An interview with three Central American women's activists conducted in December 2009 during a visit by the three to the UK organised by the Central American Women's Network (CAWN).

Femicide in Central America

January 5th 2010, by Yeny Giraldo - Alborada.net

While the United States (US) government states that the preservation of “women’s liberation” is part of the justification for its continued occupation of Afghanistan, at least three countries in its own ‘backyard’ are experiencing a rapid increase in violence and repression against women.

In 1954, in Guatemala, a democratic government was overthrown in a CIA orchestrated coup, sparking an armed conflict that would last over 40 years. Fast-forward to June 2009 and another democratically elected leader, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown, this time in Honduras. The new Honduran dictatorship has inflicted widespread violence (including murder) against the country’s pro-democracy movement, and Washington’s role in a Central American coup has once again come under scrutiny. In between these two events, the region has been the site of perennial humanitarian crises, not least in Mexico, where the US has concentrated its efforts in securing and maintaining harsh neoliberal policies and fighting a “war on drugs”. We caught up with three Central American women’s activists to learn more about the specific problems facing women in their respective countries.

Mirta Kennedy: Director of the Honduran Women’s Studies Centre (CEM-H). Mirta is an Economist from Uruguay. During the dictatorship in Uruguay, Mirta managed to escape to Honduras, where she has been living for the last 30 years. Mirta has been a consultant for the Organisation of American States (OAS), and many UN agencies such as the UNDP, UNIFEM, ILO and FAO on issues related to gender, development and poverty eradication strategies. She is one of the founders of the Honduran Women’s Studies Centre, an organisation that promotes research and campaigning on women’s rights and women’s empowerment in Honduras.

Walda Barrios: Guatemalan lawyer, sociologist and feminist. Walda is the current President of the National Union of Guatemalan Women, coordinator of gender studies at the Latin American Faculty of Social Science, and lecturer of the San Carlos University. At the last Guatemalan elections in 2007, Walda ran as a candidate to the Vice Presidency representing the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity Party.

Julia Monárrez: Mexican Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, The Northern Border College. Julia is a researcher working on the intersection of gender, class and violence in the context of the Northern border of México with the US. She received the ‘Antonio Garcia Cubas for Scientific Work’ award from the National Institute of Anthropology and History, in September 2009 for her book ‘Plot of injustice: systemic sexual Femicide in Ciudad Juarez’. Julia is currently researching the use of public space by women and men in Ciudad Juárez.

Question: How have the wars in Central America impacted upon the lives of women, politically, economically and socially?

Walda Barrios (Guatemala): After 26 years of armed conflict, a peace agreement was signed in Guatemala. Women participated in the peace process, and one can even say that there was a gender approach to the peace agreements. For example, as a result of the peace agreement, rural women are now entitled access to land tenure, which in the past only men inherited (in many rural areas this remains so). Then, a so-called ‘institutionalisation of peace’ was created, in which a number of state institutions were mandated to deal with women's issues. A ‘Defender of Indigenous Women’ office was created, to deal with the specific demands of Mayan women and a ‘Presidential Secretary for Women’s Affairs’ office was also created to address women's rights. Guatemala has signed all the relevant conventions. This is the judicial and legal aspect, but then comes the real issue.

During the armed conflict, women had an important role in the guerrilla movement. It was precisely this that put us in a strong position to ensure that the rights of women were present at the time of negotiating the peace agreement. But peace was signed in 1996 and since then 12 years have elapsed during which violence against women has been increasing. This has to do with the global crisis of capitalism but it also has to do with our protagonist role. That is to say, women previously did not demand their rights, we did not seek for a space within politics, and therefore the killings of women may have been a way of saying 'women return to your homes, this is the only place you will be safe'. What really happens is that even though the armed conflict has ended and we have signed peace accords, more people are killed now in Guatemala than during the armed conflict. There is also more arms trafficking now than during the armed conflict. This is not only the case in Guatemala but also in El Salvador. We find ourselves once again in a great crisis characterised by repression, murder, and an armed society.

Julia Monarrez (Mexico): In the 1980s the US forced a change in the route used to enter drugs from Colombia to Miami. Then they started having many problems with crime and clashes between various groups for the control and distribution of drugs. When they shut Miami then the drugs that came from the Andean region (countries like Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia) began trafficking through Mexico because it is geographically close to the US. From 1985 we start seeing an increase in violent deaths, mainly male homicides, since at this time the term female homicides had not yet been recognised. For example, in Ciudad Juarez from 1985-1992, 44 women were killed (that is 6 women each year, a woman every 2 months). However, in the 1990s the murder rate of men and women reached an exceptionally high level. In 2000 the World Health Organisation published a report on violence which concluded that those countries that exhibited a rate of 2.5 murders per hundred thousand women can be considered as violent societies for women (the rate for men had surpassed that level and was comparable to El Salvador), so feminists started saying that violence against women had reached levels never seen before and the term femicide is given to it.

Violence always creates economic gain for some people, doesn’t it? Of every ten crimes in Mexico, nine involved weapons from the US. This means we are a big market for the US (Europe does not contribute as much due to its distance). There is a debate between Mexico and the US Congress, surrounding the right in the US to sell and carry arms, a freedom that does not exist in Mexico. I do not think that in the short term we will have an agreement because we have a border of more than 3 thousand kilometers with the USA and they have more than 11 thousand armories that supply not only the Mexican cartels, but also those in Colombia, and all the violent men who are organised in gangs.

With regard to capitalism, the system of globalisation economically devalues women and men, but there is a devaluation of women specifically with regard to their sex and sexuality. In Ciudad Juarez a so-called 'sex crime' appears, something I call 'systemic sexual femicide'. Why? These people are killed because they are women, because there is a mutilation of their bodies, of their genitals. They appear naked or half naked, breasts bare, and left as a spectacle of the violence of the perpetrators, but also as a spectacle of the society that tolerates it. And that is why I call it ‘systemic' because there is a religious, economic, and political system that tolerates impunity and does not give justice to women.

Question: You mention impunity, what kind of impunity exists and why?

If there is impunity it is because there are forces of very powerful and organised men colluding with the state. These crimes are uncovered but no one answers for it. But this not only has to do with Ciudad Juarez. The entire justice system has collapsed in Mexico. Walda tells us that there is a 90% level of impunity in Guatemala. The level of impunity is very similar to Mexico. All measures that have been taken, both by the municipal government, the state government or the federal government, have failed. Then you end up with a vast population engulfed in violence, either as victim or perpetrator and a state that is unresponsive to it.

In Ciudad Juarez almost all murders of women in a specific area (i.e. the ‘maquiladoras’ [assembly factories]) remain unpunished. They remain obscure and often hidden. When the government presents the statistics, they say these are not sex crimes or torture. So I gave myself the task of making a database to show that these are indeed sexual crimes.

Walda Barrios: Also the yellow press [tabloid newspapers] creates myths and disinformation and that does not help either to establish justice, or to respect the memory of the victims. That is the other great challenge, to have a press which helps us create a better society because what we have is terrible.

Question: Is it true that those who have denounced these murders have been threatened?

Julia Monarrez: I know of people who have been threatened, but these are above all families of victims who ultimately suffer most when they demand justice. Who has less protection? The families of victims. When you go as a foreigner, especially from European countries you have a shield that protects you, you're not harassed.

Question: What has been the social impact of these murders?

Julia Monarrez: At the local level, we have a divided population, both in terms of social class and gender. For example, men have nothing to fear, but on the other hand some men who are, for example, parents or brothers, feel that they have to protect women or to be their guardians. That's a setback for women’s freedom and autonomy.

Also, on one hand, community leaders prefer not to “advertise” the word femicide because this could “damage the city's image” in the eyes of foreign investors and threaten “major job losses”. As we know this is not true—foreign investment never stops coming. On the other side there is propaganda indicating that the problem is created by women themselves, because they don’t conform to feminine norms. This promotes the myths that women are responsible for their murder and not victims of their aggressors. There is a division within the community between those who want to talk about femicide and those who don’t want to talk about it.

International pressure has been very important and your presence here and your support including the publicity that you give us through the Central American Women's Network means a lot to us. International pressure has forced Mexico to receive the visit of international organisations and accept recommendations of 11 international agencies and 63 recommendations specific to the Mexican government in relation to the case of Ciudad Juarez.

Another important development is the fact that in the past both men and women killed were buried in mass graves without any identification or ceremony. Today, DNA is obtained from all the corpses including men and women and this DNA is stored for future reference. This represents an important breakthrough in human rights, because ultimately every human being has an identity and belonging including those killed in Ciudad Juarez. Thus Ciudad Juarez has the responsibility of maintaining DNA in case families may want to identify their loved ones in the future.

However it is important to mention that it was not only that many missing persons were not investigated, many confirmed cases of murder were not either. Now there is a process of prosecution, but that has been delayed due to the war against organised crime. With more than 2,300 deaths in less than a year, the forensic system has collapsed. They say they are overworked, and that the stocks of yellow tape labeled 'do not cross' have been depleted. So it is true that there is a setback and your presence here is very important to spread the voice of those who suffer as we have done.

Question: In what ways are women’s rights being violated in Guatemala?

Walda Barrios: We are underrepresented in political and labour rights, sexual and reproductive rights, working conditions in ‘maquilas’ and everywhere are disastrous. We have a very high rate of maternal death, women often die during childbirth. The right to education? Most girls are illiterate. In relation to the millennium goals: nothing has been achieved. The right to life? They are being killed. That is to say, all women's rights are being violated, starting with the basic right to life. The human rights situation could almost be described as an emergency in the region. In the latest UN report, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are considered “a triangle of violence”.

Question: Had the position of women improved under President Manuel Zelaya?

Mirta Kennedy (Honduras): In some ways yes, because since the 1990s, we had been struggling for laws and institutional mechanisms to protect the rights of women, to have a national women's policy, legal reform for women, protect women against violence etc. During the administration of Zelaya we managed to negotiate greater control over the National Institute for women, to elaborate a national women's policy which extended the rights of women. He made a commitment to approve it, but there was not enough time for the approval because of the coup, but the policy was fully completed when the coup took place. We talked with the president to veto a bill outlawing the morning after pill, because unfortunately in Congress there is a very fundamentalist group that had proposed such a law, but the law had to pass through the executive and the president vetoed it because of an agreement with the women's movement. We also increased the budget of the prosecutor’s office to create a unit to investigate the deaths of women. Some committees were already functioning such as one that dealt with the trafficking of women, another on domestic violence, and the other on femicide. We were in process of legal reform in this regard. In this period we did make progress, at least in the formal aspect of public policy.

Question: How do you see the participation of women in anti-coup process?

Mirta Kennedy: Very high, because a large component of any popular resistance is made up of women. A major component of the teaching sector is highly feminised. There are many women in the peasant’s movement, in black communities, the indigenous communities besides the feminist organisations. But also very important is the high level of repression against women. We have just presented a report that concluded that violence against women is very highly sexualised. For example there have been 7 women who have been gang raped by a group of policemen. There are about 400 women arrested and battered, hit with sticks, some have ended up with broken jaws hands, legs and collarbones. Some were hit in their breasts and buttocks. That is, they have been beaten in “sexualised places”. And besides they have been insulted and threatened with rape, insults where they say “what are you doing on the street, why are you not in at home?” The aim is to bring women back to their domestic context and discourage their participation in political protest.

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