Gender Based Violence in Guatemala

We don't know for sure yet but September looks to continue the downward trend in overall murders in Guatemala. It also appears that the number of women murdered will decline in 2011 (340 so far) compared to 2010 (838). Even if murders in Guatemala have declined in recent years and the murder rates of neighboring Honduras and El Salvador have soared, Guatemala remains a dangerous place.   

Two women were killed in an apparent robbery at a beauty parlor on Tuesday in Guatemala City. Cristina Siekavizza has been missing since July 7. The dismembered remains of four young women have been recovered in different parts of the country within the last month. And the remains of two young women were recently found after they disappeared in late August. The two teenagers were most likely killed by a man with whom one of them struck up a relationship on Facebook. 

Activists have also warned that there has been a sharp increase in the sexual trafficking of indigenous girls and women from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador during the last three years.

Finally, the Public Ministry in Guatemala reports that sexual violence against women in Guatemala is increasing.

Meanwhile in El Salvador, the department of San Miguel is suffering an alarming increase in femicide. Forty-three women have been killed there so far this year, five in the last week. Several victims were young girls murdered while still wearing their school uniforms. Three hundred forty nine women were killed in El Salvador during the first six months of the year.

The number of women murdered in El Salvador and Guatemala in 2011 are about the same even though Guatemala’s population is nearly three times larger.    

Sexual Violence in Guatemala

Margot Wallström, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, congratulated Guatemala on the arrest of General Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes. 

“The apprehension of General Lopez Fuentes sends a strong signal to all perpetrators that conflict-related sexual violence is not acceptable, and that justice will ultimately prevail,” Ms. Wallström said.

“Sexual violence thrives on silence and impunity,” she added. “Women have no rights if those who violate their rights go unpunished.”

During the scorched-earth program carried out by the Guatemalan government in the early 1980s, entire villages were burned to the ground, women and girls were brutally raped, and unborn children were killed.

CNN also had a story today that focused mainly upon researchers who have spent much of their lives interviewing victims of rape. The first part of the article is based upon the work of Victoria Sanford and Daniel Rothenberg in Guatemala. Sanford has been carrying out work in Guatemala for the last few decades and has spent numerous hours interviewing Guatemalan women who suffered wartime rape.  

The soldiers set fire to our villages. They shot our husbands and brothers, burned our houses. They stopped to wait for the sound of our babies crying. When they cried, the soldiers came toward the wailing.

They killed our babies. They raped us.

The stories are important for the world to hear and just as importantly for the victims to share. Unfortunately, violence against women did not start with the beginning the of conflict in Guatemala nor did it stop with war's conclusion. Women continue to be raped and killed at an alarming rate.

The government's most recent effort to reduce gender-based violence is to designate women-only buses.

According to the local Association of Urban Buses, an average of a dozen vehicles per day are attacked by armed assailants who rob passengers and regularly assault female riders. Congresswoman  Zury Ríos Sosa, who spearheaded the gender-segregated bus initiative, says the new system will protect women and enhance their safety on public transportation. Ríos has said she would also like to create a women-only taxi system similar to those already established in Mexico City and other Latin American cities.

A separate bus for women sounds like a good idea to me. It's not a solution to the problem, but perhaps it will make life a little safer for Guatemalan women until society comes up with one. 

Youth Victims in Guatemala

In recent years (2005-2010), 400 youth have been killed each year in Guatemala. According to NANA, a nongovernmental organization, during the first two-plus months of 2011, 106 minors have been killed. Twenty nine girls between the ages of 12 and 15 are included in those numbers. As of last week, 127 women had been murdered so far this year.

Many of the young victims previously had been victims of sexual assault, torture, and child labor. Meanwhile Interior Minister Carlos Menocal does not deny that death squads engaged in social cleansing exist today.

According to the Interpeace Regional Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Programme,

over an 11 month period last year, 433 children under the age of 17 suffered violent deaths. 3,337 young people between the ages of 28-35 also died due to violence.

INTERPEACE is a Geneva-based international peacebuilding organization founded in 1994 "that plays a discrete role in helping societies war-afflicted societies to build lasting peace." It has just published a report that outlines "12 clear strategies and associated objectives and actions to combat youth related violence" in Guatemala.

The violence against children continued this weekend with Six dead in latest Guatemala crime wave. The bodies of six youth, including three brothers ranging in age from 9 to 18, were found in a community 30 kilometers northeast of Guatemala City.

Meanwhile, Carlos Mendoza has posted murder statistics broken down by municipality, department, sex, and weapon between 2000 and 2010 at The Black Box. Hopefully the availability of this data will be used to better understand the complex nature of violence in Guatemala today.

Finally, as if murder was not all Guatemalans had to fear, 56 kidnappings have been reported so far this year, double last years total. Ten of the 56 involve minors as the victims.

Una Centroamérica violenta, infestada por el narcotráfico y el crimen organizado, con estados débiles y dominados por la impunidad recibirá a partir de mañana al secretario general de las Naciones Unidas, Ban Ki-moon.

This is the situation that Ban Ki-Moon will hear and see when he arrives in Guatemala on Tuesday.

Reinforcing the Border - The Guatemala / Belize Border, that is

Although several Peten mayors recently requested a new state of siege in their department, Interior Minister Carlos Menocal today dismissed that possibility. According to Menocal, the government lacks resources to carry out sieges in other departments. While true, it's probably not what people want to hear given the positive evaluation most Guatemalans (though obviously not all, especially indigenous organizations) have showed towards the Alta Verapaz siege.

On the other hand, Belize's Ambassador to Guatemala is warning his countrymen of potential spillover effects from drug trafficking into their country. That spillover might come sooner rather than later as Belize says that the Guatemalan government is preparing for military operations in the Peten.

Belize’s Ambassador to Guatemala, H. E. Alfredo Martinez, told Amandala on Monday that there is already evidence that Guatemala’s narcotics problems are trickling to this side of the border. Martinez informed our newspaper that the Government of Guatemala is about to dispatch Special Forces soldiers to conduct regular foot patrols in the southern areas of Peten, near the border, while Belize military will do coordinated patrols on this side of the border.

I can't imagine that this is going over well with Belizeans. They already have one of the world's highest murder rates.

2010 was a record year for murders - and the new high mark for homicides is far, far higher than the previous record holder.

That would be 2008 when 103 murders were recorded; unofficially 2010 has seen 132.

That is 29 more than the previous record in 2008 - an increase of 29% - which is the greatest year to year increase since 2001 when the number of murders surged by 40%.

And even more alarming is that the 132 murders pushes Belize's murder rate per one hundred thousand to 40. That puts Belize officially among the highest in the world - and most likely in the top 10 worldwide.

And like Guatemala, there has been a "spike" in the killing of women (17 in 201). There were also 9 victims under the age of 16.

PBS NewsHour on Women and Public Health in Guatemala

PBS News Hour is running a series of articles related to public health in Guatemala. Here's the preview that they've released about upcoming stories.



Here's a blurb from Talea Miller at NewsHour about the upcoming broadcasts.

On March 7-8, the global health unit will air two stories from Guatemala on the NewsHour, focusing on family planning and maternal health and violence against women. The NewsHour will also air follow-up discussions with representatives of NGO groups working in Guatemala and government officials. President Obama will visit Central America in mid-March as part of a three-nation trip.

It's great that PBS NewsHour is bringing attention to the problem of poverty and violence in Guatemala so that people in the US and around the world are more aware of the problem and more likely to do something about it. However, I am getting worried about the quality of the programming.

For example, in the blurb above, they say that they will be covering public health in Guatemala at the same time that President Obama is visiting Central America. They do know that he is visiting neighboring El Salvador, not Guatemala right?

Then there's this Violence Against Women is Epidemic in Guatemala article from Imani M. Cheers.

The trend towards socialism in the 1950s concerned the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, as the Cold War against Soviet communism played out in other countries around the world.  In 1956, the CIA backed a military coup and the country fell into a decades-long civil war that left more than 200,000 civilians dead. During that time, the U.S. helped train Guatemala's military in counter-insurgency techniques

The coup was obviously in 1954, not 1956.

Then there's this quote as well.

The PBS NewsHour global health team recently returned from Guatemala reporting on the femicide crisis and violence against women. The Guatemala Human Rights Commission estimated that in 2008, over 700 women were violently murdered. 

What year are we in? If you are spending January and February 2011 in Guatemala to prepare stories for March 2011 broadcasts, you need to do better than 2008 statistics. Approximately 838 women were killed in Guatemala in 2010.

Sorry for the bit of a rant. I just think that it's a really important topic that needs greater exposure and do not want it to be done half-arsed. These aren't the biggest mistakes, but when you neglect these details they do throw your entire work into doubt. (I know I make mistakes as well, but they have editors.)

You can find several stories on their website here.

(I am hoping that they ask why officials and activists think that the total number of women murdered in Guatemala increased from 2009 to 2010 while the overall murders declined)

Violence against Women in Guatemala

There are a few recent stories about women in Guatemala that you might be interested in taking a look at. The first is by Danilo Valladares at IPS on Surviving the Sexist Genocide in Guatemala. The other reports are by Talea Miller at PBS News Hour on Opening Horizons for Guatemala's Girls and Violence Against Women in Guatemala. The global health unit of The NewsHour is preparing a more complete report for March.

All three articles highlight the horrific violence committed against women in Guatemala (838 women were murdered there last year). They also discuss the work of NGOs, including Norma Cruz's Fundacion Sobrevivientes or Survivors Foundation and Abriendo Oportunidades or Creating Opportunities, in stemming the violence and assisting the victims

Two of the articles discuss the life and death of Mindy Rodas. Here is a video about Mindy from last year. Mindy's husband had slashed her face with a machete in July 2009. Mindy's tortured, strangled body was found in the capital on December 18th.



The second video highlights the work of Creating Opportunities. This organization is "providing the most vulnerable indigenous Mayan girls and young women in Guatemala with personal and professional development skills, mentorship, and leadership opportunities."