WUNRN
The Economist
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN LATIN
AMERICA - EVERYDAY AGGRESSION
Protect her
September 21,l 2013
- One night last year police received a call from worried residents of a
wealthy area of
The police were too late. When they arrived at the scene,
they found the lifeless body of Lida Maria Huezo with a gunshot to her head.
She held the fatal weapon in her hands, but the police believed that her
husband, Manuel Gutiérrez, who was drunk and at Huezo’s side, might have put it
there to make it seem as though she had committed suicide. The police arrested
Mr Gutiérrez, the manager of a successful car dealership. He gave several
different stories: that it was an accident, that his wife had committed
suicide, that they were arguing when the gun just went off.
When a trial was held earlier this year, a forensic
specialist testified that she had found dust from the gun surrounding Huezo’s
wound, bruises on her neck and arms, and swelling in her pelvic area. But Mr
Gutiérrez was acquitted because of flaws in the prosecution case. The
prosecutor did not submit a final autopsy, did not interview the neighbours who
reported hearing the incident nor the couple’s children who were supposedly
present, and was unable to procure the gun to present as evidence.
Infuriated by the ruling, Vanda Pignat,
In theory, such crimes should not go unpunished. In 1994
Latin American countries signed the pioneering Convention of Belém, which
required them to educate their people about women’s rights, to fight machismo
and pass laws to protect women from violence. Most have done so.
Unpunished violent crime is a more general problem in the
region. Nevertheless, the statistics of violence against women are particularly
gruesome. A recent report by UN Women, a UN agency, found that many Latin
American countries have a higher-than-average incidence of domestic violence.
According to the agency, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds in
Activists say the problem is that most cases of violence
against women are not investigated, let alone effectively prosecuted. Take
Protection for victims is improving in some places: 13
countries have set up specialised police stations for women, according to
Andrew Morrison of the Inter-American Development Bank. These aim to make it
easier for victims of domestic violence to report crimes, and typically offer
them medical care, psychological counselling and legal aid. A study by the UN
suggests that, since the introduction of such stations, levels of reporting
have indeed increased.
National and local governments in
Three Latin American presidents are women: Cristina
Fernández in
Machismo has deep cultural roots in the region, and will take decades to disappear. Meanwhile, women have the right to expect that their governments act more vigorously to turn well-intentioned laws into tools to prevent and punish the violence they often face.
______________________________________