GUATEMALA:
Elections Hold Out
Little Hope for Women
Victims of Violence
By Inés Benítez
GUATEMALA CITY, (IPS) -
Although they have taken
a tough stance on crime,
the leading candidates
for Sunday’s
presidential elections
in Guatemala have not
specifically addressed
the serious problem of
violence against women,
which has cost at least
322 lives so far this
year, nor have they
proposed concrete
measures to combat it.
"They told me that if I
didn’t hand over the
money they’d kill me,
but first they’d kill my
children, my husband and
my sons-in-law,"
43-year-old Sonia
Rodríguez (not her real
name), who has been
living in the Survivors
Foundation (Fundación
Sobrevivientes) women’s
shelter for over a week,
told IPS.
According to official
statistics, 603 women
were murdered in 2006,
16 percent more than in
2005. Organised crime,
in the shape of "maras"
or youth gangs, drug
trafficking mafias or
human trafficking
networks, are behind
most of the deaths,
Norma Cruz, head of the
Survivors Foundation
which has offered
support to victims and
their relatives for
seven years, told IPS.
Cruz complained that
while both right and
left-wing parties have
promised to bolster
security in Guatemala,
which has one of the
highest per capita
murder rates in the
region, the proposed
formulas are
"simplistic" and fail to
offer concrete solutions
for the problem of
violence against women.
Sitting in the shelter’s
dining room, Rodríguez
said that when she
received the first phone
call demanding that she
pay 50,000 quetzals
(around 6,600 dollars),
she was working on
developing social
projects in the poor
outlying neighbourhood
where she lived. But the
steady stream of threats
forced the entire family
to move out.
Asked in a televised
debate last week about
what they would to
favour women and to
combat "femicide"
(widespread murders of
women), the five leading
candidates spoke of
strengthening gender and
ethnic equality and
education, and
incorporating more women
into the workforce.
"But what good will
greater participation do
us if we are dead?"
asked Cruz, whose
Foundation provides
assistance in more than
40 cases a day.
Records show that 10
percent of women murder
victims in Guatemala are
killed by their husband
or partner, another 10
percent are killed in
family or neighbourhood
feuds, and 80 percent
are the victims of
organised crime.
"There is a heavy burden
of hatred towards
women," said Cruz, a
former guerrilla fighter
who said the violence
dates back to the
country’s 1960-1996
armed conflict, because
"the revolutionary
movement demobilised,
but the infrastructure
of war and terror was
not dismantled."
Official figures
indicate that 2,857
people were murdered in
this country of 13
million, most of them by
firearm, in the first
half of 2007.
Although men make up a
much larger proportion
of the murder victims
than girls and women,
many of the female
victims are killed with
extreme cruelty, and in
a grisly fashion.
In an Aug. 31 statement,
the Inter-American
Commission on Human
Rights expressed its
concern over "A marked
increase in organised
crime, criminal activity
and violence against
women, a resurgence of
actions against human
rights defenders and the
impunity that prevails".
"It's painful. I won’t
be able to return to my
house, my projects, my
church, my people," said
Rodríguez, a married
mother of five who has
four grandchildren.
As she talked, sometimes
with tears in her eyes,
she kept her cell-phone
nearby, in case she
received a call from
"the bad guys," as she
refers to them. She has
added their number to
her list of contacts,
because she has to keep
"negotiating" the amount
of money she will have
to pay her extortioners.
"If you don't give them
the money, they kill
you," said Rodríguez,
who added that she is
"not very hopeful that
the police will put a
stop to this," even
though she filed a
complaint and the police
traced the phone calls
to a local prison.
Ana Gladis Ollas, the
head of the Women’s
Rights Section in
Guatemala’s Human Rights
Ombudsman’s Office, told
IPS that "no political
party has promised to
put a greater emphasis
on tackling the problem
of violent deaths of
women."
In Guatemala, the
official poverty rate is
51 percent, but
unofficial estimates put
the figure closer to 80
percent. And among the
indigenous majority, the
rate is even higher.
IPS asked
representatives of the
different parties what
they proposed to do to
deal with the problem of
violence against women.
Parliamentary Deputy
Myrna Ponce of the
right-wing Guatemalan
Republican Front (FRG),
the main opposition
party, said the problem
has not been put on the
political agenda and "is
largely invisible
because we (women) are
seen as a minority."
Ponce, who proposes the
creation of specific
courts for women,
acknowledged to IPS that
there have been no real
efforts to tackle
femicide because the
problem has been turned
into an "ideological
issue" in an extremely "machista"
or sexist society.
On Sunday, voters in
Guatemala will choose
between 14 presidential
candidates, and will
also elect a new vice
president, mayors and
legislators. If no
presidential candidate
wins over 50 percent of
the votes, the two
candidates who obtained
the greatest number of
votes in the first round
will go to a Nov. 4
runoff.
The centre-left National
Union of Hope (UNE),
placed by the latest
opinion polls only
one-tenth of a
percentage point behind
the front-running
rightwing Patriotic
Party (PP), presented a
draft law against
femicide to Congress in
June 2006, which is
still pending approval.
The draft law seeks to
strengthen the role of
the state in the
investigation of these
crimes, and to provide
better legal protection
for women.
National women’s
coordinator and UNE
candidate for Congress
Mauri Estrada told IPS
that the issue is absent
from political debate
"because of lack of
knowledge." She said her
plans include reforming
the law on domestic
violence, creating
specialised prosecution
services and expanding
the budget of the
institutions fighting
the problem.
René de León,
coordinator of the
government programme of
the PP, which promises
to take an "iron-fisted"
approach to crime, told
IPS of their proposal to
create "a dedicated task
force to combat crimes
against women."
Most cases of violence
against women are never
investigated, and only a
small fraction of those
that do make it to court
result in the offender
being sentenced. In
2006, judges sentenced
12 people, one to 60
years in jail and the
rest to 50 years.
Furthermore, the legal
proceedings are slow,
and it can take three
years for a case to come
to trial.
Many crimes go
unpunished because few
families are willing to
take the perpetrators to
court, "for fear of
being killed," said
Cruz.
"If a woman is raped,
she feels too ashamed to
report it. The system
discourages her," she
said, criticising the
public prosecutor’s
office for recommending
that rape victims come
to a financial
arrangement with the
rapist, even when they
have become pregnant by
him.
The Survivors
Foundation, which has a
staff of 30, receives a
congressional grant of
200,000 dollars a year.
But this is
insufficient, Cruz said,
pointing out that there
are only four women’s
shelters in the whole of
Guatemala, including
hers.
The Survivors Foundation
shelter can accommodate
25 people. At the
moment, six people live
there in addition to
Rodríguez: another woman
and her three children,
and two teenagers, 13
and 14 years old. The
eldest witnessed the
murders of her boyfriend
and her brother.
The house has a
formidable security
system, including armed
guards, surveillance
cameras and an electric
fence. But inside the
walls are painted in
bright colours, and
there is a sunny
playroom full of
children’s toys.
Rodríguez showed photos
of two of her
grandchildren, and said
she hopes that when they
grow up they won’t have
to live in fear.
"They can’t do
anything," she said
about the politicians
who are working up to a
crescendo before the
elections. "I don’t know
what’s going to happen
to me."
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