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TechnoratiGender Savagery in Guatemala
On the outskirts of Guatemala City the body of an 18-year-old woman of indigenous ethnicity was recently discovered by her frantic parents who had been searching long and hard. Forensic evidence showed that she had been repeatedly raped and tortured and that her head had been severed from her body with a blunt knife while she was still alive.
This killing was more than just a passing aberration. Nightmarish crimes against women have been occurring with horrifying frequency in Guatemala. In the last seven years, over 3,200 Guatemalan women have been abducted and murdered, with many of them raped, tortured, and mutilated in the doing. The number of victims has shown a striking increase in the last few years with some six hundred murdered in 2006 alone.
The victims often are from low-income families deracinated from their rural homesteads during the civil war and forced to crowd into Guatemala City and other urban areas in search of work.
We might recall Guatemala's horrid history of violence. From 1962 to 1996, a popular insurgency was defeated by that deranged murder machine known as the Guatemalan Army, trained, advised, financed, and equipped by the United States. A United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission in 1999 characterized much of the counterinsurgency as a genocide against the Mayan people, a holocaust that left 626 villages destroyed, approximately 200,000 people dead or disappeared, including many labor union leaders, student leaders, journalists, and clergy. Hundreds of thousands more were either displaced internally or forced to flee the country.
Those years of untrammeled massacres provide some context for the current wave of femicide sweeping the country. The 1996 peace accords officially declared an end to the butchery but the war against women continues albeit in more piecemeal fashion. Guatemalan women are enduring the whiplash of decades of dehumanizing violence---boosted by the same kind of deep-seated sexism and gender-specific crimes (rape) that are perpetrated in many societies around the world.
Independent investigators charge that the vast majority of present-day atrocities against women have been committed by current or former members of the Guatemalan intelligence services. Having escaped prosecution for human rights violations during the internal war, these trained killers are now members of private security forces or police and paramilitary units that have been strongly implicated in the crimes of the last seven years.
For the most part, authorities show little inclination to bring the perpetrators to justice. Some officials blame the victims for their own deaths, implying that the women bring it on themselves because of their supposed involvement in gang activities or drugs, or because in some way or another they refuse to lead properly conforming lives within the safe confines of a traditional family and community
Some of the victims indeed may have been entangled in shady operations. But many more have been working women, including those of indigenous stock, trapped in poverty. They are the prime victims of a broader "social cleansing" that reactionary hoodlums are conducting against a variety of groups including street children, teenagers, gays, and homeless indigents, a campaign that has claimed thousands of additional victims.
Guatemala is known as the country of "eternal spring." Some analysts have called it the land of "eternal impunity," given how right-wing thugs continue to get away with rape, torture, and murder. Statistics reveal that hardly one percent of the perpetrators are ever tried and convicted and the sentences are outrageously light.
Even those rare cases that make it all the way to a prosecutor's desk have little chance of resulting in a conviction due to the lack of reliable evidence. Recent reports reveal the continuing failure of investigators to collect and preserve essential evidence from crime scenes. More than ordinary incompetence is operative here. Guatemalan authorities manifest little interest in training skilled cadres who might unearth really damaging information about who is behind the crimes.
Anonymous death threats have been sent to the volunteer exhumation teams that locate and examine the bodies of the murdered women and who try to publicize the evidence they discover. In May 2007 the leader of one such team was informed that his sister would be "raped and dismembered into pieces" if he continued to investigate the crimes.
While these murders may seem like little more than random thrill killings to some observers, in fact they serve a function of social control much as would any form of state terrorism. The violence perpetrated against individuals creates a pervasive climate of fear and horror within the victimized families and communities, thereby discouraging social protest and popular resistance. Instead of organizing around any number of crucial politico-economic issues, many of the demoralized and traumatized families cower in stunned silence.
In time people grow numb to the violence. Feeling helpless they almost routinely check the news each day to see how many additional victims have been reported. The effects on children can be especially telling. Growing up in a climate of fear, they learn that their parents and community cannot keep them safe and that homicidal fury might strike anyone at any time.
Family members of murdered women report that authorities show hostility towards them when they request government intervention.
Guatemala's legal system is rife with provisions that minimize the seriousness of violence against women, a system codified and enforced by men who have seldom displayed any concern for the safety of women. The Guatemalan Penal Code long reflected this bias, treating domestic abuse as a minor offence and generally offering scant protection from gender-based violence.
Guatemalan president Oscar Berger voices a commitment to confronting the crisis but has done next to nothing. Rather than devoting the necessary resources to investigation and enforcement, Berger appeared on national television in 2005 to announce that, for their own safety, women would do best to stay at home.
In 2005 Guatemala appointed its first female Supreme Court President, Beatriz De Leon, and two years later a female police chief. But there is little indication that high-placed female officeholders are going to buck the Old Boys network. Until the government makes some significant efforts towards implementing the recommendations outlined by human rights organizations (such as Guatemala Peace and Development Network, MIA, NISGUA, GHRC-USA, Rights Action, and Center for Gender Studies), the lives of Guatemala's women will hang in the balance.
There are some encouraging signs. The Human Rights Committee of the Guatemalan Congress is giving serious consideration to a bill that purports to guarantee life, liberty, dignity, and equality for women along with stiffer penalties for those who physically and mentally abuse women and otherwise violate their rights.
Meanwhile a growing number of Guatemalan women are moving into nontraditional careers. In the upcoming election, at least one hundred women will be running for Congress. Some parties have designed campaign strategies intended to promote electoral victories for more women. At present of a total of 158 seats in the Guatemalan Congress only fourteen are occupied by women.
There also are efforts by human rights organizations to create a central, unified database of femicide victims, as well as an emergency response system for missing girls and women that would include utilization of state-of-the-art internet capabilities, DNA testing, and the like.
Awareness of the atrocities has been reaching other countries and gaining international attention. There is a growing demand from abroad that Guatemalan law enforcement agencies get serious about responding to the gender-based atrocities. The U.S. Congress is being pressured to get into the act. A House resolution condemns the murders and expresses condolences and support to the families of victims. The resolution urges the government of Guatemala to recognize domestic violence as a crime, and to investigate the killings and prosecute those responsible.
The U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling on the Guatemalan Congress to approve the actions of the U.N.-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. The commission intends to investigate the clandestine groups that use violence to advance their illicit political and financial interests.
Meanwhile innocent and unoffending women continue to suffer nightmarish fates at the hands of misogynistic maniacs who, some years ago, developed a taste for inflicting rape, torture, and death "in service to their country."
Michael Parenti is a noted author and social commentator. His recent books include Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories); Democracy for the Few 8th ed. (Wadsworth/Thomson) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press). See www.michaelparenti.org.
Lucia Muñoz is founder and president of Mujeres Iniciando En Las Americas, and co-founder of Guatemala Peace and Development Network. She has lectured widely across the United States on the struggles facing Guatemalan women. See www.miamericas.info.
15 Comments so far
Show AllSiouxrose, my condolences to you. Your posts are amazing. I don't even know how to respond since there's just so much that I agree with and so much that I learn from you. :) Wow.
I think this thread is proof positive that there is hope for us. I'll leav yas with a Rush lyric from their new album Snakes and Arrows, the song is called "Faithless"...
I've got my own moral compass to steer by
A guiding star beats a spirit in the sky
And all the preaching voices -
Empty vessels of dreams so loud
As they move among the crowd
Fools and thieves are well disguised
In the temple and market place
Like a stone in the river
Against the floods of spring
I will quietly resist
Like the willows in the wind
Or the cliffs along the ocean
I will quietly resist
I don't have faith in faith
I don't believe in belief
You can call me faithless
I still cling to hope
And I believe in love
And that's faith enough for me
I've got my own spirit level for balance
To tell if my choice is leaning up or down
And all the shouting voices
Try to throw me off my course
Some by sermon, some by force
Fools and thieves are dangerous
In the temple and market place
Like a forest bows to winter
Beneath the deep white silence
I will quietly resist
Like a flower in the desert
That only blooms at night
I will quietly resist
"Woman is the fountain, the fruit and the vine..."
More that three thousand, in seven years, in a country the size of Guatemala!
Our hands are clean though, in no way could this be blowback from the work of the School of the Americas.
Iwarrior & peaceman: Today I must fly off to attend a funeral in N.Y. MEN like you make me happy and I actually have a tear in my eye as I write to you. Human nature is not one size fits all, and there are elements that resonate in some and not with others. I feel real comraderie with you two and ADMIRE a man who can look at his maleness and ask, where is it that I can evolve? I believe that our present gender is mostly a facade because the soul is largely without gender; however, the socialization mechanisms are profound and begin with letting the boy baby cry, so he does not become a sissy, and giving him trucks and giving her dolls, etc. It's believed that some of the socialization process takes place at pre-natal levels.
I remember a comment Kivals (another male I admire from this site, it's an intuitive resonance/thing) made a comment about women like Maggie Thatcher. These are she-lions that you can almost SEE digging their canines into human flesh. As another enlightened male who contributes regularly to this site (UNCOMMON DREAMS) has noted, it's about evolution. If we begin to accept the fact that just as the seasons turn, that our world/globe revolves, that matter can neither be created nor destroyed and we ARE matter... that there is a vast continuum to this thing called life. As thus, it's not about, nor can it be understood from the parameters of a single lifetime.
As a sheltered young woman who grew up in upper middle class Long Island home to enter The State University of New York (Albany) in the mid l970's when LIBERAL education WAS the norm, there was a program called EOP (economic opportunity program) that allowed Blacks and Hispanics to integrate the university. They had the best parties, pot and music so I mixed with them, and had my first love affair with a Latino male. I had my minor in sociology so took "Puerto Rican American family" and as always an excellent student, got a 100% on the final. But here's the rub... while I studied the TEXTBOOK definition of machismo, and understood that when any male feels a lack of power (say by being part of a nation occupied by foreigners dictating policy in his own land) he tends to take out that powerlessness by wanting to feel superior to woman. I married a Latin man and LIVED this aspect... although I remained incredulous to the actual experience until I got a divorce!
In any case, religion plays a HUGE role in this displacing of the Divine feminine. How about the very word NUN... it implies NONE, as in nothing, and the Catholic Church has always held women in low esteem. Isn't it (apart from Buddhist monastic life) the only one that makes sex so much a taboo that priests invert their natural human drives and as has been the unseemly case for a great many, aberrant behavior results? I loved what Matthew Foxx said in "Original Blessing" to counter "original sin."
I am a romantic. I believe the greatest wound suffered on this earth is the chasm set between the genders. Brillaint Dr. Alberto Villoldo speaks of the fact that Christianity has the ONLY creation myth where human beings are thrown OUT of the garden, i.e. placed in a position of antipathy against their natural human drives. We are born of the union of male and female (to my homosexual friends, this is NO castigation... do your thing, ultimately every soul must find a balance between yin and yang traits and this mission takes many lifetimes given the way our beings have been fragmented by centuries of hate based on false programming) and can find HIGH states of at-onement there. It's call Tantra in the East. Wonderful therapy for those fortunate enough to trust each other's bodies, minds and hearts to put that power into practice.
Jesus said it, "love one another." The Course in Miracles says anywhere two heal a feud, the ground is there made holy. We talk about politics and what actions we can take, there are some mystics who believe if each of us here and now forgave that individual we believe has trespassed most against us, a wave of light would pass over this earth and do much to cleanse the darkness that masquerades as hate, lets brother take up sword against brother, and has turned this amazing Eden into zones of war, dead zones, land mine zones, depleted uranium zones... as if this is in service to God? It is in service to a distortion of power seen in wholly masculine terms, an inversion of the metaphysical premise, "God made man in his image and likeness," so men of power determined god must be, look, feel and act like them. Failure of imagination, you betcha. Why so many are atheists. Yep. Is there a force greater than ourselves, obviously... it is poetry, it is grace, it is LOVE, it is the eternal reach of yin for yang and back again. OURS is a universe ever making love to itself... big bang is only half the equation and one that satisfies those identified with the premise of ejaculation. That's half the cosmic score... I speak for the other, and it terrifies men like RON who i suppose will do all he can to castigate me on and on. Excuse my lack of response, I will be in NY for the next week... flash on fellas. Like Bonnie Raitt, I hope I gave you something to think about!
What a sad, sad, way of life in Guatemala, and other countries with this form of accepted behavior. This "macho mystique" regarding the female gender as inferior beings justifies the atrocities commited by these undeveloped men who in reality, fear the female who may be smarter, more acomplished in life, and works actively to better the society in which both genders cohabitat in. In mysticism, the male is the negative force and the female is the positive force, but this is a topic for a different discussion.
siouxrose; iwarrior's post you refer to was Olga Bonfiglio's July 4th article, titled, WALKING THE TALK OF PEACE.
I agree with your July 8,1056pm post. Written with wisdom and understanding of Universal Law.
DeAnander; Very well stated. Right to the point. I like your style!
Paul M; That's the scary part. The aftermath of a confused combat soldier who sees what the ruling class has made him. A legalized cold-blooded murderer. Where will he vent his anger?
Mainstay; Thank you for sharing the experience in Guatemala with us, especially the families trying to cope with their "patriotic" children after that violent episode allegedly ended.
Me? I've been a feminist/women's libber ever since I could remember. Hail Females!
Siouxrose, you are too kind to me. Thanks for your words.
"There is a portion of the human being, probably more developed in men as "the protector" gender, that is cued to strike when it feels threatened."
That could be why these sorts of things anger me so. I feel that there should be men standing up to protect these women from harm. That saddens me as much as the acts of depravity themselves.
I mean, I get angry and disappointed with women too at times for various reasons, but to want to rape and mutiliate? It's rare that I even raise my voice to a woman.
Sometimes I think that those who hate women are really misanthropic deep down. You can't have Man without Woman and vice versa. We need each other to keep the human race going. Misogyny and misandry for that matter are self-destructive more than anything.
Do these men have no mothers or sisters?
required reading: Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale by Mies; Femicide in Global Perspective by Russell et al.
it's not just Guatemala. IMF and WB economic hits, the deliberate fomentation of ethnic strife by colonial powers, the enclosure of land and destruction of indigenous lifeways, language and tradition: all play their role in militarising men, increasing the stresses of poverty and impotent rage, and devaluing the lives and work of women. this is another of the costs of the Anglo-American empire, global capitalism, and the enforcement of the Washington Consensus and Chi-school neoDarwinian economic theories, the price that US policy makers notoriously think is "worth it."
until there is justice for all there is no justice for anyone, and [poor] women and kids will always be at the back of the line when the justice is handed out... easy targets for the privileged, the secret police, the mafiya thugs operating with impunity, the exploiters, the enslavers.
but hey, it means we in el Norte can buy really cheap T-shirts 'Made in Guatemala' by wage-slave sweatshop labour, which might cost a whole buck or two more if these people were allowed to make a living wage, allowed to have unions or work reasonable hours or even -- heaven forbid -- have the option of farming their own land instead of sweating in the FTZs and maquiladoras and slum factories operated by our comprador puppets. so it's all good, let's go shopping...
Just one I have found in all my world travels. St. Barts in the French West Indies. I know I know it is like the ultimate gated community of just 8 square miles, but it is THE only place I have ever lived where there is no need for locks, or doors for that matter on your house and in 5 years I never took the keys out of my car.
There is zero crime and it is one of the greatest places on earth to live
And yet we assume we live in a civilized world. Where? I have a daughter of 5 years old. What am I suposed to teach her? Send her to private school and then to Stanford? Name me a safe place on this planet, one.
What a strange, incomprehensible thing to do.
It's worth noting, but the way, that the psychological traininng of the US Marines involves misogyny - quite specifically. Google "Jody marine".
It's going to be pretty terrible when the armed forces come back from Iraq, to zero support from the VA, having learned just how impossible it is to police people who use IEDs as a weapon. Forget Oklahoma. The bombs will be smaller, but there will be a lot more of 'em. And the motive will be sheer hate for the fat, comfortable civilians who sent them to die.
-----
Oh - look at this! Jody, remember, is the civilian who stays at home while you go off to war:
Jody, Jody six feet four
Jody never had his ass kicked before.
I'm gonna take a three-day pass
And really slap a beating on Jody's ass!
Say no more.
Iwarrior: I think we get a sense of who people are in this forum. Catching up on a few days away I can't recall which article you responded to at length, explaining the way you let out angst via martial arts. I just wish to say that the very fact you take the time and introspective route to look at your own potential for violence, and how best to channel it is the mark of spiritual evolution. I am well aware of the macho rituals that demand of many men, that they lose their humanity to acts that decimate themselves as well as others. There is a portion of the human being, probably more developed in men as "the protector" gender, that is cued to strike when it feels threatened. I remember how I felt as a wild flower child able to hitchhike, attend rock concerts, sleep on the couch's of newly made friends... that kind of bubble is gone. Not only has fear been drummed into us as per terrorists, the sense that we might get a disease and not have adequate health care, or that our job might be shipped overseas, or that nature may level our home in a violent storm... no question the ante is upped on all of the aforementioned.
It's been written over the Ancient temple, "Know thyself." The Bible adds, "He who conquers himself is greater than he who conquers a city." No one gets to be a Jesus or Buddha in one lifetime. It takes many. It takes reviewing our actions and learning from them. It takes a mind open to truth and a heart to compassion. As a fellow spiritual seeker, I just want to say I see these developing trends in you, and that is quite promising. You care about social justice, and like others in this forum, that marks those individuals who are not stuck in the sphere of ego, but able to really feel the ONEness with humanity. When more experience this state, we may see this planet at long last lay down its arms. Of course the ecological portents are such that it's equally possible people will fight over nature's assets just to survive. The future is not written, but its trends exist for those with the wit to recognize them. Many who write in this forum are more prescient than they realize. Most of us are working towards the ideals we believe to be possible. And now we've got Cindy back, too!
I spent some time in Guatemala in the late 90s when there was an uneasy Peace. As the overt violence and military actions came to an end, I remember the Indigenas protesting that they could not reabsorb their stolen-and-militarized sons who were being discharged from the army. This was not because of the lack of food, or jobs, or homes. They objected because they said the humanity had been brutalized out of these men and that they did not believe that after spending years as walking weapons with no loyalties to their people or culture, that these young men could possible reacclimate to the simple quiet lifestyle of their families and villages.
It seems they were correct.
This is the real cost of wars - The way they alter the humanity of the people involved.
Beyond the political postures, there is the human response.
First there is the answer to the call to Defend (despite the fact that the usual target is some other citizen of some other country who's called into service by their own leadership - and who if not manipulated by that leadership would otherwise simply be going about their own business).
Then comes the group rationalization for killing based on some identified difference.
Next comes the allocation of the treasury - away from the well being of the people (the ONLY reason we pay taxes)and toward those that provide the arms and provisions for war.
Finally, the battles begin.
With each death, each atrocity, each struggle to survive, the combatants grow more calloused, less concerned with the actual individuals they face, more invested in the need to kill or subdue, less able to weigh and measure the sanity of violence.
To send children into battle is too great a price for any people. Though there are those who equate war with loyalty, honor, and duty, it is not those things - it is the degradation of humanity. Whether in rape, torture, beheadings, or some other atrocity, it is the rare individual that does not find something of their humanity diminished by war and its affect.
"An Indian Woman in Guatemala" is the autobiography of Rigoberta Menchu. A life that inspired hundreds of Guatelan natives to aspire to a higher life. For this she was the winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.
I was surprised and disappointed that she was not mentioned in this article. She is now a candidate for president of Guatemala in the September elections and is now running third in a male dominated contest.
Articles like these are the ones that fill me with so much animosity towards my own gender. Are men who commit such atrocities against women anything but cowards? What sort of value system does a person like that have?
This why I have such difficulty blurring "good" and "evil". I know that evil walks. I see it everyday.
There have been many people in my life whom I strongly disliked. I can't recall ever wanting to dismember them.
What runs through the minds of people such as these?
And why is it that when America intervenes, we can't do so in a way that benefits the people? Our actions always end up benefiting the elites. We end up turning these countries into hellholes. We're turning the entire world into a hellhole, our country included.
Has the US's record regarding gender equality been sterling? It always makes me angry when I see people throwing stones at the cultures of other nations.
"At least WE don't treat OUR women like that."
And then we use it as another excuse to meddle.
"We need to liberate the women of Afghanistan!"
Are American women liberated?
I think it is rather apparent by the investigations Parenti and Munoz have listed -plus the US Senates call for a UN commission to investigate (CICIG)- where the focus needs to be leveled: "clandestine criminal groups" killing and torturing females for power. Several suspects are military and police, but also ex-military personnel "connected to past human rights abuses...."
"clandestine criminal groups" definition listed at amnesty.org link below:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR340192007
More evidence of what the promotion of violence leaves in its wake. The status of women in Afghanistan in absymal, in much of the Arab world they live like shadows, and now this. About a year ago CD published statistics that were compiled by the U.N (or a satellite organization) that estimated about 50% of women worldwide would know violence in some form at the hand of men. When Nafta brought jobs to Mexico, a cycle of violence against working women escalated there, as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 200 young women were found murdered in border towns. Possible work of a serial killer, it was left under the radar. Misogyny remains real and an all too dark power when societies are taught to worship force first and demur to weapons and warriors. Under Bush and Eisenhower's fulfilled prophecy regarding our own military-industrial complex, this feat has been established. Everywhere a sparrow falls the world shutters; and there are a great many human sparrows (arguably of both genders) falling today. Whatever we envision the afterlife to be, that's the zone of greatest current and yet-to-be assumed "refugee" status. CRIMES against humanity are being waged and escalating, and much has to do with religioisty attached to violence. AS if this blatant disregard for the sacredness of human life could serve the Deity (by any name).