WUNRN
Guatemala Femicide Film: Justice for My Sister
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Guatemala - Double
Standard Limits Femicide Courts
By Louisa Reynolds - WeNews Correspondent –
June 15, 2015
Male infidelity is widely accepted in Guatemala, but also more likely to
get a woman killed than in any other country in Latin America. That's a
challenge for the new femicide courts, which are battling a culture of impunity
for violence against women.
A femicide
crime scene.Credit: Rodrigo Arias
GUATEMALA
CITY, Guatemala (WOMENSENEWS)--When 26-year-old Jacoba Arévalo Garrido went
missing on Feb. 16 from her Guatemala hometown of Tiquisate, in the eastern
Department of Escuintla, her mother, Alba Garrido, feared the worst.
Clutching a
photograph of Arévalo, a young woman with short, dark hair and a soft smile,
Garrido told local reporters that her daughter's relationship with her partner
of two years, 37-year-old doctor Juan Carlos Fuentes, had been marred by
violence.
Fuentes'
abusive behavior, according to widespread local news coverage, had led Arévalo,
an X-ray technician at the local hospital, to move out of the home she shared
with him. But after six months she moved back in with him and they had been
living together for a year when she disappeared.
The couple
often argued over a photograph that Fuentes had found of Arévalo with an
ex-boyfriend, said Garrido. The couple's neighbors tell a different story. The
couple argued, they say, because Fuentes had gotten another woman pregnant.
Garrido told
the police that her daughter used to call her every evening. But on the day she
went missing, she didn't call. At 11 p.m., she said, Fuentes rang her and told
her that Arévalo couldn't speak to her because they had argued and she was
upset.
The
following day, Arévalo's charred corpse was found in a sugarcane plantation,
about 45 miles away from the couple's home. According to the autopsy report,
she was still alive when she was doused with gasoline and set alight.
Fuentes, who
vanished as soon as he became the main suspect, is currently wanted by the
police in connection with his partner's murder.
VIOLENCE
& INFIDELITY
Arévalo was
one of the 69 women killed in Guatemala in January this year, according to
official statistics.
With one
woman killed every 12 hours, Guatemala has the fourth highest femicide rate in
the world and is also the country with the highest number of femicides
committed by firearm, according to a 2015 report published by the Geneva
Declaration Secretariat.
In 2010,
after years of intense lobbying by women's rights organizations, Guatemala
became the first country in the world to create specialized courts for
femicide and other forms of violence against women.
Most of the
judges who hear the cases are women who receive training in gender issues. The
courts also employ a psychologist and a social worker and have daycare
facilities to look after children while their mothers testify so child care
does not prevent their participation in trials.
With
conviction and sentencing above 30 percent, compared to 10 percent in ordinary
courts, the new femicide courts have started to tackle Guatemala's culture of
impunity.
However,
Wichita State University professor Dinorah Azpuru, who was part of a team that
conducted a 2014 Americas Barometer survey that included violence against
women, points out that some socially entrenched attitudes, such as the
acceptability of beating a partner on the grounds of suspected infidelity, pose
challenges.
"Judicial
institutions have to be stronger to punish those who commit violence against
women but at the same time people have to understand that it's wrong to do
that," said Azpuru in a phone interview with Women's eNews. "If the
culture of respect towards women doesn't change in the household it won't
matter how good our institutions are."
HIGH
TOLERANCE FOR VIOLENCE
Bearing in
mind that some of the countries with the highest femicide rates in the world
are located in Latin America, Vanderbilt University included attitudes towards
violence against women in its 2014 Americas Barometer survey.
It
identifies Guatemala as the country in Latin America with the highest tolerance
of violence against women suspected of infidelity, with 58 percent of those
surveyed saying they regarded infidelity as a justification for violence,
followed by 42 percent of Salvadorans, 35 percent of Guyanese and 34 percent of
Mexicans.
Guatemalan
women, found the survey, are just as likely to justify violence on the grounds
of infidelity and double standards are deeply ingrained as men who cheat are
not shunned or ostracized by society.
"Men
are almost expected to be unfaithful and women suffer greatly as a result of their
partners' infidelity due to the humiliation and the possibility that they will
be abandoned," said Cecilia Menjívar, author of "Enduring Violence:
Latina Women's Lives in Guatemala," who spoke with Women's eNews by phone.
"But if they are suspected of infidelity they are harshly punished."
The gang
world offers clear examples of these double standards, rooted in the notion of
female inferiority and men's right to treat women as a possession. "They
(women) have to follow and respect certain codes and the strongest is absolute
fidelity, even if their partners are not faithful," a former gang member
is quoted as saying by a 2013 Interpeace study on gender dynamics in
Guatemala's youth gangs.
The Americas
Barometer survey also shatters the widespread belief that domestic violence is
rife in slums and impoverished rural villages but rare among the affluent and
better educated. The data indicate that education does not have a significant
impact on attitudes – either male and female--towards violence and infidelity.