have been Intercepted in
Guatemalan Waters in 2005.
Stories From the NBC/ Telemundo TV Network
Program 'Al Rojo Vivo.' |
|
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Added June 10, 2005
"Deborah Tomas Vineda, aged 16,
was kidnapped, raped, and cut to
pieces with a chainsaw,
allegedly because she refused to
become the girlfriend of a local
gang member.
Her
sister Olga, just 11 years old,
died alongside her.
The
raped and mutilated body of
Andrea Contreras Bacaro, 17, was
found wrapped in a plastic bag
and thrown into a ditch, her
throat cut, her face and hands
slashed, with a gunshot wound to
the head.
The
word "vengeance" had been gouged
into her thigh.
Sandra
Palma Godoy, 17, said to have
witnessed a killing in her home
town, was missing for a week
before her decomposing body was
found next to a local football
pitch.
Her
breasts, eyes and heart had been
mutilated, reports said."
-
BBC
News
|
Added June 10, 2005
Also from BBC News:
|
|
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|
Added June 10, 2005
"We
have the right to a life without
Violence!" - Femicide in
Guatemala. |
|
|
Added March 19, 2005
Human Rights Defender Sara Poroj
and
staff of the human rights
organization Grupo de Apoyo
Mutuo (GAM), Group of Mutual
Support have been intimidated
and threatened to stop work to
exhume secret mass graves of
victims of 699 anti-Mayan
massacres during the 1980s to
1990s Civil War. |
|
|
Added February 9, 2005
Guatemalan Human Rights Commission
Begins "Defend
Women's Right to Live!" Campaign
A March 6-14,
2005 U.S. based delegation is being formed to Demand
that
Guatemala's Government end the murder of women
with Impunity!
Over
1,200 women have
been murdered Since 2001.
In 2004, 527 women
were killed, (a 28% Increase).
Massacre at Acteal
Commemorating the 7th Anniversary of the Murder of
45 Mayan Women, Children and Men in Chiapas, Mexico.
|
|
Added Jan. 30, 2006
February
2004 - Guatemala's new conservative president
apologizes for wartime deaths February
Guatemala City - Guatemala's new president asked
forgiveness on Wednesday for the state's role in the
country's long civil war, but stopped short of
calling the widespread wartime killings of Mayan
Indians genocide. Oscar Berger, who took office last
month, said he was asking forgiveness from "every
one of the victims' relatives for the suffering that
came from that fratricidal conflict." About 200 000
people were killed in Guatemala's 36-year civil war,
which pitted Marxist guerrillas against a series of
right-wing governments and ended with peace accords
in 1996. Most of the victims were Mayan Indian
peasants, many killed in massacres during army or
paramilitary sweeps through rural areas.Berger, a
conservative businessman, pledged $9-million to
compensate civilians who lost relatives and property
in the conflict. He said the amount was "important
but insufficient" and promised more funds when state
finances were more stable. Berger made his comments
at a ceremony in the national palace on the fifth
anniversary of a UN-backed "truth commission" report
that concluded the army targeted Maya Indians in
"scorched-earth" tactics to isolate rebel groups.
Hundreds of civil war survivors demonstrated in the
streets outside the palace on Wednesday to demand
the government accept the truth commission's
conclusion the civilian deaths amounted to genocide.
"It is impossible to re-launch the peace agreements
without taking into account the truth commission
recommendations, including justice for genocide,"
said Christina Laur, deputy director of the rights
group Caldh. The Caldh group is leading efforts to
build criminal cases against senior military
officers, including former dictator Efrain Rios
Montt, for crimes against humanity.
The new
government's head of security and defense, Otto
Perez Molina, himself a retired general, denied
genocide had taken place in Guatemala. "There was no
genocide because there was no attempt to exterminate
a race. This was a battleground for the United
States and Russia, and communism against capitalism.
We provided the dead and they provided the
ideology," he said.
- Reuters
Feb. 23, 2004 |
|
December
6,
2003
Murder
wave
targets
Guatemalan
women,
girls
A
huge
bundle
of
official
papers
sits
on
the
desk
of
Sandra
Zayas,
a
criminal
investigator
in
Guatemala
City.
...These
documents
tell
the
story
of a
wave
of
brutal
and
sadistic
murders
which
is
terrifying
Guatemala's
female
population.
Since
2001,
more
than
700
women
and
young
girls
have
been
killed
in
apparently
motiveless
attacks.
So
far
this
year
more
than
250
bodies
have
been
found....
Despite
making
a
number
of
arrests,
police
have
been
unable
to
stop
the
killings. |
|
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|
Forensic
Anthropologists Threatened in Guatemala.
- The American Academy for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS)
Mar. 21, 2002
|
| |
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|
2 - Special Coverage of Guatemala |
|
|
|
Indigenous Women and children in
Guatemala
experienced
one of the most horrendous acts
of genocide in the modern
Americas during the 1970s and
1980s.
Guatemala, and its leading Mayan
human Rights advocate Rigoberta
Menchu Tum today continue to
face anti-indigenous repression. |
 |
|
Rigoberta Menchu |
|
|
|
Guatemala - September 5, 2003
Mayan
Nobel Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu intimidated and
attacked in Guatemala.
Dear Activist,
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum and her
relative, Francisco Menchu, who works for the human
rights group the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation (FRMT)
in Guatemala, have been intimidated and attacked.
Amnesty International is concerned for all staff at the
Foundation in the capital, Guatemala City.
The FRMT, which works for the protection of human rights
and the rights of indigenous people, was established by
Rigoberta Menchu Tum after she won the Nobel Prize for
Peace in 1992. The FRMT has been working since December
1999 to prosecute a number of former Guatemalan
officials for genocide and other crimes against
humanity. As a result of its human rights work, the FRMT
has constantly experienced serious persecution and
harassment.
More information is
available at:
http://www.amnestyusa.org
Added on December 11, 2004
Information on this
harassment campaign In Spanish:
Human Rights Organizations Express
Support for Ms. Rigoberta Menchu Tum.
La señora Menchú Tum recibió insultos, amenazas, empujones
y escupitajos, sin que agentes de la Policía Nacional
Civil, apostados en el interior de la CC, hicieran nada
por controlar a los agresores. Al igual que en otras
ocasiones, la pasividad de las fuerzas de seguridad fue
cómplice de los atacantes en una situación que pudo
haber tenido consecuencias trágicas.
|
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Read about the life of
Rigoberta Menchu.
Native
Indians in Guatemala had no rights of
citizenship, which were restricted to people
of Spanish descent and were, therefore,
vulnerable to abuses by those in power. When
the military-led government and the wealthy
plantation owners started taking
Indian-occupied lands by force, Rigoberta's
father, Vincente, became a leader in the
peasant movement opposing this action. He
began a series of petitions and then,
protests, to secure these lands for the
indigenous people who had been living on
them until now. He was arrested and
imprisoned many times for his activities.
In 1979,
Rigoberta's sixteen-year-old brother,
Petrocinio, was kidnapped by soldiers,
tortured and burned alive while his family
watched. In 1980, Vincente, along with
thirty-eight other Indian leaders, died in a
fire at the Spanish embassy, while
protesting violations of Indian human rights
abuses. Rigoberta's mother, also a leader in
her community and a healer, was kidnapped,
raped, tortured and killed the following
year.
Rigoberta was
likewise active in her father's movement,
the United Peasant Committee. She was wanted
by the Guatemalan government, but after her
mother's death, she fled to Mexico. While in
Mexico, she dictated her autobiography,
I...Rigoberta Menchu
(1984), telling the world not only her own
story, but also about the lives of her
fellow Indians.
In 1992,
Rigoberta Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. She used the $1.2 million cash prize
to set up a foundation in her father's name
to continue the fight for human rights of
the indigenous people. Due to her effort,
the United Nations declared 1993 the
International Year for Indigenous
Populations.
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Background on Rigoberta Menchu and the anti-Mayan
genocide that took place in Guatemala in the late
1970's and throughout the 1980's.
The following
excerpt from Jorge Rogachevsky's review of
Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of
All Poor Guatemalans effectively rebuts, in
our opinion, the widespread criticism-of and
efforts to discredit the work of Rigoberta
Menchu.
During the early
1980's I read dozens of accurate news reports
for a local radio news program in Washington, DC
regarding the repeated massacres of entire
villages of Mayan peoples in Guatemala. A
total of 440 Mayan villages and towns were
completely destroyed by Guatemala's armed forces
in an ethnically motivated genocidal war
against the 60% majority Mayan population.
I also participated in numerous demonstrations
before the U.S. Congress demanding an end to the
genocide. Congress did finally vote an aid
cutoff.
Rigoberta Menchu's
activism, her writings and her receipt of the
Nobel Peace Prize were pivotal to bringing world
attention to bear on the mass-rape and
mass-murder with impunity of over 100,000 Mayan
people based solely upon their ethnicity.
This act of ethnic
cleansing has never been held to account in the
world's legal systems. Rigoberta Menchu
and her foundation are working constantly to
demand that the war criminals involved be
brought to justice. Rigoberta Menchu and
her staff are subjected to constant threats and
attacks as a result of their ongoing demands for
justice.
We at
LibertadLatina.org
unequivocally support the important work of
Rigoberta Menchu, 100%.
- Chuck Goolsby
"For the United States, it is important that I
state clearly that the support for military
forces or intelligence units which engaged in
violent and widespread repression ... was
wrong."
President Bill Clinton
March 10, 1999
Rigoberta Menchu
and the Story of
All Poor Guatemalans
By David Stoll Westview Press; 336 pp.
Review by Jorge Rogachevsky
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/menchu2.htm
Jorge Rogachevsky teaches Spanish and
Latin America Studies at St. Mary's College
of Maryland, and has published numerous
essays on Central American and Caribbean
writers. During 1993-94 he was a Fulbright
Fellow in Guatemala.
...What then should be made of Stoll's account?
First, let me say that I strongly urge people to
read Stoll's book since it raises challenges that
anyone concerned about the development of
truly representative societies in Latin America
needs to consider. A word of caution: The level
of detail that Stoll engages in creates a maze of
information that will no doubt overwhelm any
reader who is not well versed in the vicissitudes
of recent Guatemalan history. This could have
the unhappy result of generating a knee jerk
embrace or rejection of Stoll's account not on
the basis of understanding the issues involved,
but rather on the basis of personal prejudice.
With this in mind, the present review hopes to
make a contribution to the debate by
responding in order to the five elements of
Stoll's critique.
First, to Stoll's claims of biographical
inaccuracy
in the Menchu text, one can respond simply, "So
what?" Perhaps the English language title is
misleading to some readers. The Menchu text is
not an autobiography; it is a testimony, which is
an established genre within Latin American
letters.
The testimonial text uses the image of a
prototypic
person in order to convey an experience
characteristic of a major social group that is
marginalized by a dominant group. At the beginning
of the Menchu text we read the evocation of a
characteristic testimonial subject, "My story is
the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal
experience is the reality of a whole people"
(Burgos-Debray, Verso, 1984, 1). It is from
these lines that Stoll derives the title to his
book. The testimonio does not depend primarily
on
biographical accuracy, but rather on the
authenticity of its constructed subject. Does the
Menchu text construct an authentic subject?
According to Stoll, it does: "There is no doubt
about the most important points: that a
dictatorship massacred thousands of indigenous
peasants, that the victims included half of
Rigoberta's immediate family, that she fled to
Mexico to save her life, and that she joined a
revolutionary movement to liberate her country.
On these points, Rigoberta's account is beyond
challenge and deserves the attention it
receives."
In this regard it is not that important if
Rigoberta
was illiterate and did not speak Spanish, because
in fact the great majority of Indian women
living in
villages in Guatemala are illiterate and at best
speak a few words of Spanish. Is it really
critical if
Rigoberta's brother was burnt to death by the
Guatemalan army, as her text indicates, or whether
his body was burnt after he had been shot dead
by the same army, as some of Stoll's informants
claim?
I am personally not
troubled by the possible
"inaccuracy" here; having carried out many
interviews in the Ixcan region of Guatemala,
according to my informants the practice of
burning people alive--often whole groups of
people crowded into churches or community halls
was far from uncommon on the pelt of the
Guatemalan army. Regarding this there are also
ample published materials. Stoll's second
argument is more troubling. According to him the
image of land hungry peasants struggling with
lading
landowners to keep hold of a piece of land to eke
out a meager existence is not accurate. To
challenge this notion Stoll analyzes the land
struggles that Rigoberta Menchu's father,
Vicente Menchu, had been involved in before his
untimely death during an occupation of the
Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980.
According to Stoll, Vicente Menchu is not a
destitute landless peasant who must send his
family to work in sugar plantations on the coast
and who dies because of his struggles against
lading landowning oligarchs. Instead, we see an
image of Menchu as an entrepreneurial farmer
whose main conflicts are with other Indians, in
particular members of his wife's extended
family, and who dies because he was protesting
the disappearance of his son, Petrocinio.
...If it is true that the Guatemalan civil war
was, in
terms of human lives, a tremendously costly
historical process; if it is true that the
guerrilla movement must bear some of the
responsibility for the horrors of this period;
if it is furthermore true that the
insurrectional victory that the left was hoping
to achieve in the early 1980s did not come
about; it is still no less true that the civil
war has led to the opening up of a political
space for the majority of Guatemalans to assert
themselves in ways that were unthinkable
throughout the entire previous history of that
country. In this process Rigoberta Menchu Tum
has played a very
significant role as a spokesperson for the
indigenous community. If we wished to adduce
first causes for the recent genocidal experience
in Guatemala (always a dangerous exercise) it
seems more than curious that according to Stoll
this first cause should be laid at the feet of
the revolutionary left in Latin America. It
seems
much more appropriate, especially since Stoll's
account emanates from the U.S., to indict the U.S.
for the overthrow of a left liberal reformist
government in Guatemala in 1954. And this is
not, as many would claim, ancient history. It
happened within my own and Stoll's lifetime.
Neither does it suffice, as some might attempt,
to apologetically intone that mistakes were
made, but that was in the past (think more
recently of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama). The
result of U.S.
policy towards Latin America has been and
continues to be a lengthy catalogue of
atrocities.
Those of us who make our living studying and
explaining Latin America from within U.S.
academe should at least have the small courage
to bring this particular message home in a way
that hopefully at some point may make a
difference for all of those who have suffered
and died in significant measure because of U.S.
support--
overt and clandestine--of murderous regimes
throughout Latin America. |
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The systematic rape of
indigenous Mayan women and girls during Guatemala's
1980's Civil War
Indigenous
Guatemala
-- 1997 article --
Fifteen years ago, the women of Rio
Negro [the town of Black River], some of them pregnant,
were dragged from their homes, forced to march to the
top of a mountain, and there, along with their children,
were raped, tortured and killed.
"The soldiers and the (paramilitary civil defense)
patrollers started grabbing the girls and raping us,"
recalls Ana, one of a handful of survivors of the
massacre. "Only two soldiers raped me because my
grandmother was there to defend me. All the girls were
raped."
In total, 177 women and children died that day. The
village, one of the most far flung of Rabinal
municipality in Baja Verapaz province [Guatemala],
disappeared.
From: CERIGUA Weekly
Briefs,, No. 48, DEC. 11, 1997
By: Jennifer Harbury
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Indigenous Guatemala
-- 1998 article --
An award winning Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
radio news article on the Rio Negro massacre in
Guatemala.
Jesus Curozori is 26 years old - dark, short and slim,
with blue jeans and Reebok running shoes. The widows
speak to him with a respect not merited by his years.
That’s because Jesus Curozori is a survivor of a
massacre. It also happened 16 years ago, in the nearby
hamlet of Rio Negro.
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CLIP: (Jesus) They went house to
house and tied up all the women.
Then they made us walk up the
mountain. There were 70 women and
107 children. The army hit the women
and they hit me as well while I was
trying to carry my baby brother....
At the top of the hill, the civil
patrollers started to rape the young
girls. Then they began to kill the
women. At first they didn’t let us
see what was happening - they made
us keep our face to the ground. But
we heard when the women were choking
(pause). Anyone who tried to run
away, they shot with pistols.
-
CLIP: (La Rue) Often times people
today still feel we exaggerate out
stories - it happened with the
Holocaust in the Second World War -
people say they are exaggerations.
It takes a witness. And I think
Jesus’ testimony brings it very
clearly to blood and flesh.
-
CLIP: (Jesus) My small brother
needed to go to the bathroom. So we
went into the bush. That’s when I
ran into a soldier raping a young
girl. So the soldier yelled at me
"go back right now". When we came
out of the bush I came out right
where a civil patroller was killing
a women. He took his machete and
struck twice on her back. And then
he cut the woman’s throat.
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Casa-Alianza's work with Guatemalan
massacre victims
Bruce
Harris' Casa-Alianza is among the
organizations working even now, 20 years
after the fact, to reunite family
members who were kidnapped or otherwise
displaced when the mass rapes and mass
murders took place against indigenous
Guatemalans.
From Casa-Alianza: Guatemala: Interview
with Adriana Portillo Barto.
http://www.casa-alianza.org/EN/about/offices/guatemala/barto.shtml
The
daughters of Adriana Portillo Barto were
kidnapped and "disappeared" by
Guatemalan security forces in 1981, they
were just 9 and 10 years old. Adriana
recently returned to Guatemala in order
to continue her search for her children
whose lives she hopes were spared by the
authorities.
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From:
The 2002
Global Report on Gender Violence of the
Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium:
http://www.rhrc.org/resources/gbv/gbvlamerica.pdf
Women in
Guatemala lived under a pervasive threat
of sexual violence during the country's
long civil war. Sexual violence
was commonly used by counterinsurgency
forces during the 1980s: women were
kidnapped, tortured, and raped by the
military. A 1982 study cited by
researcher Virginia Rich found that the
overwhelming fear of most female
Guatemalan refugees was that of being
raped. Perpetrators acted with
relative impunity, committing sexual
assaults that were so widespread in the
highland [mountain] combat zones one
local official commented that it would
be difficult to find a Maya girl of
eleven to fifteen who had not been
raped." |
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President Bill Clinton
CNN - Facing anti-U.S.
protests over deportations, President Clinton admitted
Wednesday to Guatemalans that U.S. support for
"widespread repression" in their bloody 36-year civil
war was a mistake.
"For the United States, it
is important that I state clearly that the support for
military forces or intelligence units which engaged in
violent and widespread repression ... was wrong,"
Clinton said as he began a round-table discussion on
Guatemala's search for peace.
"The United States must not
repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead
continue to support the peace and reconciliation process
in Guatemala," he said on the third day of a Central
American tour.
CNN report - Clinton says U.S. did wrong in Central
American Wars - March 10, 1999
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Indigenous Guatemala
-- 2002 -- Tens
of thousands of women and girls, many of them indigenous Mayans,
face persistent discrimination and other abuses working in
Guatemala's export sector and as maids and servants in private
homes, according to a report released... by Human Rights Watch
(HRW).
[They]
often suffer sexual harassment and even assaults, said the
report, which cites the cases of 29 domestic workers, of whom
one third said they had been harassed sexually during their
work. Mayan
girls and women are particularly susceptible to verbal and
emotional abuse, even from children, as a result of the racism
that pervades much of Guatemala's non-Indian, or ladino,
population, according to the report.
Guatemalan Women Face Discrimination and Abuse in Job Market
Feb 12, 2002 - Jim Lobe,OneWorld US |
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Guatemala
Sexual harassment of
domestic workers, especially indigenous
workers, has been identified as a
"widespread phenomenon" throughout Latin
America.
..."The men of the house appropriated
the bodies of these women, and this
continues in the present day," according
to Amanda Pop Bol, a psychologist and
researcher.
[Note: This exploitation also targets
Latina and especially indigenous Latina
domestics across the United States. |
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Women
and girls in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala |
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View
Amnesty International's Guatemala Issues Page |
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Updated: March 14, 2011
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Mexico / Argentina
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Former Argentine spy Raúl Luis Martins Coggiola has been accused by his adult daughter, Lorena Martins, of running a sex trafficking ring based in Cancun, Mexico.
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El “caso Martins”, al Congreso de la Unión
La Comisión Especial de Lucha contra la Trata de Personas de la Cámara de Diputados del Congreso de la Unión, solicitó la expulsión de Raúl Luis Martins Coggiola del país, debido a que significa un riesgo para la sociedad mexicana su presencia por lucrar con seres humanos.
La titular de la comisión, Rosi Orozco, afirmó que es urgente concretar la expulsión del país del ciudadano argentino Raúl Luis Martins al señalar que esta persona junto con un socio "está lucrando con seres humanos", por lo que es necesario que las autoridades mexicanas investiguen a fondo su presunta participación como líder de una red de trata de personas en Cancún y la Riviera Maya...
La legisladora federal explicó que "es urgente que las autoridades tomen cartas en el asunto, pues no entiendo cómo pueden no darse cuenta que el mismo abogado que defendió a Succar Kuri es quien ha estado defendiendo a este señor", puntualizó. Indicó que el asunto debe ser investigado de manera exhaustiva ya que se tiene una procuradora comprometida contra la trata de personas, a quien no le tiembla la mano para castigar a personas que explotan a niñas, niños y jóvenes. De acuerdo con medios de comunicación argentinos Martins Coggiola es líder de una red de trata de personas en centros nocturnos en su país y en Cancún, donde jóvenes sudamericanas son enganchadas con promesas de trabajo y posteriormente las obligan a prostituirse.
Lea el artículo completo
Congress considers the case of Raúl Martins
The Special Commission for Combating Trafficking in Persons of the lower house of Congress has called for the expulsion of Argentine citizen Raul Luis Martins Coggiola, because his presence represents a risk to Mexican society due to his [ilicit] efforts to profit from human exploitation.
The head of the commission, Deputy Rosi Orozco, said it is urgent to realize the deportation of an Argentine Raul Luis Martins, stating that both he and a partner "are profiting from human beings," so it is necessary that the Mexican authorities thoroughly investigate his alleged role as the leader of a trafficking network based in [the beach resort cities of] Cancun and Riviera Maya.
Deputy Orozco explained that "it is urgent that the authorities take action on the matter...I do not understand how they have failed to realize that the lawyer who defended [infamous convicted millionaire child pornographer Jean] Succar Kuri is the same one who has been defending this man." She added that the matter should be investigated comprehensively, given that we now have a prosecutor who is dedicated to human trafficking cases and whose hand does not tremble when it comes to the task of punishing those who exploit children and youth. According to Argentine media reports, Martins Coggiola leads a human trafficking network based in nightclubs both in Argentina and in Cancun, Mexico, where young South American women are entrapped with false promises of jemployment, and are then forced into prostitution.
Read the full article
Por Esto
Feb. 2012
Mexico / Argentina
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Lorena Martins, daughter of Raul Martins
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Argentine ex-spy accused of sex trafficking
The daughter of former Argentine intelligence officer Raul Martins will arrive in Mexico this week with evidence that her father is running a sex trafficking ring in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, an activist told EFE Monday.
Lorena Martins will deliver the evidence to Mexican lawmaker Rosi Orozco, who chairs a special committee investigating human trafficking, Gustavo Vera, head of the NGO La Alameda, said.
Lorena has already filed a criminal complaint in Argentina accusing her father of luring Argentine women and girls to Cancun and then forcing them into prostitution.
Read the full article
IANS/EFE
Jan. 31, 2012
Mexico / Argentina
Prostitution Network Buenos Aries – Cancun case will go to the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico City
Lorena Martins daughter of Raul Martins, an Argentine former spy accused of managing a prostitution network in Cancun that has reached even the mayor of Buenos Aires of receiving money for his campaign from this illegal activity in Mexico, will flight to Mexico City to denounce her father before the Chamber of Deputies, reported the Excelsior.
Lorena Martins will present emails, cell phones and other materials as proofs of a prostitution network between Buenos Aires and Cancun that ties her father Raul Martins with several businessmen, politicians and high ranking official in Mexico.
Read the full article
The Yucatan Times
Jan. 31, 2012
Mexico / Argentina
Tratan de expulsarlo por la trata
La Comisión Especial de Lucha contra la Trata de Diputados de México pidió que Raúl Martins fuera deportado. Sus abogados apelaron. Lorena, su hija, entregó a la jueza Servini de Cubría el diario de una ex de su padre en el que relata la trata de dos niñas.
La Comisión Especial de Lucha contra la Trata de Personas de la Cámara de Diputados de México pidió ayer la expulsión de Raúl Martins. El pedido es un reflejo de la denuncia de su hija, Lorena, quien relató la forma en que la organización de su padre llevó chicas argentinas, brasileñas y de otras nacionalidades a ejercer la prostitución en Cancún. Ya en 2010, la multipremiada periodista mexicana Lydia Cacho, en su libro Esclavas del Poder, tituló el capítulo sobre Martins con el nombre de “El Intocable”. En Buenos Aires, Lorena se presentó ante la jueza María Romilda Servini de Cubría, que finalmente es quien investigará el caso, y le entregó pruebas manuscritas de un diario de una ex pareja de su padre en la que se relata cómo le trajeron dos chicas de 15 años. Otras evidencias fueron remitidas a la jueza por el procurador Esteban Righi.
Lorena Martins estuvo cinco días en México. Presentó las denuncias ante la Comisión de Lucha contra la Trata y también ante la Procuración General de la República. La joven fue recibida por la primera dama de México, Margarita Zavala, en la sede del gobierno azteca, de manera que el interés por el caso –adelantado en exclusiva por Página/12 en diciembre– llegó hasta el más alto nivel del país del Norte.
Ayer, la diputada Rosy Orozco, titular de la Comisión de Trata, pidió la expulsión de Martins de México, porque “está lucrando con seres humanos. Es urgente que las autoridades se den cuenta de que quien defiende a este señor es el mismo que defendió a Succar Kury”, un famoso pederasta, poderoso dueño de una cadena hotelera, que hasta decía en un video que mantenía relaciones sexuales con niñas, incluso de cinco años. El caso también fue investigado por Lydia Cacho en el libro Los demonios del Edén.
Lea el artículo completo
Congressional members call for the expulsion of Raúl Martins from Mexico
The Special Commission to Combat Human Trafficking in the Lower House of Congress has requested that Raúl Martins be deported. Martins' lawyers have appealed. Martins' daughter Lorena has turned over evidence to a Judge Servini de Cubría
The Special Commission for Combating Trafficking in Persons of the of the lower house of Congresss yesterday asked the expulsion of Raul Martins. The demand is a reaction to a complaint made by Martins' daughter Lorena, who recounted how her father's [ilicit human trafficking] organization has brought women from Argentina, Brazil and other nations to engage in prostitution in the city of Cancun, Mexico. In 2010, the award-winning Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, in her book Servants of Power, mentions Martins in a chapter called "The Untouchable." In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Lorena appeared before Judge Maria Romilda Servini de Cubria, who investigated the case, and provided evidence in the form of a handwritten diary written by a former girlfriend of her father, in which she relates how Raul Martins had [sex] trafficked two 15-year-old girls. Other evidence was submitted to the judge by the prosecutor Esteban Righi.
Lorraine Martins [recently] spent five days in Mexico. She presented her complaints before the Special Commission to Combat Human Trafficking [of the lower house of Congress], as well as before the federal Attorney General's Office. She was also received by the first lady of Mexico, Margarita Zavala in the seat of the Aztec [Mexican] government, showing that the case, which was releaved by Page12 reporters in December of 2011, had reached the highest level of attention. .
Yesterday, Deputy Rosi Orozco, president of the congressional anti-trafficking commission, called for the expulsion of Martins from Mexico, because, she said, "he is profiting from human exploitation. It is urgent that the authorities realize that the lawyer who is defending Martins also represented [convicted child sex trafficker] Jean Succar Kuri," an infamous pedophile and powerful hotel chain owner, who had once been recorded with hidden video admitting that he had engaged in sexual acts with girls as young as age five. The case was [first exposed by anti-trafficking activist and journalist] Lydia Cacho in her book The Demons of Eden.
Read the full article
Raúl Kollmann
Page 12
Feb. 09, 2012
Mexico / Argentina / Paraguay / Dominican Republic
Prostitution ring brought people from Argentina to Mexico
Buenos Aires.- A prostitution ring operated by former Argentine spy Raul Martins, reported yesterday in Mexico by his own daughter, started by advertising vacancies in local newspapers and culminated in the sexual exploitation of women in Cancun, Mexico.
Gustavo Vera, representative of La Alameda, a prestigious organization dedicated to denouncing people trafficking for labor and sexual slavery in the South American country, told Notimex details of the operation.
In fact, La Alameda published the photo of Martins with the mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, who is alleged to have received funding of the alleged pimp in his election campaign.
Read the full article
Cecilia Gonzalez
Notimex
Feb. 02, 2012
Mexico
Mayoría de víctimas de trata de personas en NY son hispanos
Nueva York - Más de la mitad de los afectados por la trata de personas y que viven en el estado de Nueva York son inmigrantes latinoamericanos obligados a realizar trabajos forzados o a prostituirse, según datos de la mayor agencia de servicios a víctimas de Estados Unidos.
Un 58% de los clientes de Safe Horizon, la agencia más importante de servicios de víctimas en el país, proviene de Latinoamérica, dijo la organización a The Associated Press. Aproximadamente un 24% de esas víctimas son mexicanos.
Las victimas de trata no tienen oportunidad de denunciar su situación por temor a ser deportados.
Lea el artículo completo
The majority of human trafficking victims in New York are Hispanic
New York - According to data gathered by the largest [non profit] victim service agency in the United States, more than half of New York ressidents who are victimized by human trafficking are Latino immigrants who are forced into prostitution or labor exploitation.
Some 58% of the clients of Safe Horizon were Latin Americans, the organization told The Associated Press. Approximately 24% of those victims were Mexican.
[Many immigrant] victims of trafficking have have not had an opportunity to speak out de to their fear of being deported.
Read the full article
The Associated Press
Feb. 04, 2012
New York City, USA / Mexico
Sex slave's story: Woman duped into leaving Mexico, forced to New York City's trafficking underworld
Sofia tells the Daily News how a "boyfriend" tricked her into leaving Mexico illegally -- and forced her into the life of a sex slave.
Her boyfriend told her they were leaving Mexico to live with his relatives in Queens, get restaurant jobs and build a happy life in America.
Instead, she was forced into a life of sex slavery — made to work as a “delivery girl” prostitute riding from john to john in a livery cab.
Read the full article
Erica Pearson
New York Daily News
Feb. 12, 2012
Mexico
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Mexican Member of Congress and leading anti-trafficking advocate Deputy Rosi Orozco
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Cada semana llegan a Tijuana decenas de niñas y mujeres de para ser forzadas a prostituirse: Rosi Orozco
Diputada Rosi Orozco: "cada semana llegan a Tijuana, Baja California, autobuses y aviones con decenas de niñas y mujeres de entre 3 a 65 años de edad para ser forzadas a prostituirse, refirió."
Distrito Federal.-La presidenta de la Comisión Especial para la Lucha contra la Trata de Personas, diputada Rosi Orozco (PAN), impulsa un punto de acuerdo para la colocación de un muro en las instalaciones del Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro, en el que se exhiban fotografías de niñas, niños y mujeres desaparecidos por posible trata de personas. Además, que el Canal del Congreso difunda, de manera permanente, cápsulas con las imágenes de las posibles víctimas, así como los datos de las instancias competentes para formular denuncias, como señal de solidaridad y efectivo auxilio, precisó la legisladora.
Señaló que la trata de personas con fines sexuales es el tercer negocio ilícito más lucrativo a nivel mundial, después del tráfico de drogas y armas; genera al año diez mil millones de dólares.
La gran mayoría de las víctimas provienen de contextos en los que difícilmente pueden conocer plenamente sus derechos, subrayó.
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Each week, dozens of girl children and women are trafficked into sexual slavery in [the Mexico/U.S.] border city of Tijuana
Deputy Rosi Orozco: "According to a study conducted by the College of the Northern Frontier (Colegio de la Frontera Norte), each week dozens of girls and women between the ages of 3 and 65 are brought by bus and by air to the city of Tijuana, in the state of Baja California so that they can be exploited sexually."
Mexico Ciy - National Actional Party deputy Rosi Orozco, who is President of the Special Commission for Combating Trafficking in Persons in the lower house of Congress, has introduced a resolution for the placement of a mural on the premises of the Legislative Palace of San Lazaro, where the photographs of children and women who have disappeared and may be vicims of human trafficking will be displayed. In addition, Deputy Orozco proposes that the Congress Channel permanently broadcast segments that show the images of possible victims, as well as instuctions for filing human trafficking complaints, as a practical act of solidarity and assistance.
Orozco noted that human trafficking for sexual purposes is the third most lucrative illicit business worldwide, after drugs and arms trafficking, generating a year ten billion dollars.
The vast majority of victims come from contexts [situations] where it is difficult for them to fully know their rights, she said.
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El Observador Diario
Feb. 04, 2012
California, USA / Mexico
Human Trafficking Continues To Rise Along San Diego-Tijuana Border
San Diego - Nearly every official who attended the second annual bi-national forum to address human trafficking in Chula Vista agreed: Human trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border is on the rise.
Government figures show about 18,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year. But officials also acknowledge there are many more victims hidden in communities who are sold for prostitution, labor or other services. Often times the illegal practice goes unreported.
The goal of Thursday's forum was to improve collaboration between agencies on both sides of the border to help crackdown on human trafficking and child prostitution.
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Marissa Cabrera
Fronteras Desk
Jan. 16, 2012
New York City, USA / Mexico
ICE agent cites 'disturbing and subhuman' methods used to trick young women into sex slavery
"It’s very difficult for us to break through to the average American, the average New Yorker and let them know that people in 2011 and 2012 are actually held against their will," says Special Agent in Charge James Hayes, Jr., of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
G-men and cops are busting twice as many human traffickers, but advocates say a sickening number of immigrants are being forced into prostitution in the city.
Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement racked up 172 arrests for trafficking in the metropolitan area, up from 75 the previous year.
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Erica Pearson
New York Daily News
Feb. 12, 2012
Mexico
Presentan marcas de abuso sexual, bebes recuperados en Jalisco
En entrevista con Hoy por Hoy con Salvador Camarena, Tomás Coronado Olmos, procurador de Justicia de Jalisco, ratificó que bebés adoptados ilegalmente en dicha entidad presentan huellas de abuso sexual.
“De los 11 menorcitos recuperados, seis presentan marcas de violencia sexual”.
“De los 11 menorcitos recuperados, seis presentan marcas de violencia sexual”.
Derivado de las investigaciones que realiza la PGR, dijo, hay nueve detenidos pero aun no se precisa si extranjeros de origen irlandés están relacionados con las agresiones sufridas por los menores.
“Los tenemos plenamente identificados y el embajador de Irlanda en México ha estado muy al pendiente. Una vez que concluya el proceso se determinará su situación jurídica”.
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Children put up for adoption in the cityof Jalisco show signs of sexual abuse
Jalisco state Attorney General Tomás Coronado Olmos has confirmed that the babies show signs of abuse.
"Six of 11 recovered todlers show signs of sexual abuse"
According to the federal Attorney General's Office, their investigations into this case have resulted in nine arrests. The authorities have not yet determined whether prospective adoptive parents from Ireland have any connection to the abuses.
"The [couples seeking adoption] have been identified. Ireland's ambassador in Mexico has been very attentive. After completion of the process the legal status of the prospective parents will be determined."
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wradio.com.mx
Feb. 08, 2012
Mexico
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Deputy Rosi Orozco at recent anti-trafficking forum
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México, segundo lugar en pornografía infantil a nivel mundial
El 45 por ciento de las víctimas de trata son indígenas, dijo la diputada Rosi Orozco. En tanto que Margarita Zavala consideró fundamental combatir de manera frontal este delito.
El 45 por ciento de las víctimas de trata son indígenas, dijo la diputada Rosi Orozco. En tanto que Margarita Zavala consideró fundamental combatir de manera frontal este delito.
México está ubicado en el segundo lugar en producción de pornografía infantil a nivel mundial, afirmó la presidenta de la Comisión Especial de Lucha contra la Trata de Personas, diputada panista Rosi Orozco al inaugurar el Foro Líderes de Opinión Contra la Trata de Personas.
En presencia de la presidenta del Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, Margarita Zavala Gómez del Campo, la legisladora subrayó que el delito de trata de personas ocupa el segundo lugar a nivel mundial, como el negocio ilícito más redituable para el crimen organizado, con 42 mil millones de dólares, y después está el de la venta de armas.
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Mexico holds second place globally in [the production of] child pornography
Some 45% of human trafficking victims in Mexico are indigenous, according to Deputy Rosi Orozco. First Lady Margarita Zavala declares that confronting trafficking head-on is fundamental.
Some 45% of trafficking victims are indigenous, according to Deputy Rosi Orozco.
According to National Action Party Depurty Rosi Orozco, president of the Special Committee to Combat Trafficking in Persons in the Lower House of Congress, Mexico holds a second-place position in the global production of child pornography. Deputy Orozco made these remarks as she opened the forum Opinion Leaders Against Human Trafficking. The event was attended by Mexico's First Lady Margarita Zavala Gómez del Campo, who is also the president of the National System for Integral Family Development (the nation's social services agency).
Depurty Orozco explained that the global human trafficking business brings in ilicit earning of $42 billion per year, making it the most profitable criminal enterprise after illegal arms trafficking.
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Grupo Fórmula
Jan. 24, 2012
Mexico
México, Segundo en Pornografia Infantil en el Mundo
Trata de personas y pornografía infantil, delitos graves… Al señalar que México es de los cinco países del orbe con el mayor problema en materia de trata de personas y segundo en pornografía infantil, la diputada panista Rosi Orozco previno que el delito de la trata, ya superó las ganancias que obtiene la delincuencia organizada por el tráfico de armas a nivel mundial, con más de 42 mil millones de dólares.
Al inaugurar el foro “Líderes de Opinión contra la Trata de Personas”, sostuvo que por todo ello, la Organización de las Naciones Unidas escogió a nuestro país para iniciar la campaña del Corazón Azul, donde se pretende sensibilizar a la población y a las autoridades para erradicar el delito.
En nuestro país, el negocio de la trata de personas sigue en ascenso; mientras que a la fecha, sólo 19 entidades del país tienen una Ley contra la Trata de Personas, y únicamente el Distrito Federal, Puebla y Chiapas han aplicado sentencias condenatorias.
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Mexico: The second largest producer of child pornography globally
Human trafficking and child pornography, felonies ... Noting that Mexico is among the five countries in the world with the biggest problem in terms of trafficking in child pornography and second, the National Action Party's Deputy Rosi Orozco, who is a member of the Lower House of Congress, has warned that the crime of trafficking has surpassed the profits earned through ilicit arms trafficking, and now amount to $42 billion dollars per year [in criminal profits].
During her presentation opening the forum Opinion Leaders Against Trafficking in Persons, Deputy Orozco added that the Organization of the United Nations chose Mexico to start its [global] Blue Heart campaign, which aims to sensitize the population and authorities with the goal of eradicating modern human slavery.
In our country, the business of trafficking in persons continues to rise, while to date only 19 states [out of 32 federated entities] in the country have a law against trafficking in persons, and only the Federal District [Mexico City], and the states of Puebla and Chiapas have have handed down sentences in criminal cases associated with these crimes.
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Jaime Arizmendi
Quadratín
Jan. 25, 2012
Mexico
Mexico No. 2 Producer Of Child Porn, Lawmakers Say
Mexico is the world's No. 2 producer of child pornography and is classified as a source, transit and destination country for people traffickers involved in sexual exploitation, lawmakers said.
Child pornography is the No. 2 illegal business, trailing only drug trafficking, and generates $42 billion annually, Special Committee to Fight People Trafficking chairwoman Rosi Orozco said.
Indians account for about 45 percent of the victims, Orozco, a member of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, said at the start of a forum in Mexico City on people trafficking.
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EFE
Jan. 26, 2012
Mexico
Estados más pobres, vulnerables a trata de personas: PAN
La diputada Rosi Orozco, apuntó que en el tema de la trata de personas, ahora se ha hecho mucha conciencia, luego que tiempo atrás se veía una marcada ignorancia de lo que sucedía. Asimismo, dijo ya hay acciones encaminadas a terminar con la pornografía infantil, "con los ciberdelitos que agreden tan fuertemente a los niños, niñas y jóvenes".
Rosi Orozco, diputada del PAN quien ha buscado combatir desde tiempo atrás la trata de personas, destacó el encuentro que se llevó a cabo el día de ayer en donde una chica por primera vez dio su testimonio sin cubrirse el rostro.
Explicó que la joven, quien en el libro "Del cielo al infierno", narró su historia de cómo la habían enganchado a través de enamoramiento, con el que se sentía en el cielo al estar con un príncipe, para después bajar a lo peor de un infierno de vida, de golpes para obligarla a prostituirse.
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Mexico's poorest states are vulnerable to human trafficking: National Action Party
During a recent event focused on the topic of human trafficking in Mexico, Congresswoman Rosi Orozco of the National Action Party stated that significant public awareness of the issue has now been acheived, after a period in which ignorance about the facts had prevailed. She added legislation is being considered by Congress that will put an end to child pornography and "cybercrimes that seriously assault children and youth." First Lady Margarita Zavala and the media also attended.
Deputy Orozco, who has had long sought to combat human trafficking, said the meeting that was held yesterday included for the first time testimony by a victim who appeared without hiding her face.
Deputy Orozco explained that the youth, who's story is told in Orozco's book "From Heaven to Hell", related the story of how she was entrapped by a trafficker who pretended to fall in love with her. She felt that she was in heaven with her prince. Later, she fell into the worst depths of hell-on-earth when the same man beat her to force her into prostitution.
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Paola Rojas
Grupo Fòrmula
Jan. 25, 2012
Mexico
Avances, no descartan riesgos de frenar ley
No se descartan riesgos en San Lázaro que frenen la aprobación de la Ley para Prevenir, Sancionar y Erradicar la Trata de Personas y los Delitos Relacionados, toda vez que al momento sólo 104 legisladores de todos los partidos la han avalado, todavía falta trecho por andar, y aunque “está bastante acordada”, todos los esfuerzos se hacen para que avance, a fin de combatir el lacerante comercio y explotación sexual de seres humanos: niñas, niños y mujeres.
La diputada del PAN Rosi Orozco, presidenta de la Comisión Especial de Lucha Contra la Trata de Personas aclaró: “no he politizado ninguna situación, realmente va más allá de los partidos, estamos hablando de nuestros mexicanos, de nuestros niñas y niños y protegerlos a ellos no tiene colores”, ya que es una esclavitud en pleno siglo XXI, advirtió en entrevista durante la sesión en San Lázaro.
Confió que en este último periodo ordinario de la LXI Legislatura salga la Ley para Prevenir, Sancionar y Erradicar la Trata de Personas, “es una ley que no tiene por qué no salir, la gente que está en las comisiones está de acuerdo en que tengamos una Ley General, lo difícil fue sacar la reforma al artículo 73 y eso, pues ya se logró” apunta la legisladora albiceleste.
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Human trafficking legislation advances in Congress, members decline to reveal hidden threats to passage
Congressional lawmakers have declined to reveal the sources of hidden influences that are putting efforts to pass the proposed Law on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Trafficking in Persons and Related Crimes at risk. Currently, only 104 federal lawmakers from across Mexico's political parties have endorsed the proposal. Although significant work needs to be accomplished to achieve passage of the bill, basic agreement has been reached [on the need for an enforceable federal anti-trafficking law]. All possible efforts are being made to advance the bill, which will allow [a more effective federal effort to fight the damaging effects of the labor and sexual exploitation of girls, boys and women].
During an interview held in San Lazaro (the seat of Congress), National Action Party (PAN) Deputy Rosi Orozco, who is the president of the Special Committee to Combat Human Trafficking in the lower house of Congress said: "I have not politicized this effort. It [is a campaign that] really goes beyond the [interests of individual political] parties. What we are talking about here are our Mexican people, our children. They don't have colors [political affiliations]." She added that this [crisis] is a 21st Century form of slavery.
Deputy Orozco added that she hopes that, during the latter period of the 61st [LXI] Legislature's regular session, the Law to Prevent, Punish and Erradicate Human Trafficking will be passed." She noted that there is no reason why the bill should not pass, given that the members of the relevant congressional commissions [committees] are in agreement that we should have a general law against trafficking [a general law is the only form of federal law that may actually be enforced by federal authorities in the states]. The hardest part was achieving the reform of Article 73, said Orozco [During 2011, President Felipe Calderón achieved the passage of amendments to Articles 19, 20 and 73 of the Mexican Constitution to remove certain obstacles to the prosecution of human trafficking cases].
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Luz María Alonso Sánchez
El Punto Critico
Feb. 03, 2012
Mexico
Ritmoson combate con música trata de personas
Crean campaña para generar conciencia del delito y cerrarán con un concierto
El tercer delito más lucrativo en México y otros países es la trata de personas, por ello, crear conciencia entre los jóvenes y niños para no ser víctimas de él es la pretensión del canal Ritmoson Latino.
Con la campaña Música libre, la señal internacional puso a andar su tercera iniciativa social, esta vez para combatir un “grave problema”.
Ricky Martin, Calle 13, Selena Gomez y Kinky, entre otros artistas, hacen el llamado que a partir de este mes y hasta julio próximo se transmitirá por televisión restringida y redes sociales oficiales.
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Ritmoson TV channel to run anti-trafficking campaign
The third most lucrative crime in Mexico and other countries is human trafficking. Therefore, the Latino Ritmoson channel, which is a part of the Televisa network, has created a trafficking prevention campaign to raise awareness among children and youth.
The international channel's Free Music campaign is its third social initiative, directed, this time, at addressing a "grave problem."
Performing artists] Ricky Martin, Calle 13, Selena Gomez. Kinky, among other artists will promote the campaign between now and July of 2012. It will be broadcast on television and by way of social media networks.
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Josue Fabián Arellano M.
El Universal
Feb. 10, 2012
California, USA / Mexico
Bill Aims to Make It Easier to Prosecute Child Sex Traffickers
As child sex trafficking expands as a source of money for San Diego gangs, there’s an effort to make it easier for prosecutors to go after pimps.
The way California law is written now, prosecutors have to prove force or coercion when a sex trafficking victim is younger than 18. Because so many victims are lured by pimps through emotional bribery or promises of work, it’s been difficult for prosecutors to prove trafficking.
Susan Munsey is with the nonprofit group Generate Hope which helps trafficking victims get back on their feet. She said Assembly Bill 90, which changes the standard of proof from forced to encouraged or persuaded, is badly needed.
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Amita Sharma
Fronteras Desk
Aug..12, 2011
Mexico
Lideraba "La Niurka" red de prostitución de menores
Tijuana.- Una orden de aprehensión por el presunto delito de trata de personas le fue cumplimentada a María Guadalupe Román Valenzuela, alias "La Niurka", señalada como quien lideraba una red de prostitución con mujeres menores de edad desde el año 2005.
Fueron agentes de la Policía Estatal Preventiva quienes finalmente le concretaron el mandato judicial que pesaba en su contra desde el año 2007 por el delito de lenocinio, cuya figura delictiva fue cambiada con motivo de la entrada en vigor de la Ley Contra la Trata de Personas en el estado.
La Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Estatal informó que la detención de la fémina, también conocida como "La Tía", se llevó a cabo la tarde del domingo al ubicarla tras semanas de investigación en el fraccionamiento La Bodega, en la ciudad de Mexicali.
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Police arrest child sex trafficker known as "La Niurka"
The city of Tijuana - An arrest warrant for the alleged crime of human trafficking ihas been carried out against Maria Guadalupe Roman Valenzuela, also known as "The Niurka." Authorities indicate that since 2005, Roman Valenzuela has lead a prostitution ring that exploits underage girls.
The [Baja California] State Preventive Police (SSPE) arrested Roman Valenzuela, who had been wanted since 2007 on charges of pimping. The charges were later modified after the enactment of the state's Law Against Human Trafficking.
The State Secretariat of Public Security reported that the arrest of the suspect, who also went by the name of "Auntie," took place Sunday afternoon following a weeks-long investigation in the La Bodega neighborhood in the city of Mexicali.
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Manuel Cordero
El Sol de Tijuana
Jan. 17, 2012
Mexico
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Journalist, women's center director and
anti-trafficking advocate Lydia Cacho
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Lydia Cacho wins Olof Palme Prize 2011
Lydia Cacho, Mexican journalist and writer, and Roberto Saviano, Italian author, were awarded with Olof Palme Prize 2011. They both spoke about justice and human rights issues in their native countries with a great deal of courage, and currently they are living under threats and persecution.
In 2009, Lydia Cacho received a lot of attention at the Göteborg Book Fair, where she presented the translated version of her book "I will not let myself be intimidated". She wrote it based on her life experience in Mexico – her motherland, where she is known for her accusations of corruption among Mexican politicians and businessmen.
In 2005, by having written "Demons of Eden", she exposed paedophile Succar Kuri's network in Cancun and named several accomplices among high-ranking politicians and businessmen. Since that moment the author has lived under constant death threats. Besides being an author and having written seven books in total, since 2000, Lydia Cacho has been sheltering vulnerable women and children in Cancún, where they get an opportunity to retreat.
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Göteborg Book Fair
Jan. 30, 2012
Peru
Lanzan campaña contra la trata de menores en la minería informal
La ONG Save The Children y la Unión Europea lanzaron este fin de semana una intensa campaña para erradicar la explotación sexual y laboral de niños y adolescentes en la minería informal en Madre de Dios (selva sur), una de las regiones más pobres de Perú.
La ONG Save The Children y la Unión Europea lanzaron este fin de semana una intensa campaña para erradicar la explotación sexual y laboral de niños y adolescentes en la minería informal en Madre de Dios (selva sur), una de las regiones más pobres de Perú.
"Una de las metas de la campaña es recuperar con apoyo de la policía y fiscalía a unos mil niños, niñas y adolescentes explotadas sexual y laboralmente en campamentos de la minería informal en Madre de Dios", dijo a la AFP Teresa Carpio Villegas, representante de Save The Children en Perú.
En los campamentos las menores son explotadas en cantinas convertidas en prostíbulos conocidos como 'prostibares', así como en, entre otras actividades, en la extracción de oro y la servidumbre, señaló Carpio.
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NGO launches [million dollar] campaign against child trafficking in Peru's remote informal mining camps
THe NGO Save the Children and the Earopean Union are launching a compaign this week to intensity efforts to
eradicate the sexual and labor exploitation of children and youth in the informal mining camps of Madre de Dios, one of Peru's poorest regions.
The NGO Save The Children and the European Union this weekend launched an intensive campaign to eradicate sexual and labor exploitation of children and adolescents in the informal mining region of Madre de Dios (Mother of God), one of the poorest regions of Peru.
"One of the goals of the campaign is to organize police and prosecutorial support to rescue approximately 1,000 children and teens who are exploited for sex and labor in informal mining camps of the Madre de Dios," he told AFP Teresa Carpio Villegas, who Save the Children's representative in Peru.
In the mining camps, children are exploited in bars that have been converted into brothels and are known as 'prostibars.' Minors are also exploited to work in gold mining and [other forms of] servitude, Carpio said.
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Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Jan. 30, 2012
Indigenous Mexico
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Indigenous women are marginalized in Mexican society.
Comprising 15-to30 percent of the population, they and their
underage daughters make up an estimated 45% of all human trafficking
victims in the Aztec nation (Mexico).
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Voces del pueblo indígena
México-. La situación de asimetría y desigualdad ha hecho que históricamente los pueblos indígenas en México sean marginados y excluidos de los procesos de toma de decisiones en el país.
En la actualidad, con una población que se acerca a los 16 millones de habitantes, de ellos más de mitad mujeres, de acuerdo con estimados de la Movimiento Indígena Nacional (MIN), estos grupos se localizan, fundamentalmente en los estados de Yucatán (59 por ciento) y Oaxaca (48 por ciento).
También en Quintana Roo (39), Chiapas (28), Campeche (27), Hidalgo (24), Puebla (19), Guerrero (17), San Luis Potosí (15) y Veracruz (15).
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Voices of indigenous peoples
Conditions of inequality have historically resulted in the indigenous peoples being marginalized and excluded from the decision making process in Mexico.
Today, with their population is approaching 16 million people. Over half of them are women, according to estimates from the National Indigenous Movement (MIN). These groups are located mainly in the states of Yucatan (where they are 59% of the state's total population) and Oaxaca (where they are 48%).
The indigenous population is also significant in several other states: Quintana Roo (39%), Chiapas (28%), Campeche (27%), Hidalgo (24%), Puebla (19%), Guerrero (17%), San Luis Potosi (15%) and Veracruz (15%).
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Deisy Francis Mexidor
Prensa Latina
Mexico
Agents save 13 from sex slavery in Mexican bar
The city of San cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas state - Investigators say they have rescued a group of 13 women and girls, mostly from Central America, who were forced to have sex with clients at a bar in southern Mexico.
Chiapas state prosecutor Miguel Hernandez says at least half of the 13 women were minors, and 10 were from Central America.
Hernandez and other agents raided the bar in the town of Teopisca Saturday and arrested the manager, 42-year-old Mauri Diaz, on human trafficking, prostitution and corruption of minors charges.
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The Associated Press
Feb. 4, 2012
Mexico
Mexico unravels child trafficking ring
Zapopan - The Irish couples ensnared in an apparent illegal adoption ring in western Mexico thought they were involved in a legal process and are devastated by allegations organisers were trafficking in children, the families said.
"All the families have valid declarations to adopt from Mexico as issued by the Adoption Authority of Ireland," they said in a statement, which was read over the phone to The Associated Press by their lawyer in Mexico, Carlos Montoya.
Prosecutors in Mexico contend the traffickers tricked destitute young Mexican women trying to earn more for their children and childless Irish couples desperate to become parents.
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News24
Jan. 24, 2012
Mexico / Central America
Rescatan a centroamericanos víctimas del tráfico de personas
Some 73 undocumented Central Americans have been located and rescued by army units after being held in 'safe houses' that were presumably owned by human traffickers.
El Ejército mexicano encontró a 73 inmigrantes indocumentados en presuntas casas de traficantes de personas en el nororiental estado de Tamaulipas, informó el jueves la Secretaría de la Defensa.
La acción se realizó el martes en la ciudad de Reynosa "de manera coordinada, simultánea y sorpresiva" y permitió la detención de cuatro personas. Entre los indocumentados, cuyas nacionalidades no se dieron a conocer, había 18 menores de edad, informó DPA.
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Central American human trafficking victims are rescued
Se trata de 73 indocumentados localizados por el ejército en casas que presuntamente pertenecen a traficantes de seres humanos.
The Mexican army has found 73 illegal immigrants in alleged human trafficking safe houses located in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, the Secretary of Defense announced Thursday.
The action took place on Tuesday in the city of Reynosa "in a coordinated suprise raid" that led to the arrest of four people. Among the undocumented, whose nationalities were not released, there were 18 children.
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El Universal
Feb. 10, 2012
The World
UNODC: The Role of Corruption in Trafficking in Persons
The UNODC report focuses on the close interrelation between corruption and human trafficking, critiquing existing international legal instruments that deal only indirectly with this problem, and providing recommendations on how to strengthen these tools.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime outlines the impetus for its report:
Trafficking in persons and corruption are closely linked criminal activities, whose interrelation is frequently referred to in international fora. Yet, the correlation between the two phenomena, and the actual impact of corruption on trafficking in persons, are generally neglected in the development and implementation of anti-human trafficking policies and measures. This lack of attention may substantially undermine initiatives to combat trafficking in persons and prevent the customization of responses as needed. Only after recognizing the existence and the effects of corruption in the context of human trafficking, can the challenges posed by it be met.
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Insight Crime
Feb. 13, 2012
Mexico
Oklahoma Human Trafficking Operation May Have Ties To Mexican Cartels
Oklahoma City - We're learning more about a human trafficking operation busted last week in both Oklahoma City and Tulsa. It appears to have ties to a Mexican human trafficking ring, which are said to be some of the most violent and brutal.
A search warrant obtained by News 9 reveals a victim of human trafficking, who was rescued in Tulsa, said she was also held against her will in Oklahoma City.
She told investigators she was held at the apartments off S.W. 59th Street and Harvey during the first part of January, and that she and others were forced to have sex with multiple strange men.
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Adrianna Iwasinski
Oklahoma News 6
Feb. 06, 2012
Mexico
Pretenden regular pornografía en Baja California
Baja california es uno de los estados que ofrece más turismo sexual en México, es por esto que el Partido Encuentro Social presentará este mes una iniciativa ante el Congreso del Estado para que las compañías proveedoras de internet regulen el consumo de la pornografía.
La iniciativa pretende regular el uso de internet en el aparto de Gobierno y el sector educativo, además el que vende internet debe cuidar el acceso de los menores el uso de la pornografía reveló el presidente Estatal del PES, Javier Peña García.
“Es una iniciativa ciudadana, pero estamos invitando a las diferentes fracciones de los partidos a que se adhieran en esto para que salga en común acuerdo con todos los partidos de Baja California”, adelantó.
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Legislators work to regulate online pornography in Baja California state
Baja California is one states that offers the most sex tourism in Mexico, which is why the Social Encounter Party will, later this month, present a proposal to the State Congress that will require Internet service provider companies to regulated the consumption of pornography.
The initiative seeks to regulate Internet use in government agencies and in the education sector. The measure will also insist that companies that provide Internet services take measures to limit that access of minors to pornography. which also sells Internet access to take care of children using pornography revealed the leader of the state branch of the Social Encounter Party (PES), Javier García Peña.
"It's a citizens' initiative, but we are inviting the different political parties in Baja California to agree to this so that we may present a common front on the issue," he stated.
Read the full article
Uni Rdio Informa
Feb. 13, 2012
Bolivia
In Bolivia, Many Indigenous Communities Turn to Vigilantism to Fight Crime
If a man kills another man in the harsh high plains of Jesús de Machaca or the lush lowlands of Beni, the people who catch him might not call the police. Instead they might call a meeting.
Far from courthouses and police stations that may not know their languages, and despite having no jails to lock up criminals, remote villagers in Bolivia have quietly kept justice in their own hands for centuries, handling everything from malicious gossip to murder. They have demanded fines, doled out whippings, even banished people from the pueblo. These community courts have sometimes been criticized for trampling on human rights, especially when it comes to the rights of women, but indigenous leaders say they work better for them than the regular system.
To press a case in the ordinary courts, “you must hire a lawyer and spend money on paperwork,” says Justina Vélez, who represents Pando, the northernmost province of Bolivia, in an organization of female peasants named for the indigenous hero Bartolina Sisa. “All the courthouses are located in the main cities.… The indigenous authorities are right here where we live.”
Read the full article
Emily Alpert
Indian Country Today
Feb. 08, 2012
Mexico
Mexico Official Admits Some Areas Out of Government Control
At a military ceremony yesterday, Mexican Defense Minister Guillermo Galvan Galva described the national security situation in stark terms. “Clearly, in some sectors of the country public security has been completely overrun,” said Galvan, adding that “it should be recognized that national security is seriously threatened.” He went on to say that organized crime in the country has managed to penetrate not only society, but also the country’s state institutions.
Galvan also endorsed the military’s role in combating insecurity, asserting that although they have a responsibility to acknowledge that “there have been mistakes,” the armed forces have an “unrestricted” respect for human rights.
InSight Crime Analysis
Read the full article
Geoffrey Ramsey
InSight Crime
Feb. 10, 2012
Mexico
Operan 47 redes de trata de personas en México
Diputados piden a los tres órdenes de gobierno crear políticas adecuadas en la materia
La Cámara de Diputados pidió a los tres órdenes de gobiernos que combatan de manera integral el delito de trata de personas, debido a que en México operan al menos 47 redes que se dedican a este ilícito, de acuerdo con datos de la Red Nacional de Refugios.
Según cifras de la red, al año hay 800 mil adultos y 20 mil menores víctimas de este delito cuyas ganancias oscilan entre los 372 mil millones de pesos.
Las rutas incluyen los estados de Veracruz, Chiapas, Puebla, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, Baja California, Chihuahua, Guerrero y Quintana Roo, así como países centroamericanos como Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador.
Lea el artículo completo
Some 47 human trafficking networks are operating in Mexico
Congressional deputies ask the three branches of government to develop adequate policies to address human trafficking
Mexico's Lower House of Congress has asked the three branches of government (legislative, judicial and executive) to integrate their efforts to fight human trafficking, given that at least 47 trafficking networks exist in the nation, according to data released by the National Network of Refuges.
According to the Network, some 800,000 adults and 20,000 children are entrapped by modern human slavery each year, resulting in criminal earnings of some 372 million Mexican pesos ($28 million US dollars).
Trafficking routes exist in the Mexican states of Veracruz, Chiapas, Puebla, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, Baja California, Chihuahua, Guerrero and Quintana Roo, as well as in Central American countries including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Read the full article
Israel Navarro and José Luis Martínez
Milenio
Feb. 05, 2012
Costa Rica
Costa Rica lags in sex-trafficking fight
“Mariel” became a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 17. She managed to escape, but still suffers anxiety and fear. Rahab Foundation is helping her recover.
“Mariel” fears that she will be kidnapped again.
At 17, she was lured into human trafficking by an acquaintance with the promise of work. Her captor used false documents to take her from Costa Rica across the border to Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.
Read the full article
Dominique Farrell
The Tico TImes
Jan. 27, 2012
Costa Rica
La pornografía infantil existe en Costa Rica
Adultos sedientos de sentir y tocar la piel de un cuerpo junto al suyo, deseosos de pagar sumas de dinero por alquilar un rato de confort, quizás hasta hacer una película o tomar unas fotos, pero no de cualquier cuerpo ni de cualquier persona, sino de un niño o una niña costarricense.
La explotación sexual comercial -también llamada prostitución infantil- es un flagelo social que existe en Costa Rica y se concentra mayoritariamente en las zonas fronterizas y las costas, según cuentan organizaciones no gubernamentales que han dado seguimiento a los casos esta ha desembocado en una riada de producción de pornografía infantil en la que se utilizan niños y niñas costarricenses.
Según Rocío Rodríguez directora de Alianza por tus Derechos, en la actualidad las zonas más plagadas de casos –tanto de explotación sexual comercial como de pornografía- son Puntarenas, Guanacaste y Limón.
Lea el artículo completo
Child pornography exists in Costa Rica
Hungry adults feel and touch the skin of a body against thiers, eager to pay money to rent a bit of comfort, perhaps even make a movie or take some pictures, but not of any body or any person, but a boy or a girl in Costa Rica.
Commercial sexual exploitation, which is also known as child prostitution, is a social scourge that exists in Costa Rica. It is concentrated along the nation's borders and coasts, accourding to non governmental organizations who support victims. This reality has led to a flood in the production of child pornography that exploits Costa Rican children.
According to Rocio Rodriguez director of the NGO Alliance for your Rights (Alianza por tus Derechos), the cities of Puntarenas, Guanacaste and Limón are the regions that are the most plagued by both commercial sexual exploitation and pornography.
Read the full article
Daniela Araya
Costa Rica Hoy
Feb. 16, 2012
Mexico
Arrestan a pastor por violar niñas
De la secta Sendero de Luz.. Abusó de ellas durante años con la complacencia de sus padres
Delicias, Chihuahua.- Años de un sufrimiento en silencio fueron vividos por dos niñas desde que tenían 11 años de edad, pues un pastor de la denominada Iglesia Sendero de Luz les decía que "para ser siervas de Dios tenían que hacerle todo lo que les indicara", y eso incluía tener relaciones sexuales con él, acciones de las cuales aparentemente su padres estaban enterados.
Las familias de ambas sabían lo que pasaba con el religioso, pero su fanatismo les impedía actuar en su contra, según las jóvenes de ahora 22 años de edad, quienes comentaron que los abusos comenzaron desde el año 2001 y continuaron durante 9 años, hasta que se mudaron a la capital de estado.
Tras la denuncia impuesta por parte de las afectadas, agentes investigadores detuvieron mediante una orden de aprehensión a José Manuel Herrera Lerma, de 59 años, líder del grupo religioso previamente señalado.
Lea el artículo completo
Pastor is arrested on charges of child rape
Path of Light sect leader abused two girls over a number of years with the knowledge of the victim's parents
The city of Delicias in Chihuahua state - Two girls suffered years of sexual abuse in silence, from the time they were age 11, at the hands of their church pastor. The reverend of the Path of Light church told the girls that, "to be servants of God they had to do everything that he told them to do," and that included having sex with him. The parents were apparently aware of the pastor's behavior with their daughters.
The families of both girls knew what was happening with the pastor, but their religious fervor prevented them from acting against him. The victims, who are now both age 22, have stated that the abuse began in 2001 and continued for 9 years, until [the family] moved to the state capital.
In response to the complaint filed by the victims, investigative agents served an arrest warrant on José Manuel Herrera Lerma, age 59.
Read the full article
Marisol Marín
oem.com.mx
Feb. 08, 2012
Mexico
Children in Mexican adoption scam show signs of sexual abuse
Ten children were seized by authorities in the western Mexican city of Guadalajara after they uncovered the apparent child trafficking scam last weekend.
Eleven Irish couples hoping to adopt children in the country have been caught up in the investigation.
“There are four children who show signs of having been abused (sexually), perhaps not in a violent way but there are signs (of abuse),” the Jalisco state attorney general Tomas Coronado told reporters today.
Read the full article
TheJournal.ie
Jan. 12, 2012
Ecuador
148 millones invirtió el Gobierno en implementación de tres mil centros infantiles
Como parte de este proceso, 242 profesionales entre sicopedagogas, parvularias, tecnólogas en educación y especialistas en desarrollo infantil se incorporaron al trabajo en la provincia costera del Guayas, luego de un periodo de selección y capacitación.
Alrededor de 500 mil niños en Ecuador, entre 0 y 5 años, son atendidos por el Ministerio de Inclusión Económica y Social (MIES), en los Centros del Buen Vivir y el programa “Creciendo con nuestros hijos”.
La ministra de Inclusión Económica y Social, Ximena Ponce, indicó que el desarrollo infantil es uno de los seis proyectos de inversión prioritarios del gobierno del presidente Rafael Correa.
La meta es implementar un profesional por cada Centro para garantizar una conducción técnica en sus tres componentes: salud, educación y protección, especialmente en niños de 0 a 3 años.
Lea el artículo completo
Government invests $148 million to implement 3,000 children's centers across the country
As part of the initiative, 242 professionals have joined the effort in the key coastal province of Guayas
About 500,000 children, from newborns to age 5 are served by Ecuador's Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES), through its Good Living Centers and by way of its program "Growing with our children."
Minister of Economic and Social Inclusion Ximena Ponce indicated that child development is one of six priority investment projects for the government of President Rafael Correa.
The goal is to provide one professional worker for each center to ensure technical leadership in its three focus areas: health, education and protection. The initiative is especially geared toward assisting children from 0 to 3 years of age.
Read the full article
eldiario.com.ec
Feb. 08, 2012
Guatemala
Former Guatemala dictator to give testimony in genocide trial
Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will be made to testify at his genocide trial, according to a statement by judicial officials on Saturday. Rios Montt was in control of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983 as a result of a coup and is being charged with crimes against humanity and genocide during his rule. He was protected from prosecution until this month because he was serving in congress. Rios Montt said he would cooperate with the court [EFE report, in Spanish]. The case involves at least 1,771 deaths and 1,400 human rights violations during the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] with much of the violations occurring during Rios Montt's rule.
The Guatemalan civil war resulted in more than 200,000 deaths, mostly among Guatemala's large indigenous Mayan population. According to a UN report [text, in Spanish] released in 1999, the military was responsible for 95 percent of those deaths. In response to these violations, the Guatemalan government founded the National Compensation Program (PNR) in 2003 to deal with claims by civilians affected by the civil war. The PNR, after setting up its administrative structure, has begun to use its $40 million budget to work through a backlog of more than 98,000 civilian complaints. Four former soldiers and two former police officers [JURIST reports] have already been convicted in relation to these crime. Spain attempted to extradite Rios Montt [JURIST report] in 2008, but failed due to a lack of jurisdiction.
Read the full article
Matthew Pomy
Jurist
Jan. 22, 2012
Mexico
Dictan prisión contra tres hombres por trata de personas en Chiapas
Un juez penal dictó auto de formal prisión por el delito de trata de personas en contra de tres hombres que operaban un bar clandestino en San Cristóbal de las Casas, donde fueron rescatadas cuatro menores víctimas.
La Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado (PGJE) informó que los presuntos responsables Abraham “N”, propietario del negocio, el encargado Rosendo “N” y el vigilante Diego “N”, son procesados en el centro penitenciario ” El Amate”.
Agentes de la Fiscalía Especializada en Asuntos Relevantes ejecutaron un operativo en el bar ” La Sirena”, donde rescataron a cuatro menores, sometidas a trata de personas y corrupción de menores.
En el sitio fueron sorprendidos también dos menores de edad que ingerían alcohol, lo que constituye una violación a las leyes de salud.
Lea el artículo completo
Three men are sentenced to prison in [the southern border state of] Chiapas
I jusdge has sentenced three men to prison on human trafficking charges who operated a clandestine bar in the cisty of San Cristóbal de las Casas. Four minors had been rescued from the bar.
The Office of the Chiapas State Attorney General (PGJE) has announced that three suspects, Abraham "N," a bar owner, bar manager Rosendo "N" and a guard, Diego "N," have been detained and sent to the "El Amate" prison.
Agents of the Special Prosecutor's Office for Relevant Issues executed an operation at the bar "La Sirena" (the Siren), where they rescued four children who had been subjected to the crimes of human trafficking and the corruption of minors.
The authorities also encountered two other youth who were drinking alcohol in violation of health laws.
Read the full article
Provincia.com.mx
Feb. 08, 2012
Peru
Piden cadena perpetua para acusado de violar a 15 menores en 2009
La directora del Programa Nacional contra la Violencia Familiar y Sexual, Ana María Mendieta, exhortó hoy al Poder Judicial a aplicar la pena máxima de cadena perpetua a Óscar Visalot, acusado de abusar sexualmente de 15 menores de edad en 2009.
Este pedido contra Visalot, quien fue capturado en octubre de 2010, surge ante la posible excarcelación del acusado por exceso de carcelería, precisó la funcionaria de ese programa perteneciente al Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables (Mimp).
“Exhortamos al Poder Judicial, a la Primera Sala de Reos en Cárcel de Lima y a las autoridades penitenciarias a que el procesado sea trasladado a Lima y se le dicte una sentencia ejemplar de cadena perpetua”, sostuvo Mendieta.
Lea el artículo completo
Officials ask for a life sentence for a man accused in 2009 of the rape of 15 minors
The director of the National Programme Against Family and Sexual Violence (PNCVFS), Ana Maria Mendieta, today urged the judiciary to apply the maximum penalty of life imprisonment in the case of Oscar Visalot, accused of sexually abusing 15 minors in 2009.
The request to have Visalot, who was captured in October 2010, sentenced promptly arose from the fact that the defendant is being considered for release from prison due to a determination that the has spent an excessive amount of time in detention, said Mendieta, an official of the PNCVFS, which is a program under the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP).
"We urge the Judiciary, the First Board of Inprisoned Inmates in Lima and the prison authorities to transport the prisoner to Lima and [that the Court] hand down a sentence of life imprisonment," said Mendieta.
Read the full article
Andina.com.pe
Feb. 08, 2012
Ohio, USA
Man guilty of raping girl in 2005
Hamilton - The adoptive parents of a young girl raped and kidnapped by Butler County’s former “most wanted” fugitive say their daughter can finally start “healing from the nightmare she suffered at the hands of this monster.”
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for three hours Wednesday before deciding “Mario” Lopez-Cruz was guilty of one count of kidnapping and four counts of rape for his attack on a 9-year-old Hamilton girl on Fathers Day 2005.
Lopez-Cruz faces life in prison without parole until he spends 10 years in prison on the rape charges and up to 10 years on kidnapping. Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth will sentence him March 15.
Read the full article
Denise G. Callahan
The Oxford Press
Feb. 01, 2012
|
A sample of
other important news stories
and commentaries
Added: Aug. 05, 2011
About sex trafficker's war against indigenous
children in Mexico
LibertadLatina
Commentary
|
|
|
Indigenous women and children in Mexico |
During the over ten years that the
LibertadLatina
project has existed, our ongoing analysis of the
crisis of sexual abuse in the Americas has lead us to the conclusion that our
top priority should be to work to achieve an end to the rampant sex trafficking
and exploitation that perennially exists in Mexico. Although many crisis hot
spots call out for attention across Latin America and the Caribbean, working to see
reform come to Mexico appeared to be a critical first step to achieving major
change everywhere else in the region.
We believe that this analysis continues to be correct. We also recognize the fact that the
Dominican Republic, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Colombia are other emergency
zones of crisis. We plan to expand our coverage of these and other
issues as resources permit.
Mexico is uniquely situated among the nations of the Americas, and therefore
requires special attention from the global effort to end modern human slavery.
Mexico:
-
Is the world's largest Spanish speaking nation
-
Includes a long contiguous border with the U.S., thus making it a transit
point for both 500,000 voluntary (but vulnerable) migrants each year as well
as for victims of human slavery
-
Has multi-billion dollar drug cartels that profit from Mexico's proximity to
the U.S. and that are today investing heavily in human slavery as a
secondary source of profits
-
Has a 30% indigenous population, as well as an Afro-Mexican minority, both
of whom are marginalized, exploited and are 'soft targets' who are now
actively being cajoled, and kidnapped by trafficking mafias into lives of
slavery and death
-
Has conditions of impunity that make all impoverished Mexicans vulnerable to
sex and labor trafficking
-
Has a child sex tourism 'industry' that attracts many thousands of U.S.,
European and Latin American men who exploit vulnerable, impoverished
children and youth with virtual impunity
-
Is the source of the largest contingent of foreign victims of human slavery
who have been trafficked into the U.S.
-
Has a large and highly educated middle class which includes thousands of women who
are active in the movement to enhance human rights in general and women's
rights in particular
-
Has a growing anti-trafficking movement and a substantial women's rights
focused journalist network
-
Has a politically influential faction of socially conservative men who
believe in the sexist tenants of machismo and who favor
maintaining the status quo that allows the open exploitation of poor Mexicans and
Latin American migrants to continue, thus requiring assistance from the
global movement against human exploitation to help local activists balance
the scales of justice and equality
For a number years
LibertadLatina's
commentaries have called upon Mexico's
government and the U.S. State Department to apply the pressure that is required
to begin to change conditions for the better. It appears that the global
community's efforts in this regard are beginning to have impact, yet a lifetime
of work remains to be done to end what we have characterized as a slow-moving
mass gender atrocity.
Recent developments in Mexico are for the most part encouraging.
These positive developments include:
The replacement of Chávez Chávez
with
Marisela
Morales Ibáñez as the nation’s first female attorney general
(Morales
Ibáñez
was recently honored by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton)
Morales
Ibáñez’ reform-motivated purge of 174 officials and employees of the
attorney general’s office, including the recent resigna-tions of 21 federal
prosecutors
Morales
Ibáñez’ recent raid in Cuidad Juárez, that resulted in the arrests of 1,030
suspected human traffickers and the freeing of 20 underage girls
The recent appointment of Dilcya Garcia , a
former Mexico City prosecutor who achieved Mexico's first trafficking
convictions to the federal attorney general's office (Garcia
was recently honored by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her
anti-trafficking work)
The July, 2010 replacement of Interior Secretary
Fernando Gómez Mont with José Francisco Blake Mora. (Secretary Gómez Mont
openly opposed the creation of strong federal anti-trafficking legislation.)
Success by President Calderón and the Congress
of the Republic in achieving the first steps to bringing about a
constitutional amendment to facilitate human trafficking prosecutions
Recent public statements by President Calderon
imploring the public to help in the fight against human trafficking
Some progress in advancing legislation in
Congress to reform the failed 2007 federal anti trafficking law, a reform
effort that has been lead by Deputy Rosi Orozco
The active collaboration of both the U.S.
Government and the United Nations Office eon Drugs and Crime in supporting
government efforts against trafficking
Taken together, the above actions amount to a truly watershed moment in Mexico’s
efforts to address modern human slavery. We applaud those who are working for reform,
while also recognizing that reform has its enemies within Congress, government
institutions, law enforcement and society.
Mexico’s key anti-trafficking leaders, including journalist and author
Lydia
Cacho, Teresa Ulloa (director of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in
Women for Latin America and the Caribbean -
CATW-LAC),
and Congresswoman
Rosi
Orozco of the ruling National Action Party (PAN) have all raised the alarm in
recent months to indicate that corrupt businessmen, politicians and law
enforcement authorities continue to pressure Mexican society to maintain a
status quo that permits the existence of rampant criminal impunity in relation to
the exploitation of women, children and men. The fact that
anti-trafficking activist
Lydia Cacho continues to face credible deaths threats on a regular basis and
must
live with armed guards for 24 hours a day is one sobering indicator of
this harsh reality.
The use of slavery for labor and sexual purposes has a solid 500 years of
existence in Mexico and much of the rest of Latin America. Indigenous peoples
have been the core group of victims of human exploitation from the time of the
Spanish conquest to the present. This is true in Mexico as well as in other
nations with large indigenous populations such as Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru and
Colombia. African descendants are also victims of exploitation - especially in
Colombia, and like indigenous peoples, they continue to lack recognition as
equal citizens.
These populations are therefore highly vulnerable to human trafficking and
exploitation due to the fact that the larger societies within which they live
feel no moral obligation to defend their rights. Criminal human traffickers and other
exploiters take advantage of these vulnerabilities to kidnap, rape, sex traffic
and labor traffic the poorest of the poor with little or no response from
national governments.
A society like Mexico - where even middle class housewives are accustomed to
treating their unpaid, early-teen indigenous girl house servants to labor
exploitation and verbal and physical violence
–
and where the men of the house may be sexually abusing that child – is going to
take a long time to adapt to an externally imposed world view that says that the
forms of exploitation that their conquistador ancestors brought to the region
are no longer valid. That change is not going to happen overnight, and it is not
going to be easy.
Mexico’s current efforts to reform are to be applauded. The global anti-trafficking
activist community and its supporters in government must, however remain vigilant and
demand that Mexico continue down the path toward ending its ancient traditions
of tolerated human exploitation. For that transformation to happen effectively,
indigenous and African descendant Mexicans must be provided a place at the
table of deliberations.
Although extending equality to these marginalized groups is a radical concept
within the context of Mexican society, we insist that both Mexico, the United
States State
Department (a major driver of
these reforms in Mexico) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC - another
major driver in the current reforms) provide the social and political spaces
that will be required to allow the groups who face the most exposure to
exploitation to actually have representation in both official and NGO
deliberations about their fate at the hands of the billion dollar cartels and
mafias who today see them as raw material and 'easy pickings' to drive their
highly lucrative global slavery profit centers.
Without taking this basic step, we cannot raise Mexico’s rating on our
anti-trafficking report card.
Time is of the essence!
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Aug. 05, 2011
Updated Aug. 11,2011
Note: Our August 4/5,
2011 edition contains a
number of stories that
accurately describe the
nature of the
vulnerabilities that
indigenous children and
women face from modern
day sex
traffickers, pedophiles
and rapists.
See also:
Added: Aug. 1, 2010
An editorial by anti trafficking activist Lydia puts the
spotlight on abusive domestic work as a form of human slavery targeting, for the
most part, indigenous women and girls
Mexico
Esclavas en México
México, DF, - Cristina y Dora tenían 11 años cuando Domingo fue por ellas a la
Mixteca en Oaxaca. Don José Ernesto, un militar de la Capital, le encargó un par
de muchachitas para el trabajo del hogar. La madre pensó que si sus niñas
trabajaban con “gente decente” tendrían la posibilidad de una vida libre, de
estudiar y alimentarse, tres opciones que ella jamás podría darles por su
pobreza extrema.
Cristina y Dora vivieron en el sótano, oscuro y húmedo, con un baño improvisado
en una mansión construida durante el Porfiriato, cuyos jardines y ventanales
hablan de lujos y riqueza. Las niñas aprendieron a cocinar como al patrón le
gustaba. A lo largo de 40 años no tuvieron acceso a la escuela ni al seguro
social, una de las hermanas prohijó un bebé producto de la violación del hijo
del patrón. Les permitían salir unas horas algunos sábados, porque el domingo
había comidas familiares. Sólo tres veces en cuatro décadas les dieron
vacaciones, siendo adultas, para visitar a su madre enferma...
Slaves in Mexico
[About domestic labor slavery in Mexico]
Mexico City – Cristina and
Dora were 11-years-old when Domingo picked them up in the state of Oaxaca. José
Ernesto, a military man living in Mexico City, had sent Domingo to find a pair
of girls to do domestic work for him. The girls’ mother thought that if they had
an opportunity to work with “decent people,” they would have a chance to live a
free life, to study and to eat well. Those were three things that they she could
never give them in her condition of extreme poverty.
Cristina and Dora lived in the dark and humid basement of a
mansion built during the presidency of
Porfirio Díaz (1876
to 1910). Their space had an improvised bathroom. Outside
of the home, the mansion’s elaborate gardens and elegant windows presented an
image of wealth and luxury. The girls learned to cook for the tastes of their
employer.
It is now forty years later. Cristina and Dora never had access
to an education, nor do they have the right to social security payments when
they retire. One of the sisters had a child, who was the result of her being
raped by one of their employer’s sons.
They are allowed out of the house for a few hours on Saturdays.
On Sundays they had to prepare family meals for their patron (boss).
Today, some 800,000 domestic workers are registered in Mexico.
Ninety three percent of them don’t have access to health services. Seventy Nine
percent of them have not and will not receive benefits. Their average salary is
1,112 pesos($87.94) per month. More than 8% of these workers receive no pay at
all, because their employers think that giving them a place to sleep and eat is
payment enough.
Sixty percent of domestic workers in Mexico are
indigenous women and girls. They began this line of work, on average, at the age
of 13. These statistics do not include those women and children who lived
locked-up in conditions of extreme domestic slavery.
Mexico’s domestic workers are vulnerable to
sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, exploitation, racism and being otherwise
poorly treated…
Recently, the European Parliament concluded that undocumented
migrant women face an increased risk of domestic labor slavery. In Mexico, the
majority of domestic slaves are Mexicans. Another 15% of these victims are
[undocumented] migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador. Their undocumented
status allows employers to prohibit their leaving the home, prohibit their
access to education or deny their right to have a life of their own. The same
dynamics happen to Latina women in the United States and Canada.
For centuries [middle and upper class white Mexican women] became
accustomed to looking at domestic labor slavery as something that ‘helps’
indigenous women and girls. We used the hypocritical excuse that we were lifting
them out of poverty by exploiting them. [They reality is that] millions of these
women and girls are subjected to work conditions that deny them access to
education, healthcare, and the enjoyment of a normal social life.
We (Mexico’s privileged) men and women share the responsibility
for perpetuating this form of slavery. We use contemptuous language to refer to
domestic workers. Like other forms of human trafficking, domestic labor slavery
is a product of our culture.
Domestic work is an indispensable form of labor that allows
millions of women to work. We should improve work conditions, formally recognize
it in our laws, and assure that in our homes, we are not engaging in
exploitation cloaked in the idea that we are rescuing [our domestic workers]
from poverty.
To wash, iron, cook and care for children is as dignified as any
other form of work. The best way for us to change the world is to start in own
homes.
“Plan B” is a column written by Lydia Cacho
that appears Mondays and Thursdays in CIMAC, El Universal and other newspapers
in Mexico.
Lydia Cacho
CIMAC Women's News Agency
July 27, 2010
|
Added: Aug. 4, 2011
LibertadLatina
Commentary
We at
LibertadLatina
applaud U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder, the U.S. Justice Department and all of the agencies and officers
involved in Operation Delego, which shut down a grotesque international
child pornography network that glorified and rewarded the torture and rape of
young children. We also wish you good hunting in taking down all child
pornography rings, wherever they may exist.
We call attention
to a recent story (posted on Aug. 4, 2011) on the rape with impunity of indigenous school children, from
very young ages, in the nation's now-closed Indian boarding school system. The
fact that the legislature of the state of South Dakota passed legislation that
denies victims the right to sue the priests and nuns who raped
them is just as disgusting as any of the horror stories that are associated
with the pedophile rapist / torturers who have been identified in Operation Delego.
Yet neither the
U.S. Justice Department nor the Canadian government, where yet more horrible
sexual abuses, and even murders of indigenous children took place, have ever
sought to prosecute the large number of rapists involved in these cases.
In addition,
federal prosecutors drop a large number of rape cases on Indian reservations
despite the fact that indigenous women face a rate of rape in the U.S. that is
3.5 times higher that the rate faced by other groups of women. White males are
the perpetrators of the rape in 80% of these cases.
When former
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired eight U.S. attorneys in December of
2006, it turned out that 5 of those targeted had worked together to increase the
very low prosecution rates for criminal cases on Native reservations. Their
firings did a disservice to victims of rape and other serious crimes in Indian Country.
The indigenous
peoples of the Americas demand an end to the rampant sexual exploitation with
impunity of our peoples, be they from the United States, Mexico, Brazil,
Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru or Canada.
We expect the United Stated Government to set the
tone and lead the way in that change in social values.
Time is of the
essence!
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Aug. 05, 2011
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Added: Apr. 17, 2011
Massachusetts, USA
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Donna Gavin, commander of the Boston
Police Human Trafficking Unit, at
Wheelock College |
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Norma Ramos, executive director of
the
Coalition Against Trafficking in
Women, speaks |
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Wheelock professor and anti
pornography activist
Dr. Gail Dines,
and survivor and activist
Cherie
Jimenez speak at Wheelock |
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LibertadLatina's
Chuck Goolsby speaks up to represent
the interests of Latin American and
indigenous victims at Wheelock
College |
Wheelock College anti-trafficking event
Stopping the Pimps, Stopping the Johns: Ending the Demand for Sex Trafficking
This event is part of Wheelock's sixth annual "Winter Policy Talks."
Speakers:
•Donna Gavin, commander of the Boston Police Human Trafficking Unit and the Massachusetts Task Force to Combat Human Trafficking. She is a sergeant detective of the Boston Police Department.
•Cherie Jimenez, who used her own experiences in the sex trade to create a Boston-area program for women
•Norma Ramos, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
•Gail Dines, Wheelock professor of Sociology and Women's Studies and chair of the American Studies Department
Wheelock College
March 30, 2011
See also:
Massachusetts, USA
Wheelock College to discuss Massachusetts sex trafficking
Wheelock College is set to hold a panel discussion on the growing sex trafficking in Massachusetts.
The discussion, titled "Stopping the Pimps, Stopping the Johns: Ending the Demand for Sex Trafficking," is scheduled for Wednesday and will feature area experts and law enforcement officials.
Those scheduled to speak include Donna Gavin, commander of the Boston Police human trafficking unit and the Massachusetts task force to combat human trafficking.
Experts believe around 14,000 to 17,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year, including those from Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The panel is part of the Brookline school's sixth annual "Winter Policy Talks."
The Associated Press
March 30, 2011
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
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Chuck Goolsby |
On March 30, 2011 Wheelock College in Boston
presented a forum that explored human
trafficking and ways to end demand. Like many
human trafficking gatherings held around the
world, the presenters at this event provided an
empathetic and intelligent window into current
thinking within the different interest
groups that make up this movement. Approximately
40 college students and local anti-trafficking
activists attended the event.
Norma Ramos, executive director of the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) spoke about
current human trafficking conditions around the
world. Pornography abolitionist Dr. Gail Dines
of Wheelock presented a slide show on
pornography and its link to the issue of
prostitution demand. Survivor Cherie Jimenez
told her story of over 20 years facing abuse at
the hands of pimps, and her current efforts to
support underage girls in prostitution.
Detective Donna Gavin discussed the Boston
Police Department’s efforts to assist women and
girls in prostitution, including the fact that
her department’s vice operations helping women
in prostitution avoid criminal prosecution to
the extent possible.
The presentation grew into an intelligent
discussion about a number of issues that the
presenters felt were impacting the effectiveness
of the movement. Among these issues were
perceptions on the part of Dr. Dines that a
number of activists in the human trafficking
movement have expressed pro-pornography points
of view. She added that the great majority of
college students in women’s programs with whom
she talks express a pro-pornography perspective. Panelists
also expressed the view that many men
who lead anti-trafficking organizations also
have a pro-pornography viewpoint.
Cherie Jimenez shared her opinion that U.S. born
victims do not get as much visibility and attention
relative to foreign born
victims. She emphasized that victims from all
backgrounds are the same, and should be treated
as such.
Jimenez emphasized that much of her work as an
activist focuses on helping young women who, at
age 18, leave state supported foster care, and
must then survive on their own. She emphasized
that foster care is a broken system that exposes
underage girls to routine sexual abuse. CATW’s
Ramos, who was a victim of that system herself,
agreed.
Ramos, head of the global Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women and Girls for Sexual
Exploitation (CATW), emphasized that men who
operate in the arena of anti sex trafficking
activism must be accountable to women activists,
because the issue was a gender issue. She also
stated that she approached the human trafficking
issue from an indigenous world view.
In response to a question from a Latina woman
about services for transgender youth, Detective
Gavin of the Boston Police Department stated
that they have not run into sex trafficking
cases involving males. Norma Ramos did note that
sex trafficked male youth did exist in
significant numbers in the New
York City area.
During the question and answer period of the
forum, I spent about 15 minutes discussing
the issue of human trafficking from the Latin
American, Latin Diaspora and indigenous
perspectives.
* I noted that as a male anti-trafficking
activist, I have devoted the past dozen years of
that activism to advocating for the voiceless
women and girls in Latin America, the United
States and in advanced nations of the world in
Europe and Japan where Latina and indigenous
victims are widely exploited.
* I pointed out that within the Boston area as
elsewhere within the United States, the brutal
tactics of traffickers, as well as the
Spanish/English language barrier, the cultural
code of silence and tolerance for exploitation
that are commonplace within Latin immigrant
communities all allow sex trafficking to
flourish in the Latin barrios of Boston such as
East Boston, Chelsea, Everett and Jamaica Plain.
* I also mentioned that during the current climate
of recession and increased immigration law
enforcement operations, Latina women and girls
face a loss of jobs and income, and a loss of
opportunities to survive with dignity, which are
all factors that expose them to the risk of
commercial sexual exploitation.
* I mentioned that the sex trafficking of women
and girls in Latin America focuses on the crisis
in Mexico, which, I stated was the epicenter of
sex trafficking activity in the Americas.
* I stated that the U.S. anti-trafficking
movement cannot make any progress while it
continues to treat the sex trafficking crisis in
Mexico as a secondary issue.
* I mentioned that Teresa Ulloa, director of the
Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC),
was a stellar activist who has provided the
vanguard of leadership in anti sex trafficking
activism in the region. I added that Ulloa
recently promoted statistics developed by the
Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, that
state that 25% of the Gross Domestic Product
across all Latin American nations is derived
from human trafficking.
*
I
mentioned that a number
of years ago, I
called-on my local
police department to
enforce the law and
arrest an adult man who
was severely sexually
harassing an 11-year-old
Latina girl.
These two officers
told me in a matter of fact way that they could not respond to what the
county Police Academy had taught them (in cultural sensitivity classes
there) was just a part of Latino culture.
As is the case in most public events that I
attend that address the crisis in human
trafficking, the issue of Latina and indigenous
victims (who are the majority of U.S. victims)
would not have been discussed in detail without
the participation of
LibertadLatina.
The event was an enlightening experience. My
perception is that both the activists and the
audience were made aware of the dynamics of the
crisis of mass gender atrocities that women and
children are facing in Latin America, the
Caribbean and in their migrant communities
across the globe.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
April
17, 2011
Mexico
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This map
shows the number of types of child slavery that occur in the
nations of Latin America and the Caribbean |
Indigenous children are the focal point for underage sex and labor slavery in Mexico
Around 1.5 million children do not attend school at all in Mexico, having or choosing to work instead. Indigenous children are often child laborers. Throughout Central and South America, indigenous people are frequently marginalized, both economically and socially. Many have lost their traditional land rights and they migrate in order to find paid work. This can in turn make indigenous peoples more vulnerable to exploitative and forced labor practices.
According to the web site Products of Slavery.org, child slavery, especially that which exploits indigenous
children, is used to generate profits in the following industries in Mexico:
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*
The production of Child
Pornography
*
The production of coffee,
tobacco, beans, chile peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, melons, onions,
sugarcane and tomatoes - much of which is sold for export
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Key facts about Mexican child sex
and labor exploitation defined on the Product of Slavery:
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*
Many indigenous children in
Mexico aged between seven and 14 work during the green bean harvest
from 7am until 7pm, meaning they cannot attend school.
*
Amongst Mexico's indigenous
peoples, 86% of children, aged six years and over, are engaged in
strenuous physical labor in the fields six days a week working to
cultivate agricultural produce such as chile peppers.
*
Indigenous child labor keeps
costs of production down for Mexican companies as boys and girls
from indigenous families are frequently denied recognition of their
legal status as workers, charged with the least skilled tasks, such
as harvesting cucumbers, and so receive the lowest pay.
*
Child labor is widespread in
Mexico's agricultural sector; in 2000, it was discovered that 11 and
12 year olds were working on the family ranch of the then-President
elect, Vicente Fox, harvesting onions, potatoes, and corn for export
to the United States.
[I know a couple of U.S. ICE agents who can add 'another
paragraph' to the above statement -
LL.]
*
Mexican children who are
exploited by the sex industry and involved in activities such as
pornography and prostitution suffer physical injuries, long-term
psychological damage with the strong possibility of developing
suicidal tendencies and are at high risk of contracting AIDS,
tuberculosis and other life-threatening illnesses.
*
There are strong links between
tourism and the sexual exploitation of children in Mexico; tourist
centers such as Acapulco, Cancun and Tijuana are prime locations
where thousands of children are used in the production of
pornographic material and child prostitution is rife.
*
Mexican street children are
vulnerable to being lured into producing pornographic material with
promises of toys, food, money, and accommodation; they then find
themselves prisoners, locked for days or weeks on end in hotel rooms
or apartments, hooked on drugs and suffering extreme physical and
sexual violence.
*
David Salgado was just eight
years old when he was crushed by a tractor as he went to empty the
bucket of tomatoes he had just collected on the Mexican vegetable
farm where he worked with his family. The company paid his funeral
expenses but refused to pay compensation to his family as David was
not a formal employee. |
The web site explores child enslavement in all of the nations shown in the above
map.
Products of Slavery
North Carolina, USA
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"For
Sale" - A composite from a poster announcing Davidson College's
recent event on Human
Trafficking
in
Latin America
See the complete poster |
Chuck Goolsby speaks at Davidson College
On
February 3rd of 2011 I travelled to Davidson College, located in a beautiful
community north of Charlotte, North Carolina, to provide a 90 minute
presentation on the crisis of sexual slavery in Latin America, and in Latin
American immigrant communities across the United States. I thank the members of
Davidson's Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS) and the Vann
Center for Ethics for cosponsoring the
presentation, and for their hospitality and hard work in setting up this event.
During my talk I described many of the dynamics of how sexual slavery works in
the Americas. I summarized the work of
LibertadLatina
as one of the few English
language voices engaging the world in an effort to place Latin American gender
exploitation issues on an equal footing with the rest of the world's struggle
against sex trafficking. I covered the facts that:
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1)
Sexual slavery has long been condoned in Latin America;
2)
Community tolerance of sexual exploitation, and a cultural code of
silence work to hide crimes of violence against women across the
region;
3)
The multi-billion dollar pockets of Latin American drug cartels,
together with the increasing effectiveness of anti-drug trafficking
law enforcement efforts are driving cartel money into major
investments in kidnapping, 'breaking-in' and selling underage girls
and young women into slavery globally, en mass;
4)
Men in poverty who have grown up in [especially rural] cultures
where women's equality does not exist, are prime candidates to
participate in the sex trafficking industry - this is especially
true in locations such as Tlaxcala state, just east of Mexico City,
where an estimated 50% of the adults in the La
Meca neighborhood of the major city of Tenancingo are involved in
sex traffickers;
5)
Male traffickers, often from family organized mafias of adults and
teens [especially in Tlaxcala], either kidnap women and girls
directly, or engage in false romances with potential victims that
result in the victim's beating, gang rape and enslavement, getting
the victim pregnant - and then leaving the infant with the
trafficker's family as a form of bribery [threatening the baby's
death if the victim does not continue to submit to forced sexual
enslavement;
6)
Traffickers typically take their victims from Tlaxcala, to Mexico
City, and to Tijuana on the U.S. border - from which they are
shipped like merchandise to Tokyo, Madrid, Amsterdam, Los Angeles,
Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte, Washington, DC and New York City;
7)
Traffickers also bring victims to farm labor camps large and small
across the rural U.S.;
8)
North Carolina, including the major population centers of
Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte are places where Latina immigrant
sexual slavery is a major problem (given the rapid growth in the
local immigrant population, who see the state as a place with lots
of jobs and a low cost of living);
9)
Mexico's government is reluctant (to be polite) to engage the issue
of ending human trafficking (despite recent presidential rhetoric),
as exemplified by the multi-year delay in setting up the regulations
and inter-agency collaborations needed to actually enforce the
nation's 2007 Law to Prevent and Punish Human Trafficking (note that
only in early 2011 has the final element of the legislation been put
into place to actually activate the law - which some legislators
accurate refer to as a "dead letter.");
10)
heroes such as activist
Lydia Cacho have faced retaliation and death
threats for years for having dared to stand-up against the child sex
trafficking networks whose money and influence corrupts state and
local governments;
11)
it is up to each and every person to decide how to engage in
activism to end all forms of human slavery, wherever they may exist.
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Virtually everyone in the crowd that attended the event had heard about human
trafficking prior to the February 3rd presentation. They left the event knowing important details about the
facts involved in the Latin American crisis and the difficulties that activists
face in their efforts to speak truth to power and the forces of impunity. A number of
attendees thanked me for my presentation, and are now new readers of
LibertadLatina.org.
The below text is from Davidson College's announcement for this event.
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Slavery is (thankfully) illegal
everywhere today. But sadly, it is still practiced secretly in many
parts of the world. One persistent form of it occurs when women and
girls are forced into prostitution or sexual slavery, sometimes by
being kidnapped and trafficked or smuggled across national borders.
Chuck Goolsby has worked tirelessly
for decades to expose and end this horrific, outrageous practice. As
the founder and coordinator of
LibertadLatina, much of his work has
focused on sex-trafficking in the Latin American context. Join us
to hear from him regarding the nature and scope of the current
problem, and what we can do to help stop it. |
We have given similar presentations to groups such as Latinas
United for Justice, a student organization located at the John Jay College
for Criminal Justice in New York City.
We are available for conferences and other speaking engagements
to address the topics of human trafficking in its Latin American, Latin
Diaspora, Afro-Latina and Indigenous dimensions.
Please write to us in regard to your event.
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina.org
Feb. 26, 2011
The United States
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Tiffany Williams of the Break the Chain Campaign |
Highlighting New Issues in Ending Violence Against Women; More Women Afraid To Come Forward And Access Services
Congressional leaders will participate in an ad-hoc hearing examining violence against immigrant women this Thursday on Capitol Hill
Washington, DC—Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Gwendolyn Moore (D-WI) will co-chair an ad-hoc hearing this Thursday afternoon, bearing witness to the testimony of immigrant women and advocates who are speaking out about increasing barriers to ending violence against immigrant women and families. Honorable guests Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) will join the co-chairs.
Maria Bolaños of Maryland will share her personal story. Juana Flores from Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), an immigrant women’s organization in California and the Rev. Linda Olson Peebles from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington will share the perspective of community groups, and legal advocates Leslye Orloff (Legal Momentum) and Miriam Yeung (NAPAWF) will offer testimony in light of the expected 2011 re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
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WHAT: Ad-hoc hearing on violence against immigrant women
WHEN: Feb. 10, 2011 - 2 pm-3 pm
WHERE: Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2456
WHO: Rep. Raul Grijalva, Rep. Gwendolyn Moore, Rep. Jared Polis, Rep. Napolitano, members of the press, domestic violence advocates, immigrant rights advocates, and other invited guest
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Co-Sponsoring Organizations: 9to5, AFL-CIO, Family Values @ Work Consortium, Franciscan Action Network, Institute for Policy Studies, Legal Momentum, MomsRising, Ms. Foundation for Women, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, South Asian Americans Leading Together, United Methodist Women/Civil Rights Initiative, Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Contact: Tiffany Williams
Tel. (202) 787-5245; Cell (202) 503-8604; E-mail:
tiffany@ips-dc.org
The Institute for Policy Studies / Break the Chains Campaign
Feb. 9, 2011
See also:
The United States
Silencing human trafficking victims in America
Women should be able to access victim services, regardless of their immigration status.
Thanks to a wave of anti-immigrant proposals in state legislatures across the nation, fear of deportation and family separation has forced many immigrant women to stay silent rather than report workplace abuse and exploitation to authorities. The courts have weakened some of these laws and the most controversial pieces of Arizona's SB 1070 law have been suspended. Unfortunately, America's anti-immigrant fervor continues to boil.
As a social worker, I've counseled both U.S.-born and foreign-born women who have experienced domestic violence, or have been assaulted by either their employers or the people who brought them to the United States. I'm increasingly alarmed by this harsh immigration enforcement climate because of its psychological impact on families and the new challenge to identify survivors of crime who are now too afraid to come forward.
For the past decade, I've helped nannies, housekeepers, caregivers for the elderly, and other domestic workers in the Washington metropolitan area who have survived human trafficking. A majority of these women report their employers use their immigration status to control and exploit them, issuing warnings such as "if you try to leave, the police will find you and deport you." Even women who come to the United States on legal work visas, including those caring for the children of diplomats or World Bank employees, experience these threats.
Though law enforcement is a key partner in responding to human trafficking, service providers continue to struggle with training authorities to identify trafficking and exploitation in immigrant populations, especially when the trafficking is for labor and not sex. While local human trafficking task forces spend meetings developing outreach plans, our own state governments are undermining these efforts with extremely harsh and indiscriminate crackdowns on immigrants...
Regardless of their legal status, these women are human beings working hard to
feed their families. Their home countries' economies have been by shattered by
globalization. Our economic system depends on their cheap labor. Yet much of the
debate about U.S. borders fails to acknowledge immigrants as people, or
appreciate the numerous cultural contributions that ethnic diversity has
provided this country. As a result, humane comprehensive immigration reform
remains out of reach in
Congress.
We're a nation of immigrants and a nation of hard-working families. An economic crisis caused by corporate greed has turned us against each other in desperation and fear. We should band together to uphold our traditional values of family unity, to give law enforcement the tools they need to provide effective victim protection and identification rather than reactionary laws, and ensure that women can access victim services, regardless of immigration status.
Tiffany Williams is the advocacy director for Break The Chain Campaign, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Tiffany Williams
The Huffington Post
Feb. 07, 2011
See also:
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Chuck Goolsby |
LibertadLatina
Commentary
We at
LibertadLatina
salute the Break the
Chain Campaign and their
advocacy director, Tiffany
Williams, for bringing voice
to the voiceless immigrant
working women and girls
(underage teens) across the
United States. Latin
American and other immigrant
women routinely face
quid-pro-quo sexual demands
of "give me sex or get out"
from male managers and
supervisors across the
low-wage service sector of
the U.S. economy.
My advocacy for victims of
gender violence
began with efforts to
provide direct victim
assistance to Latina women
facing workplace gender
exploitation
in the Washington,
DC region. My work included
rescuing two Colombian women
from the fearful labor
slavery that they faced in
two diplomatic households in
Montgomery County, Maryland,
just north of Washington,
DC. I also assisted six
women in bringing complaints
to police and to our local
Montgomery County human rights commission
(a local processor of U.S.
Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission
cases).
Immigrant women have never
had free and equal access to
the legal system to address
these employer abuses. The
Break the Chain Campaign
rightly identifies the fact
that the social and
political climate in the
U.S. in the year 2011 is
creating conditions in which
immigrant women and girl
victims fear coming forward.
It is encouraging that the
Break the Chains Campaign
openly identifies the sexual
and labor exploitation of
immigrant women and girls in
domestic and other low wage
service jobs as being forms
of human trafficking. Ten
years ago, local
anti-trafficking
organizations in the
Washington, DC region did
not buy into that view of
the world.
Conditions have not changed
for the better for at-risk
immigrant women and girls
since we first wrote about
this issue in the year 1994
(see below).
These community continues to need our
persistent help on this
issue.
End impunity now!
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Feb. 10, 2011
See
also:
LibertadLatina
Our section covering human trafficking, workplace rape and community exploitation facing Latina women and children in the Washington, DC regional area.
See
also:
Latina Workplace Rape
Low wage
workers face managerial threats of 'give me sex or get out!'
across the U.S. and Latin America.
See also:
On the Front Lines of the War Against
Impunity in Gender Exploitation
Government, corporations
and the press ignored
all of these victims
cases in which Chuck
Goolsby intervened
directly
during the 1990s.
Rockville, Maryland
-
Case
1
Workplace Rape with
Impunity
A major
corporation working on defense and civilian
U.S. government contracts permitted
quid-pro-quo sexual demands, sexual coercion
and retaliatory firings targeted at Latina
adult and underage
teen cleaning workers.
Rockville, Maryland -
Case 2
Workplace Assault and Battery
with Impunity
A Nicaraguan
indigenous
woman
cleaning
worker was
slapped across the chest
and knocked to the floor by
her manager in
the Rockville offices
of a federal agency, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA).
The local Maryland
State's Attorney's Office repeatedly
pressured the victim (through calls to Chuck
Goolsby) to drop her insistence
on having her assailant prosecuted.
Rockville, Maryland
- Case 3
About
the One
Central Plaza office complex
Workplace Rape and Forced
Prostitution with
Impunity
Over a dozen
women were illegally fired for not giving in
to
the sexual demands of three Latino
cleaning crew managers who forced women and
underage girls into quid-pro-quo sexual
relationships as a condition of retaining
their jobs.
Some women were forced to
commit acts of prostitution in this office
building, that housed Maryland state government
and other offices.
A medical
doctor who leased office space at One
Central Plaza filed a formal complaint with
the building owners
and stated that
he
was finding his
patient examining
tables
dirtied by sexual activity after-hours
(cleaning managers had keys to access these
offices to have them cleaned).
A pregnant woman was
severely sexually harassed, and was fired
and told to come back after her child was
born, when she could be sexually exploited.
The Montgomery County,
Maryland County Human Relations commission
in 1995 literally buried the officially
filed casework of this pregnant woman and
another victim, who had an audio tape of a
20 minute attempt by her manager to rape her. Both detectives at the Montgomery County
Police Department (where I worked part-time
during those times) and a team of Washington
Post reporters refused to investigate this
crisis of workplace impunity.
A Latina Washington Post reporter, when
explaining to me why she would not cover the
story said, "well, after all, you are trying
to accuse these guys (the perpetrators) of
felonies." The same reporter stated that her
manager would not allow her to cover the
story because it was a "dangerous
situation." To this day I continue to ask myself,
If it was a
dangerous situation, was it not, then,
news!
See also:
The above three cases
are among those
documented in my below
report from 1994.
Charles M.
Goolsby, Jr.'s
1994 Report on the Sexual Exploitation
of Latina immigrant Women and Girls in
Montgomery County, Maryland (a suburb of
Washington, DC)
The
LibertadLatina
project grew directly
out of these initial
efforts to speak truth
to the official and
criminal impunity in our
society that openly
targets innocent
immigrant women
and girls for sexual
victimization.
India
Human trafficking slur
on Commonwealth Games
The jinxed Commonwealth
Games could have done
without this. After
being troubled by
brittle infrastructure,
CWG 2010 has now been
blamed for a jump in
trafficking of women and
children from the
Northeast. The
accusation has come from
Meghalaya People’s Human
Rights Council (MPHRC)
general secretary Dino
D.G. Dympep. The
platform he chose on
Tuesday was the general
debate discussion on
racism, discrimination,
xenophobia and other
intolerance at the 15th
Human Rights Council
Session at the UN
headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland.
“The human rights
situation of indigenous
peoples living in
Northeast India is
deteriorating,” Dympep
said, adding New Delhi
has chose to be
indifferent to human
trafficking of and
racial discrimination
toward these indigenous
groups.
“What worries the
indigenous peoples now
apart from racial and
gender-based violence is
the fear of alleged
human trafficking for
flesh trade.” The number
of indigenous women and
children trafficked
particularly for the
upcoming CGW could be
15,000, he said.
The rights activist also
underscored the racial
profiling of people from
the Northeast on the
basis of their
ethnicity, linguistic,
religious, cultural and
geographical
backgrounds.
Dympep also pointed out
86 per cent of
indigenous peoples
studying or working away
from their native places
face racial
discrimination in
various forms such as
sexual abuses, rapes,
physical attacks and
economic exploitation.
“The UN has condemned
India's caste system and
termed it worse than
racism. The racism faced
by indigenous peoples of
the Northeast is
definitely the outcome
of the caste system.
Such negative attitude
as ignoring the region
will only lead to deeper
self-alienation by the
indigenous peoples,
which comes in the way
of integration in
India,” he said.
Rahul Karmakar
Hindustan Times
Sep. 28, 2010
LibertadLatina
Note:
Indigenous peoples
across the world face
the problem of being
marginalized by the
dominant societies that
surround them. They
become the easiest
targets for human
traffickers because the
larger society will not
stand up to defend their
basic human rights.
Exploiting the lives and
the sexuality of
indigenous women is a
key aspect of this
dynamic of oppression.
We at
LibertadLatina
denounce all forms of
exploitation. We call
the world's attention to
the fact that tens of
thousands of indigenous
peoples in the Americas,
and most especially
women and girls in
Guatemala and Mexico,
are routinely being
kidnapped or cajoled
into becoming victims of
human trafficking.
For 5
centuries, the economies
of Latin America have
relied upon the forced
labor and sexual
exploitation of the
region's indigenous
peoples as a cornerstone
of their economic and
social lives. Mexico,
with an indigenous
population that
comprises 30% of the
nation, is a glaring
example of this dynamic
of racial, ethnic and
gender (machismo) based
oppression. In Mexico,
indigenous victims are
not 'visible' to the
authorities, and are on
nobody's list of social
groups who need to be
assisted to defend
themselves against the
criminal impunity of the
sex and labor
trafficking mafias.
For
Mexico to arrive in the
21st Century community
of nations, it must
begin the process of
ending these feudal-era
traditions.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
New York, USA
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U.S.
Ambassador Luis
CdeBaca (second
from left) and
other presenters
at UN / Brandeis
conference |
Hidden in Plain Sight: The
News Media's Role in
Exposing Human Trafficking
The Schuster Institute for
Investigative Journalism at
Brandeis University
cosponsored a first-ever
United Nations panel
discussion about how the
news media is exposing and
explaining modern slavery
and human trafficking -- and
how to do it better. Below
are the transcript and video
from that conference, held
at the United Nations
headquarters in New York
City on June 16 and
co-sponsored by the United
States Mission to the United
Nations and the United
Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime.
Take a look as some leading
media-makers and
policymakers debate coverage
of human trafficking. What
hinders good reporting on
human trafficking? What do
journalists fear when they
report on slaves and
slavery? Why cover the
subject in the first place?
What are the common
reporting mistakes and
missteps that can do more
harm than good to
trafficking victims, and to
government, NGO, and
individual efforts to end
the traffic of persons for
others' profit and pleasure?
Among the main points:
Panelists urged reporters
and editors to avoid
salacious details and
splashy, "sexy" headlines
that can prevent a more
nuanced examination of
trafficked persons' lives
and experiences.
Journalists lamented the
lack of solid data, noting
that the available
statistics are
contradictory, unreliable,
insufficient, and often
skewed by ideology.
As an example, the two
officials on the panel --
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca,
head of the U.S. Office to
Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons, and
Under-Secretary-General
Antonio Maria Costa,
executive director of the
U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crime -- disagreed on the
number of rescued
trafficking victims. Costa
thought the number was
likely less than half
CdeBaca's estimate (from the
International Labour
Organization) of 50,000
victims rescued worldwide...
Read
the transcript
The
Huffington Post
July 15, 2010
See also:
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Chuck Goolsby |
LibertadLatina
Note:
In response to the above
article by the Huffington
Post, on the topic of press
coverage of the issue of
human trafficking, we would
like to point out that the
LibertadLatina
project came into existence
because of a lack of
interest and/or willingness
on the part of many (but not
all) reporters and editors
in the press, and also on
the part of government
agencies and academics, to
acknowledge and target the
rampant sexual violence
faced by Latina and
indigenous women and
children across both Latin
America and the Latin
Diaspora in the Untied
States, Canada, and in other
advanced economies such as
those of western Europe and
Japan.
Ten years after starting
LibertadLatina,
more substantial press
coverage is taking place.
However, the crisis of
ongoing mass gender
atrocities that plague Latin
America, including human
trafficking, community based
sexual violence, a gender
hostile living environment
and government and social
complicity (and especially
in regard to the region's
completely marginalized
indigenous and African
descended victims - who are
especially targeted for
victimization), continue to
be largely ignored or
intentionally untouched by
the press, official
government action, academic
investigation and NGO
effort.
Therefore we persist in
broadcasting the message
that the crisis in Latin
America and its Diaspora
cannot and will not be
ignored.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
July
21, 2010
Video of Mexican Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont's presentation at the Feb. 23rd and 24th, 2010 congressional Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to Criminal Law to Control Human Trafficking.
[Ten minutes - In Spanish]
Deputy Rosi Orozco
On YouTube.com
Feb. 26, 2010
See also:
LibertadLatina Commentary
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Chuck Goolsby |
Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!
Mexican Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont's presentation at the congressional Forum for Analysis and Discussion in Regard to Criminal Law to Control Human Trafficking has been widely quoted in the Mexican press. We have posted some of those articles here (see below).
The video of Secretary Mont's discourse shows that he is passionate about the idea of raising awareness about human trafficking. He states: "Making [trafficking] visible is the first step towards liberation."
Secretary Mont believes that the solution to human trafficking in Mexico will come from raising awareness about trafficking and from understanding the fact that machismo, its resulting family violence and also the nation's widespread extreme poverty are the dynamics that push at-risk children and youth into the hands of exploiters.
During Secretary Mont's talk he expressed his strongly held belief that federalizing the nation's criminal anti-trafficking laws is, in effect, throwing good money after bad. In his view, the source of the problem is not those whom criminal statutes would target, but the fundamental social ills that drive the problem.
The Secretary's views have an element of wisdom in them. We believe, however, that his approach is far too conservative. An estimated 500,000 victims of human trafficking exist in Mexico (according to veteran activist Teresa Ulloa of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women - Latin American and Caribbean branch - CATW-LAC).
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A note about the figures quoted to describe the number of child sexual exploitation victims in Mexico...
Widely quoted 'official' figures state that between 16,000 and 20,000 underage victims of sex trafficking exist in Mexico.
We believe that, if the United States acknowledges that 200,000 to 300,000 underage children and youth are caught-up in the commercial sexual exploitation of children - CSEC, at any one time, based on a population of 310 million, (a figure of between .00064 and .00096 percent of the population), then the equivalent numbers for Mexico would be between 68,000 and 102,000 child and youth victims of CSEC for its estimated 107 million in population.
Given Mexico's vastly greater level of poverty, its legalization of adult prostitution, and given that southern Mexico alone is known to be the largest zone in the world for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), with 10,000 children being prostituted just in the city of Tapachula (according to ECPAT figures), then the total number of underage children and youth caught-up in prostitution in Mexico is most likely not anywhere near the 16,000 to 20,000 figure that was first released in a particular research study from more than five years ago and continues to be so widely quoted today. |
Regardless of what the actual figures are, they include a very large number of victims.
While officials such as Secretary Mont philosophize about disabling anti-trafficking law enforcement and rescue and restoration efforts, while instead relying upon arriving at some far-off day when Mexican society raises its awareness and empathy for victims (and that is Mont's policy proposal as stated during the recent trafficking law forum), tens of thousands of victims who are being kidnapped, raped, enslaved and sold to the highest bidder need our help. They need our urgent intervention. As a result of their enslavement, they typically live for only a few years, if that, according to experts.
The reality is that the tragic plight of victims can and must be prevented. Those who have already been victimized must be rescued and restored to dignity.
That is not too much to ask from a Mexico that calls itself a member of civilized society.
Mexico exists at the very top of world-wide statistics on the enslavement of human beings. Save the Children recognizes the southern border region of Mexico as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual exploitation of children on Planet Earth.
Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, Japanese Yakuza mafias and the Russian Mob are all 'feeding upon' (kidnapping, raping, and exporting) many of the thousands of Central and South American migrant women who cross into Mexico. They also prey upon thousands of young
Mexican girls and women (and especially those who are Indigenous), who remain unprotected by the otherwise modern state of Mexico, where Roman Empire era feudal traditions of exploiting the poor and the Indigenous as slaves are honored and defended by the wealthy elites who profit (economically and sexually) from such barbarism.
Within this social environment, the more extreme forms of modern slavery are not seen as being outrageous by the average citizen. These forms of brutal exploitation have been used continuously in Mexico for 500 years.
We reiterate our view, as expressed in our Feb. 26th and 27th 2010 commentary about Secretary Mont.
Interior Secretary Mont has presided over the two year delay in implementing the provisions of the nation's first anti-trafficking law, the Law to Prevent, and Punish Human Trafficking, passed by Congress in 2007.
-
The regulations required to enable the law were left unpublished by the Interior Secretary for 11 months after the law was passed.
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When the regulation were published, they were weak, and left out a role for the nation's leading anti-trafficking agency, the Special Prosecutor for Violent Crimes Against Women and Human Trafficking in the Attorney General's office (FEVIMTRA).
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The regulations failed to target organized crime.
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The Inter-Agency Commission to Fight Human Trafficking, called for in the law, was only stood-up in late 2009, two years after the law's passage, and only after repeated agitation by members of Congress demanding that President Calderón act to create the Commission.
-
Today, the National Program to Fight Human Trafficking, also called for in the 2007 law, has yet to be created by the
Calderón administration.
-
In early February of 2010, Senator Irma Martínez Manríquez stated that the 2007 anti-trafficking law and its long-sought regulations were a 'dead letter' due to the power of impunity that has contaminated the political process.
All of the delaying tactics that were used to thwart the will and intent of Congress in passing the 2007 anti-trafficking law originated in the National Action Party (PAN) administration of President Felipe Calderón. All aspects of the 2007 law that called for regulations, commissions and programs were the responsibility of Interior Secretary Mont to implement. That job was never performed, and the 2007 law is now accurately referred to as a "dead letter" by members of Congress.
Those of us in the world community who actively support the use of criminal sanctions to suppress and ultimately defeat the multi-billion dollar power of human trafficking networks must come to the aid of the many political and non governmental organization leaders in Mexico who are working to create a breakthrough, to end the impasse which the traditionalist forces in the PAN political machine have thrown-up as a gauntlet to defeat effective anti-trafficking legislation.
Interior Secretary Mont's vision for the future, which involves continuing on a course of complete inaction on the law enforcement front, must be rejected as a capitulation to the status quo, and as a nod to the traffickers.
While "Little Brown Maria in the Brothel" - our metaphor for the voiceless victims, suffers yet another day chained to a bed in Tijuana, Acapulco, Matamoros, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Tapachula and Cancun, the entire law enforcement infrastructure of Mexico sits by and does virtually nothing to stop this mass gender atrocity from happening.
That is a completely unacceptable state of affairs for a Mexico that is a member of the world community, and that is a signatory to international protocols that fight human trafficking and that defend women and children's human rights.
We once again call upon U.S. Ambassador at Large Luis CdeBaca, director of the Trafficking in Persons office at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Barack Obama to stand-up and speak out with the moral authority of the United States in support of the forces of change in Mexico.
Political leaders and non governmental organizations around the world also have a responsibility to speak-up, and to let the government of President Felipe Calderón know that the fact that his ruling party
(finally) supported presenting a forum on trafficking, and the holding of a few press conferences, is not enough of a policy turn-around to be convincing.
The PAN must take strong action to aggressively combat the explosive growth in human slavery in Mexico in accordance with international standards. Those at risk, and those who are today victims, await your effective response to their emergency, President Calderón.
Enacting a 'general' federal law that is enforceable in all of Mexico's states would be a good fist step to show the world that sincere and honest voices against modern day slavery do exist in Congress, and are willing to draw a line in the sand on this issue.
As for Secretary Mont, we suggest, kind sir, that you consider the age-old entrepreneurial adage, and either "lead, follow, or get out of the way" of progress.
No more delays!
There is no time to waste!
End impunity now!
- Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 1, 2010
See Also:
Mexico
Víctimas del tráfico de personas, 5 millones de mujeres y niñas en América Latina
De esa cifra, más de 500 mil casos ocurren en México, señalan especialistas.
Five million victims of Human Trafficking Exist in Latin America
Saltillo, Coahuila state - Teresa Ulloa Ziaurriz, the director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women's Latin American / Caribbean regional office, announced this past Monday that more than five million women and girls are currently victims of human trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean.
During a forum on successful treatment approaches for trafficking victims held by the Women's Institute of Coahuila, Ulloa Ziaurriz stated that 500,000 of these cases exist in Mexico, where women and girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation, pornography and the illegal harvesting of human organs.
Ulloa Ziaurriz said that human trafficking is the second largest criminal industry in the world today, a fact that has given rise to the existence of a very large number of trafficking networks who operate with the complicity of both [corrupt] government officials and business owners.
Mexico is a country of origin, transit and also destination for trafficked persons. Of 500,000 victims in Mexico, 87% are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation.
Ulloa Ziaurriz pointed out that locally in Coahuila state, the nation's human trafficking problem shows up in the form of child prostitution in cities such as Ciudad Acuña as well as other population centers along Mexico's border with the United States.
- Notimex / La Jornada Online
Mexico City
Dec. 12, 2007
See also:
Mexico: Más de un millón de menores se prostituyen en el centro del país: especialista
Expert: More than one million minors are sexually exploited in Central Mexico
Tlaxcala city, in Tlaxcala state - Around 1.5 million people in the central region of Mexico are engaged in prostitution, and some 75% of them are between 12 and 13 years of age, reported Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean...
La Jornada de Oriente
Sep. 26, 2009
[Note: The figure of 75% of 1.5 million indicates that 1.1 million girls between the ages of 12 and 13 at any given time engage in prostitution in central Mexico alone. - LL]
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A
child in
prostitution in
Cancun, Mexico
stands next to a
police car with an
adult john.
About Child Sexual
Slavery in Mexico
Thousands
of foreign sex
tourists arrive in
Cancun daily from
the U.S., Canada and
Europe with the
intention of having
sex with children,
according to a short
documentary film by
a local NGO (see
below link). Police
and prosecutors
refuse to
criminalize this
activity.
This grotesque
business model, that
of engaging in child
sex tourism, exists
along Mexico's
entire northern
border with the
U.S., along Mexico's
southern border with
Guatemala [and
Belize], and in
tourist resorts
including Acapulco,
Cancun and Veracruz.
Thousands of U.S.
men cross Mexico's
border or fly to
tourist resorts each
day to have sex with
minors.
Unfortunately,
Mexico's well heeled
criminal sex
traffickers have
exported the
business model of
selling children for
sex to every major
city as well as to
many
migrant farm labor
camps
across the U.S.
Human trafficking in
the U.S. will never
be controlled,
despite the passage
of more advanced
laws and the
existence of ongoing
improvements to the
law enforcement
model, until the
500-year-old
'tradition' of
sexual slavery in
Mexico is brought to an
end.
The
most influential
political factions
within the federal
and state
governments of
Mexico show little
interest in ending
the mass torture and
rape of this
innocent child
population.
We must continue to
pressured them to do
so.
End Impunity now!
See also:
The
Dark Side of Cancun
- a short
documentary
Produced by Mark
Cameron and
Monserrat Puig
2007
About the case of
Jacqueline Maria
Jirón Silva
Our one page flyer
about Jacqueline
Maria Jirón Silva (Microsoft Word
2003) |
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Added: Dec. 03, 2009
Mexico
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Award-winning anti-child sex trafficking activist, journalist, author and women's center director Lydia Cacho |
Muertes por violencia en México podrían ser plan de limpieza social: Cacho
Especialistas indagan si asesinatos vinculados con el crimen son una estrategia del Estado, dijo.
Madrid. Las muertes por violencia en México en los últimos años, 15 mil en los últimos tres años, podrían formar parte de un plan de "limpieza social por parte del Estado mexicano", declaró este lunes en Madrid la periodista mexicana Lydia Cacho….
Deaths from violence in Mexico could be the results of social cleansing: Lydia Cacho
Specialists are investigating whether murders are state strategy, Cacho says.
Madrid. Deaths from violence in Mexico in recent years, including 15,000 during the past three years, could form part of a plan of "social cleansing by the Mexican State," declared Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho in Madrid, Spain on Monday.
"Experts are beginning to investigate at this time in Mexico whether these 15,000 murders are linked to intentional social cleansing by the Mexican State," Cacho said in a press conference in which she denounced human rights violations and persecution of the press in her country.
Since President Felipe Calderón [became president] three years ago, we have been witnessing a growing authoritarianism in Mexico "justified by the war " (on drugs), in which " militari-zation, and harassment of journalists and human rights defenders is increasing danger-ously," stated Cacho.
Cacho was kidnapped [by rogue state police agents] and tortured in Mexico after divulging information about a pedophile ring in which businessmen and politicians were involved.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) will determine in an upcoming decision whether Mexican authorities violated the rights of the journalist in that case.
The foundation that bears Cacho's name, created in Madrid a year ago, is organizing a concert to raise funds to help pay for her defense before the IACHR...
Cacho is the author of [the child sex trafficking exposé] The Demons of Eden. In recent years she has received several awards for her work on behalf of human rights carried out through investigative journalism, including the UNESCO-Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award.
Agence France Presse (AFP)
Nov. 23, 2009
See also:
Mexican Government Part of Problem, Not Solution, Writer Says
Madrid - A muckraking Mexican journalist known for exposes of pedophile rings and child prostitution said on Monday that President Felipe Calderón’s bloody campaign against Mexico’s drug cartels is “not a battle for justice and social peace.”
Lydia Cacho, who has faced death threats and judicial persecution for her writings, told a press conference in Madrid that Mexico’s justice system is “impregnated with corruption and impunity.”
Accompanied by the head of the Lydia Cacho Foundation, Spanish screenwriter Alicia Luna; and Madrid Press Association President Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja, the author said the nearly three years since Calderón took office have seen increased “authoritarianism” and harassment of journalists and human rights advocates.
The period has also witnessed “15,000 documented killings,” Cacho said, exceeding the carnage in Colombia at the height of that country’s drug wars.
“Specialists are beginning to investigate if those 15,000 killings are linked with intentional social cleansing on the part of the Mexican state,” she said.
Calderón, she noted, “insists on saying that many of those deaths are collateral effects and that the rest are criminals who kill one another.”
“It is a war among the powerful and not a battle for justice and social peace,” she said of the military-led effort against drug cartels, which has drawn widespread criticism for human rights abuses.
Cacho also lamented “self-censorship” in the highly concentrated Mexican media, saying that many outlets color their reporting to avoid trouble with the government and other powerful interests.
A long-time newspaper columnist and crusader for women’s rights, Lydia Cacho became famous thanks to the furor over her 2005 book “Los demonios del Eden” (The Demons of Eden), which exposed wealthy pedophiles and their associates in the Mexican establishment.
In the book, she identified textile magnate Kamel Nacif as a friend and protector of accused pedophile Jean Succar Kuri, who has since been sent back to Mexico from the United States to face charges.
Nacif, whose business is based in the central state of Puebla, accused Cacho of defamation - a criminal offense - in Mexico and arranged to have her arrested for allegedly for ignoring a summons to appear in court for the case.
In February 2006, Mexican dailies published transcripts of intercepted phone conversations in which Nacif was heard conspiring with Puebla Governor Mario Marin and other state officials to have Cacho taken into custody and then assaulted behind bars.
The transcripts indicated that Nacif, known as the “denim king” for his dominance of the blue-jeans business, engineered the author’s arrest by bribing court personnel not to send her the requisite summonses.
Cacho was subsequently released on bail and the case against her was ultimately dismissed.
EFE
Nov. 24, 2009
See Also:
LibertadLatina
Special Section
Journalist / Activist
Lydia Cacho is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
See Also:
Perils of Plan Mexico: Going Beyond Security to Strengthen U.S.-Mexico Relations
Americas Program Commentary
Mexico is the United States' closest Latin American neighbor and yet most U.S. citizens receive little reliable information about what is happening within the country. Instead, Mexico and Mexicans are often demonized in the U.S. press. The single biggest reason for this is the way that the entire binational relationship has been recast in terms of security over the past few years...
The militarization of Mexico has led to a steep increase in homicides related to the drug war. It has led to rape and abuse of women by soldiers in communities throughout the country. Human rights complaints against the armed forces have increased six-fold.
Even these stark figures do not reflect the seriousness of what is happening in Mexican society. Many abuses are not reported at all for the simple reason that there is no assurance that justice will be done. The Mexican Armed Forces are not subject to civilian justice systems, but to their own military tribunals. These very rarely terminate in convictions. Of scores of reported torture cases, for example, not a single case has been prosecuted by the army in recent years.
The situation with the police and civilian court system is not much better. Corruption is rampant due to the immense economic power of the drug cartels. Local and state police, the political system, and the justice system are so highly infiltrated and controlled by the cartels that in most cases it is impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
The militarization of Mexico has also led to what rights groups call "the criminalization of protest." Peasant and indigenous leaders have been framed under drug charges and communities harassed by the military with the pretext of the drug war. In Operation Chihuahua, one of the first military operations to replace local police forces and occupy whole towns, among the first people picked up were grassroots leaders - not on drug charges but on three-year old warrants for leading anti-NAFTA protests. Recently, grassroots organizations opposing transnational mining operations in the Sierra Madre cited a sharp increase in militarization that they link to the Merida Initiative and the NAFTA-SPP [North American Free Trade Act - Security and Prosperity Partnership] aimed at opening up natural resources to transnational investment.
All this - the human rights abuses, impunity, corruption, criminalization of the opposition - would be grave cause for concern under any conditions. What is truly incomprehens-ible is that in addition to generating these costs to Mexican society, the war on drugs doesn't work to achieve its own stated objectives...
Laura Carlsen
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
Nov. 23, 2009
Added: Dec. 03, 2009
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