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TechnoratiGuatemala's 'Femicide' Crisis
A white sheet covers another victim of Guatemala City's violence in District 16.
![[Gang-related violence has increased in recent years alongside a rise in drug-trafficking activity (Al-Jazeera file)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/femicide_0.jpg "femicide.jpg")
Jocelyn was shot dead while walking home. She was only 17-years-old.
Her family has no idea why she was killed. Her murder, like so many others in this country, will probably remain unpunished.
Situations like this one have become regular in Guatemala as violence against women - termed "femicide" - continues to increase.The savage methods being used by street gangs in their fight against each other are now being used against women.
Gang-related violence has increased sharply here in recent years, amid an increase in drug-trafficking activity.
But while the murder rate cuts evenly across both sexes, women's groups point out that females are often killed simply because of their gender.
In 2007, more than 700 women and girls were murdered.
Assault and torture
The pattern of violence includes sexual assault and physical torture before the women are killed and their bodies dumped in public places.
Odilia Sanchez's niece was raped and killed by three men hoping to rise through the ranks of their gang. She was only three-years-old.
Her father found her dead, naked and badly beaten after searching for hours.
Two of her killers were stoned to death by the community and then set on fire.
This is a common practice in poor communities where the justice imposed by the state is non-existent. Afraid of revenge, the little girl's family fled town.
We found them hiding in a small house in the capital.
"I am afraid for my family so I brought them all here" Odilia Sanchez told Al Jazeera.
Those who dare challenge the power of men in Guatemalan society often pay with their lives and only two per cent of crimes against women are solved.
Adela Chacon Tax was tortured and stabbed to death by a man whom she refused to date.
Her body was thrown in a ditch in Escuintla, in the southern part of the country.
She left behind three children, who continue to visit the humble tomb where she is buried.
Catalina Fajarto Perez, her sister, told Al Jazeera: "There are other cases like her. After my sister was killed the bodies of two other women appeared. There is impunity and nobody really cares."
Fighting for justice
We went along with her family to see her accused killer face trial.Her two young children could not stop crying.
The trial was being pushed by Norma Cruz, a lawyer who has become a champion for abused women across the country.
She leads the non-governmental organisation Survivors and helps abused women and the family members of those who were killed fight for justice.
"We are a society that has gotten used to death," she said.
"We had the longest civil war in Latin America with thousands of people dead, so people here take it as something normal.
"Women are not seen as great contributors to the country, so violence against them seems to be acceptable."
Others also blame much of the violence against women on the country's 30-year civil war.
In a country ensnared by residual violence from Central America's longest-running internal conflict, where many of the crimes committed by the state and anti-government fighters remain unpunished, murders are not front-page stories - especially when those killed are women in what is a predominantly paternalistic Guatemalan society, critics say.
No state protection
According to a Guatemalan Human Rights Commission report, femicide is often carried out with "shocking brutality".
A contributing factor to the continued crime is the absence of state guarantees to protect the rights of women, the report says.
But the hard work of women's rights groups has seemingly paid off.
In April 2008, Guatemala passed a law against femicide, which officially recognised it as a punishable crime.
However, much more is needed to fight this battle as the crimes against women continue and perpetrators remain unpunished.
7 Comments so far
Show AllI have spent some time in Guatemala and I know that there are many kind, intelligent men who support their families in Guatemala. It's just that a few powerful men in the United States during the 50's destroyed the government of Guatemala. Young men were rounded-up and forced at gunpoint into the military. The lucky ones were able to hide. Many women were raped by these soldiers whose training, incredibly inhumane, was directed and financed by the mostly male military of the United States. The movie, Voces Innocentes, tells what happened in El Salvador, but the same thing happened in Guatemala. The book, Bitter Fruit, is a must read for anyone interested in Guatemala.
It's only been 13 years since the cease fire in this civil war in which the Mayans were forced to kill their own people. Does anyone expect these broken ex-soldiers to re-integrate into society after participation in a genocide against their own? During the 30 year war, every (male) president of the U.S., with the exception of Jimmy Carter-- correct me if I am wrong-- provided financial support to the military and death squads of Guatemala.
The male religious leaders in Guatemala preach against birth control. Abortion is illegal. However prostitution is legal and thriving. Men come to Guatemala from the United States, Europe, and Asia to partake of the offerings of desperate, young women. Unemployment is terribly high, all the labor leaders are dead,or will have short lives. What choice do these girls and women have? Some women have been forced into selling babies. Some women have had babies stolen.
The Guatemalan leaders and members of the death squads have never been brought to justice. On the other hand, neither have the U.S. political leaders, the military, and the School of the Americas been brought to justice for their responsibility in this tragedy.
I have been reading about this epidemic; places in N. Mexico are engaging in femicide...usually women who work in the maquiladoras.
I have listened to gang members make comments about the vicious crimes of members of Mara Salvatrucha; these gang members observed the horrible violence that is the hallmark of this gang is a product of the El Salvador's years of civil war.
In fact, Central America's years of social violence didn't go away; instead of revolutionary violence, it has become gang violence.
Because the various Central American's nations' civil wars have stopped, it doesn't mean the underlying structural violence has not gone away: hunger, drugs, unemployment, rule by corrupt and unresponsive oligarchs, malnutrition, evicting campesinos from their land, families split by migration, lack of a working public education system, mass poverty, etc.
The recent coup in Honduras is another indication that the underlying structural violence in most Central American societies is alive and well.
The violence of civil war and patriarchy has devastated Guatemalan society. In regards to the last comment, most people who adopt from Guatemala have no idea of the corruption involved in it, including stealing babies. Please see http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/GuatemalaNews.html
The brutality of war seeps into all segments of a society, which becomes numb to the horror. The US is a prime example. After decades of war, parading under the banner of "bringing democracy to the world" or other such nonsense, we have grown accepting of torture, rendition (kidnapping by our own government) endless drone bombing of civilians, and other things which the public would have found unthinkable in my childhood (even though I know that the government was doing these things covertly at the time). Unlike in Guatemala, the results of our acceptance of such monstrous evils do not remain within our own borders, but infect the entire planet. Currently I am working with youth to try to open their eyes to the horror of war before they become as hardened to it as their parents.
Read the history of Guatemala and you will find the hand of the US. In 1954 a CIA coup overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala. The civil war (an estimated 300,000 killed, massacred, villages destroyed) and it's aftermath (femicide and more) follow from that.
In absence of a Government that preserves the law equally for ALL rather then just the elite, this is the type of world that follows.
One where the BRUTES rule via violence using their willingness to KILL others and inflict violence upon them to maintain their own limited power and status.
It one reason that well meaning men and women get together to form Governments. That to ensure that Governments provides for their safety and well being.
A Government that fails to do so are not a Government of the people and are COMPLICIT in these crimes.
Libertarians take note.
My son's sister-in-law and her husband adopted a little Guatemalan girl a couple of years ago.
This article makes clear how important that act is for her future. She has one now.
The men in Guatemala make me ashamed to share their gender.
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