M aria Isabel Veliz Franco was kidnapped and murdered in December 2001 when he was 15. His body ravaged by multiple rape and torture, was abandoned in a vacant lot. This case is not isolated. Is one among the more than five thousand violent deaths of women that have run in less than a decade in Guatemala, a country where impunity rates reach 98%, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
Mercedes Hernández * - Photo: Walter Astrada ** - Feminicidio.net - 10/03/2011
This reality, usually silenced and hidden behind the scene of daily violence, misogyny and reveal the enormous operational capacity of the murderers, hint that remain to be tried or punished. But increasingly, thanks to the voices of hundreds of activists, a question is in the air: Why these men are organized to torture and kill women in the form more merciless as possible and then expose their bodies in certain areas?
start Answers arise from chronological analysis determined by two essential points: the first is described by the term itself femicide, which the author defines as Lagarde "a breakdown of the rule of law that encourages impunity" . The second is that any authoritarian ideological system and patriarchy is-needs to impose its tenets as unquestionable truths. According
Walda Barrios, academic and activist for the rights of women in Guatemala , traditionally, most women have been regarded as the property of a man : father, husband, father, brother, boyfriend religious authority or any male who has been delegated to his tutelage. These are legitimate social guardians and-sometimes-legally to decide on the productive and reproductive behavior, sexual access and other roles of women that they consider theirs. This sense of ownership has meant that, as throughout the world, "the house is the most dangerous place for women" because indoors also decides on life and death.
In recent years violence against women has been orchestrated as a weapon of terror used by criminal groups to intimidate the population. In the women's bodies pacts have been sealed with blood and have sent multiple messages to groups enemies and the inhabitants of the disputed territories . In these cases, the links between the perpetrators and the victims have been non-existent: "What is new is that it has depersonalized murder, both for the victims as compared to their murderers." (Rosa Cobo, 2009).
Historically
these crimes, and its use as a war strategy, have an important precedent in the internal armed conflict that ravaged Guatemala for almost 40 years where he was declared the State itself to women as the enemy within . In the bodies of indigenous women's speech was signed power groups , and they settled the defeat and the sacrifice of the Maya people, ordered from the highest leadership of the State.
The past is not decoupled from this
Despite the alarming figures present, have been an ongoing femicide in Guatemala. The objectification of women's bodies have become the norm and never historical exception, as argued by the anthropologist Marcela Gereda "before their bodies were invaded and pregnant with white fur, and Europe. They were then mobilized, trucks, such as livestock, and exploited to cut the large coffee fincas (...). In the eighties their bodies were, in many cases, slaughtered, burned or disappeared by the Army. "
As Catherine Mackinnon says, there have been times of peace for women . The pre-Columbian American patriarchy followed the forms of subordination based on racial domination imposed by the English invasion. Landa Diego around 1562, who spent his old age to study the Mayan culture, perhaps to try to retrieve the information they had destroyed in his time as an inquisitor, he wrote in his memoirs: "Formerly married 20 years and now 12 or 13; given that the English killed their own, starting (the Indians) to mistreat and even kill them. "
In recent years violence against women has been orchestrated as a weapon of terror used by criminal groups to intimidate the population. In the women's bodies pacts have been sealed with blood and have sent multiple messages to groups enemies and the inhabitants of the disputed territories . In these cases, the links between the perpetrators and the victims have been non-existent: "What is new is that it has depersonalized murder, both for the victims as compared to their murderers." (Rosa Cobo, 2009).
Historically
these crimes, and its use as a war strategy, have an important precedent in the internal armed conflict that ravaged Guatemala for almost 40 years where he was declared the State itself to women as the enemy within . In the bodies of indigenous women's speech was signed power groups , and they settled the defeat and the sacrifice of the Maya people, ordered from the highest leadership of the State.
The past is not decoupled from this
Despite the alarming figures present, have been an ongoing femicide in Guatemala. The objectification of women's bodies have become the norm and never historical exception, as argued by the anthropologist Marcela Gereda "before their bodies were invaded and pregnant with white fur, and Europe. They were then mobilized, trucks, such as livestock, and exploited to cut the large coffee fincas (...). In the eighties their bodies were, in many cases, slaughtered, burned or disappeared by the Army. "
As Catherine Mackinnon says, there have been times of peace for women . The pre-Columbian American patriarchy followed the forms of subordination based on racial domination imposed by the English invasion. Landa Diego around 1562, who spent his old age to study the Mayan culture, perhaps to try to retrieve the information they had destroyed in his time as an inquisitor, he wrote in his memoirs: "Formerly married 20 years and now 12 or 13; given that the English killed their own, starting (the Indians) to mistreat and even kill them. "
During the internal armed conflict, government forces used sexual violence as a tactic of individual and collective extermination. As in other genocides, sexual violence was a recurrent practice to subject peoples and opposing sides through the body of his wives, with the connivance of the leadership of the Government . The study Breaking the Silence (2006), Consortium agents of change, reflected in many communities the soldiers raped the massacre survivors after men, while other women were publicly raped and tortured before their families and the people before being killed. In communities where men had fled or been killed, some widows and orphans remained for years as sex slaves for the commanders of the Army and Civil Defence Patrols (PAC): "They not only arrived but set up a task and all we were leaving the widows, and executed because they killed our husbands do not know where, we were forced to go to feed them. We were put into groups to take turns, to lunch and after satisfying all imposed on us we were raped one by one ". (Testimony one of the survivors before the Court of Conscience Against Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict. March 2010).
sexual violence was a mass practice, systematic and planned within the state's counterinsurgency strategy and directed particularly against the indigenous population during the scorched earth policy (1982-1983). According to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 99% of victims were women, of which 88.7% were Mayan . Their bodies were practiced all kinds of sexual humiliation designed to "boost the morale of the troops." There is sufficient evidence to determine with certainty and clarity the chain of command worked at all times. Kate Doyle as shown in his analysis of Operation Sofia, a military offensive by the army of Guatemala in the Ixil area (consisting of three municipalities, Nebaj, Chajul Cotzal and in the department of Quiché) between July and August 1982, In order to exterminate the Indians and considered subversive in the area: "The actions of the soldiers in the field were a direct result of orders from superior officers and not only began operations under his command but also the continued very caring, they learned everything in real time, sent new instructions during operations were met by troops. In short, they had total control over their development as took place. "
The conclusions of the Court of Conscience declared: "The rape was committed in conjunction with any other serious crimes such as genocide and other crimes against the duties of humanity." These facts directly attributable to the State because they were made by public officials or employees and state agencies, military and civilians, who were delegated, de jure or de facto, the power to act on their behalf. However, sexual violence was a state policy that most analysis has been reduced and misinterpreted as an isolated incident committed by military officers in pursuit of pleasure.
After 36 years of armed conflict that claimed over 200,000 lives and led to the diaspora of more than half a million people, was the long awaited signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. However, the executioners benefited from legal and social norms that may well be considered the end point and have allowed a single one of the authors, intellectuals or materials of these crimes has been prosecuted or punished.
sexual violence was a mass practice, systematic and planned within the state's counterinsurgency strategy and directed particularly against the indigenous population during the scorched earth policy (1982-1983). According to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 99% of victims were women, of which 88.7% were Mayan . Their bodies were practiced all kinds of sexual humiliation designed to "boost the morale of the troops." There is sufficient evidence to determine with certainty and clarity the chain of command worked at all times. Kate Doyle as shown in his analysis of Operation Sofia, a military offensive by the army of Guatemala in the Ixil area (consisting of three municipalities, Nebaj, Chajul Cotzal and in the department of Quiché) between July and August 1982, In order to exterminate the Indians and considered subversive in the area: "The actions of the soldiers in the field were a direct result of orders from superior officers and not only began operations under his command but also the continued very caring, they learned everything in real time, sent new instructions during operations were met by troops. In short, they had total control over their development as took place. "
The conclusions of the Court of Conscience declared: "The rape was committed in conjunction with any other serious crimes such as genocide and other crimes against the duties of humanity." These facts directly attributable to the State because they were made by public officials or employees and state agencies, military and civilians, who were delegated, de jure or de facto, the power to act on their behalf. However, sexual violence was a state policy that most analysis has been reduced and misinterpreted as an isolated incident committed by military officers in pursuit of pleasure.
After 36 years of armed conflict that claimed over 200,000 lives and led to the diaspora of more than half a million people, was the long awaited signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. However, the executioners benefited from legal and social norms that may well be considered the end point and have allowed a single one of the authors, intellectuals or materials of these crimes has been prosecuted or punished.
Old forms of femicide are fed new modalities and motivations
Where once the productive capacity of women was exploited in the estates of the colonists and the natives settled in Guatemala, now it is no less by the heirs of these or by new vendors of employment in factories and domestic work, where women are interchangeable parts and bodies that can be accessed easily sexually, always interchangeable with similar characteristics. Also criminal economy makes women selling products as well as use them as cheaper labor. Thousands of women are converted each year in goods market of prostitution, also tax collectors of war established by the gangs, drug carriers, in uteri producing children for adoption (most of them illegal) and is well and other providers of their own bodies.
Today, these national and multinational corporations are constituted by organized crime groups in certain sectors of the traditional Guatemalan oligarchy, the police and the army, and even members of some political parties. women's bodies are destroyed and exhibited as a mechanism for dialogue between direct and indirect recipients "of the disputed areas , messages sent through lethality and misogyny charged and proven by the author or authors of these crimes against women. Torture
that were made publicly during the armed conflict and that did not end with death, for prohibiting the burial of the bodies and displayed in view of the whole community, are practices used in the same way in conflict between gangs and other criminal groups today. Today, the revenues obtained through sexual terrorism remain the conquest of territory, the loss enemy morale through the repositories of family honor or group, the dialogue and cohesion of the criminal brotherhoods through blood pacts where young girls and women who dare to leave their homes and occupy public space as María Isabel, are killed every day.
silence and impunity travel times as guardians of the status quo
that were made publicly during the armed conflict and that did not end with death, for prohibiting the burial of the bodies and displayed in view of the whole community, are practices used in the same way in conflict between gangs and other criminal groups today. Today, the revenues obtained through sexual terrorism remain the conquest of territory, the loss enemy morale through the repositories of family honor or group, the dialogue and cohesion of the criminal brotherhoods through blood pacts where young girls and women who dare to leave their homes and occupy public space as María Isabel, are killed every day.
silence and impunity travel times as guardians of the status quo
transmission of knowledge and mastery over their own bodies and their sexuality they have been historically denied to women, using this imposition of silence as collateral of not knowing (Consortium agent of change. 2010). Ignorance of their sexuality has turned women into lifelong learners and administrators subordinate teaching of sex and female body who has delegated his tutelage . This ignorance, perversely used as synonymous with innocence, contains a subtext of free access to female bodies and ability to hide and shield the crimes they committed. For this reason, breaking the silence is extremely dangerous to the status quo since, as argued by Ana Carcedo, "can subvert the dependency that links the subjection and obedience to the supreme power."
The state-sponsored impunity, making full use of silence and concealment of information essential to the management and treatment of violence femicide remains a constant.
The state-sponsored impunity, making full use of silence and concealment of information essential to the management and treatment of violence femicide remains a constant.
information is not accurate, even on the number of women murdered each year. According to the expert Hilda Morales, director of the Office of Victim Assistance of the Public Ministry, " there is irresponsibility of the State as to provide reliable statistical figures . The Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence against Women establishes the National System of Information on Violence Against Women, but still (the state) does not provide statistics and each institution-INACIF, MP, PNC, individually OJ-information continues. " Also, Morales, when asked about the cause of the difference between the total numbers of women killed by civil registered against the state, says: "The figures cited by women's organizations do not agree with the state, probably because those of the women are not included injuries and later died in hospital. "
Carlos Castresana, former director of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), said in his speech at The Court of Conscience: " Impunity is an invitation to repeat the crimes . The crimes are crimes not punished sooner or later are repeated. (...) With the crimes of armed conflict is the same. If the people who committed such abuses during the armed conflict have not been punished, they are free and continue to abuse. "
femicide Policy: institutionalized misogyny, by act or omission
Arbitrary choice-not innocent of making information public and politicized, on the contrary, censorship is invisible and , functions as the set of "non-legal codes to which a subject is not recognized as the same has to conform." (Alicia Miyares. 2008). The information withheld by the State of Guatemala is a hidden subtext, common to many other countries, which reveals that the hegemony of male power is crumbling because women occupy more and in different ways, public space. According Giovana Lemus, director of the Guatemalan Women's Group: "These state resistance are evident when there is a direct rejection to put gender equality as one of the key elements of the political agenda." This unfinished agenda voluntarily pending institutionalized misogyny practiced from the sectors of power.
latest political projects have yielded, never easy, some of the pressures of organized groups of civil society women, who in the past 25 years have driven most of the legislation on violence against women, including their own law against femicide and the creation of organisms that make up the institutions for women. And the repeal of laws such as allowing the rapist to marry his victim, if this was more than twelve years, to "repair damage. "
Violence against women increases in scenarios where the state is weak. In Guatemala, a major cause of that erosion has been privatization, many government bonds have been transferred, either implicitly or explicitly and formally, at the hands of individuals and groups of people outside official circles. As Naomi Klein explains, with structural attacks have been avoiding or minimizing certain features that states historically have been met, including hold the monopoly of violence and protect its members . This loss of function has contributed to state the emergence and proliferation of mafias and private market for homeland security. A lot of state officials, meanwhile, is a resource embedded in the State / private criminal groups. "The National Civil Police is now considered the main source of human rights violations." (Yakin Ertürk. 2006).
Privatization also acts as a shield of femicide when allowed and encouraged to be silenced, and thus depoliticized, turning them into sex crimes. In a country where sex is still the great taboo, is not least for those who formulated the rules of law and the imagination of the operators in chain of justice or for the look of the media producing, in most cases, the sexualization of these crimes. This privatization joins the circle of families of victims and society in general, they hope to talk as little as possible of sexual harassment and prefer to keep this information in the strictest privacy to avoid a penalty that is preying social with the victims, even after his death. "Nothing is as difficult as talking about rape committed against a child. Only his absence and the impunity of his death is a bigger pain, "said Rosa Franco, mother of Mary Isabel.
femicidal policies converge on institutional collapse boxes where the state is responsible for the crimes misogynist: a share, when its agents executed the murders of women, and by default when no policies are implemented to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. femicide policy becomes constant neglect of the will to truth and objectivity that should govern research . The State has abdicated the scientific and ethical reasons as the basis of theoretical analysis that should reflect reality and politicize it, as the only way to de-privatize-and start building legal categories, types of crime and effective and efficient policies against violence femicide.
Ending impunity generated by the policies femicidal requires dismantling mechanisms of silence: the debates should be open about using women's bodies as Rita Segato has called "the language of femicide" or what Victoria Sanford discussed how the threats against an individual or group through the body of the women around them. To combat impunity for violence femicide is necessary to understand that violence on the bodies of women "especially in war zones, but not sexual violence sexual violence means ". Monárrez Julia, who is devoted to analyzing the murders of women for more than ten years, says: "To understand how they arise femicide is essential to understand theoretically how the politics of sexuality in the patriarchal system" and what are the mechanisms that generate these sexualized forms of aggression, which must be de-privatized to unravel the identities of the factions that dominate the courts in dispute, whose superiority is settled through joint crime against humanity that culminated in the murder of girls and women like Maria Isabel were used to deliver a message that, after nine years, the Guatemalan justice system could not decipher, let alone punish those who issued it through the destruction of his body and his murder.
Violence against women increases in scenarios where the state is weak. In Guatemala, a major cause of that erosion has been privatization, many government bonds have been transferred, either implicitly or explicitly and formally, at the hands of individuals and groups of people outside official circles. As Naomi Klein explains, with structural attacks have been avoiding or minimizing certain features that states historically have been met, including hold the monopoly of violence and protect its members . This loss of function has contributed to state the emergence and proliferation of mafias and private market for homeland security. A lot of state officials, meanwhile, is a resource embedded in the State / private criminal groups. "The National Civil Police is now considered the main source of human rights violations." (Yakin Ertürk. 2006).
Privatization also acts as a shield of femicide when allowed and encouraged to be silenced, and thus depoliticized, turning them into sex crimes. In a country where sex is still the great taboo, is not least for those who formulated the rules of law and the imagination of the operators in chain of justice or for the look of the media producing, in most cases, the sexualization of these crimes. This privatization joins the circle of families of victims and society in general, they hope to talk as little as possible of sexual harassment and prefer to keep this information in the strictest privacy to avoid a penalty that is preying social with the victims, even after his death. "Nothing is as difficult as talking about rape committed against a child. Only his absence and the impunity of his death is a bigger pain, "said Rosa Franco, mother of Mary Isabel.
femicidal policies converge on institutional collapse boxes where the state is responsible for the crimes misogynist: a share, when its agents executed the murders of women, and by default when no policies are implemented to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. femicide policy becomes constant neglect of the will to truth and objectivity that should govern research . The State has abdicated the scientific and ethical reasons as the basis of theoretical analysis that should reflect reality and politicize it, as the only way to de-privatize-and start building legal categories, types of crime and effective and efficient policies against violence femicide.
Ending impunity generated by the policies femicidal requires dismantling mechanisms of silence: the debates should be open about using women's bodies as Rita Segato has called "the language of femicide" or what Victoria Sanford discussed how the threats against an individual or group through the body of the women around them. To combat impunity for violence femicide is necessary to understand that violence on the bodies of women "especially in war zones, but not sexual violence sexual violence means ". Monárrez Julia, who is devoted to analyzing the murders of women for more than ten years, says: "To understand how they arise femicide is essential to understand theoretically how the politics of sexuality in the patriarchal system" and what are the mechanisms that generate these sexualized forms of aggression, which must be de-privatized to unravel the identities of the factions that dominate the courts in dispute, whose superiority is settled through joint crime against humanity that culminated in the murder of girls and women like Maria Isabel were used to deliver a message that, after nine years, the Guatemalan justice system could not decipher, let alone punish those who issued it through the destruction of his body and his murder.
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