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Indigenous Women, Children at Risk |
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This
Section Last Updated
December 5, 2009 |
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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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Added:
Nov. 30, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of
Violence Against Women - 2009
Guatemala
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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
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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
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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.)
|
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|
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 |
|
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Indigenous Women and children in
Guatemala
experienced
one of the most horrendous acts
of genocide in the modern
Americas during the 1970s and
1980s.
| | | | | | |
/ Welcome
