Abstract
Four murder cases in Guatemala and El Salvador, two from the period of conflict, two following democratisation. But all show similar patterns. The violence meted out to the female victims is sustained and visceral. The photographs of the dead display appalling injuries inflicted both before and after death and the marks of sexual torture speak of a hatred and disgust for women and girls in the minds of the perpetrators.
The first hauled out of the hole was Jean Donovan, twenty seven years old, a lay missionary from Cleveland. Her face had been blown away by a high calibre bullet that had been fired into the back of her head. Her pants were unzipped; her underwear twisted round her ankles. When area peasants found her, she was nude from the waist down. They had tried to replace the garments before burial. Then came Dorothy Kazel, a forty year old Ursuline nun also from Cleveland. At the bottom of the pit were Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford, forty, and Maura Clarke, forty nine, both from New York. All the women had been executed at close range. The peasants who found the women said that one had her underpants stuffed in her mouth; another’s had been tied over her eyes. All had been raped.*
The first case reported by the media was that of Marian Isabela Rivas Martinez, a 17 year old girl whose body was found on 4 December 2002 in San Bartolo, municipality of Soyapango, San Salvador department. She had been raped, killed and dismembered … The mutilated and semi-naked body of 19 year old Claudia Liseth Diaz (Delgado) was found in Colonia Esperanza, Quezaltepeque, La Libertad Department on 31 January 2003. She had machete wounds to her face and head. Her left arm had been cut off and left some meters from her body.â€
Then on April 4 another leader of [the civil rights group] GAM, MarÃa Rosario Godoy de Cuevas, her twenty-one-year old brother, and her two-year-old son were picked up, tortured and murdered. Her breasts had bite marks and her underclothing was bloody; her two year old son had had his fingernails pulled out.‡
The raped and mutilated body of Andrea Contreras Bacaro, 17, was found wrapped in a plastic bag and thrown into a ditch, her throat cut, her face and hands slashed, with a gunshot wound to the head. The word ‘vengeance’ had been gouged into her thigh.§
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Notes
P. Bourgois, ‘The Power of Violence in War and Peace: Post Cold-War Lessons from El Salvador’, Ethnography 2, 1 (2001): 11–12 http://escholarship.org/uc/ item/8w69708b#page-1
J. Cáceres, in ‘Violence, National Security and Democratisation in Central America’ in Catholic Institute of International Relations States of Terror. Death Squads or Development, (London: Catholic Institute of International Relations, 1989).
C. Forster, ‘Violent and Violated Women. Justice and Gender in Rural Guatemala 1936–1956’, Journal of Women’s History 11, 3 (1999): 55–77.
M. S. Martinez, ‘Guatemala: between Authoritarianism and Democracy’, in The Central American Impasse. eds. Gi Di Palma and L. Whitehead (London: Croom Helm, 1986): 152–53; Cáceres, ‘Violence, National Security and Democratisation in Central America’: 101.
Ibid.: 103; S. Bird and P. Williams, ‘El Salvador. Revolt and Negotiated Transition’, in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 27–9.
During the 1980s the US provided El Salvador with $3.9 billion in military and economic aid and Guatemala with $570 million. C. Vilas, ‘Neoliberalism in Central America’ in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 217 only surpassed by Egypt and Israel.
P. Bourgois, ‘The Power of Violence in War and Peace: Post Cold-War Lessons from El Salvador’, Ethnography 2, 1 (2001): 4 http://escholarship.Org/uc/item/8w69708b#page-1
W. Stanley, The Protection Racket State. Elite Politics, Military Extortion and Civil War in El Salvador. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996): Chapters 5 and 6.
In El Salvador ORDEN had been declared illegal by the government in 1979 but the structure re-emerged as the civil defence patrols. M. McClintock, ‘American Doctrine and Counterinsurgent State Terror’, in Western State Terrorism. ed. A. George (Cambridge: Polity, 1991): 141 and Guatemala introduced conscription style civil patrols in the early 1980s.
E. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media. (London: Bodley Head, 2008): 46; Stanley, The Protection Racket State: 222.
Stanley, The Protection Racket State: Chapter 6; J. Dunkerley and R. Sieder, ‘The Military: The Challenge of Transition’, in Central America. Fragile Transition. ed. R. Sieder (London: Macmillan/ILAS, 1996): 60.
I. Skjelsbaek, ‘Sexual violence and war: mapping out a complex relationship’, European Journal of International Relations, 7, 2 (2001): 211–37.
N. Hollander, ‘The Gendering of Human Rights: Women and the Latin American Terrorist State’, Feminist Studies 22, 1 (1999): 62.
According to one FMLN soldier: ‘We used to be machista. We used to put away a lotta drink and cut each other up. But the Organisation showed us the way, and we’ve channelled that violence for the benefit of the people’. Guerrilla speaking in 1981 quoted in P. Bourgois, ‘The Power of Violence in War and Peace: Post Cold-War Lessons from El Salvador’, Ethnography 2, 1 (2001): 5.
J. Dunkerley and R. Sieder, ‘The Military: The Challenge of Transition’, in Central America. Fragile Transition. ed. R. Sieder (London: Macmillan/ILAS, 1996): 92.
Ibid. and S. Bird and P. Williams, ‘El Salvador. Revolt and Negotiated Transition’, in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 33–4 for this complex process.
Dunkerley and Sieder, ‘The Military: The Challenge of Transition’: 61–2; R. Sieder and P. Costello, ‘Judicial Reform in Central America: Prospects for the Rule of Law’, in Central America. Fragile Transition. ed. R. Sieder (London: Macmillan/ILAS, 1996): 191; Stanley, The Protection Racket State: 250–52.
S. Jonas and T. Walker, ‘Guatemala. Intervention, Repression, Revolt and Negotiated Transition’, in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 11–12.
See P. Gavigan, ‘Organized Crime, Illicit power Structures and Guatemala’s Threatened Peace Process’, International Peacekeeping 16, 1 (2009): 62–76.
R. Sieder and P. Costello, ‘Judicial Reform in Central America: Prospects for the Rule of Law’, in Central America. Fragile Transition. ed. R. Sieder (London: Macmillan/ILAS, 1996): 192.
C. Vilas, ‘Neoliberalism in Central America’ in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 227.
C. Vilas, ‘Neoliberalism in Central America’, in Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America. eds. T. Walker and A. Armony (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000): 218.
C. Ponce, D. Woods Jnr. and D. Skelton, ‘Eliminating the Kidnappers in El Salvador’, in Policing in Central and Eastern Europe eds. G. Mesko, M. Pagon and B. Dobovsek (Slovenia: University of Maribor, 2004): 259–69;
O. Jütersonke, R. Muggah and D. Rodgers, ‘Gangs and Violence Reduction in Central America’, Security Dialogue 40, 4–5 (2009): 9.
In Guatemala the main army was reduced from approximately 47,000–33,000 but the real figure may have been lower, to 15,000. Keen, ‘Demobilising Guatemala’: 8–9 and the massive paramilitary forces which may have numbered up to 200,000 were demobilised. In El Salvador the regular and other security forces reduced from 75,000 to 6000 in the new police. J. Cruz, ‘Violence, Insecurity and Elite Manoevring in El Salvador’, in Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas. eds. J. Bailey and L. Dammert (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2006): 153. In both countries private security mushroomed, often composed of ex-security force officials but clearly they were not stationed around the country in the same way.
M. Wilkerson, ‘Security and democracy in El Salvador: an Undeniable Connection’, Stanford Journal of International Relations 10, 1 (2008): 39.
C. T. Call, ‘War Transitions and the New Civilian Security in Latin America’, Comparative Politics 35, 1 (2002): 11.
H. Frühling, ‘Police Reform and the Process of Democratization’, in Crime and Violence in Latin America. eds. H. Frühling, J. Tulchin and H. Golding (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003): 20.
ICG, ‘Guatemala: squeezed between crime and impunity’, Latin America Report 33 (2010). The lack of institutional capacity on the part of the police is a separate issue from corruption. In both countries, those police officers that genuinely wish to investigate sexual assaults are unable to do so due to the large number of cases, poor training, lack of forensic support and so forth. See R. Sieder and P. Costello, ‘Judicial Reform in Central America: Prospects for the Rule of Law’, in Central America. Fragile Transition. ed. R. Sieder (London: Macmillan/ILAS, 1996): 191; Amnesty International, ‘Guatemala. No protection, no justice: killings of women (an update)’, AMR 34/019/2006; Amnesty International, ‘El Salvador. End Impunity for Violence Against Women’, AMR 20/002/2005.
Ibid.: 14; J. Handy, ‘Chicken thieves, witches, and judges: vigilante justice and customary law in Guatemala’, Journal of Latin American Studies 36 (2004): 535.
Las Dignas 2004 study quoted in Y. Ertürk, Integration of the Human Rights of Women and a Gender Perspective. Mission to El Salvador 2–8 February 2004. (United Nations Economic and Social Council, 2004): 9.
P. Alston, Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Disappearances and Summary Executions. Mission to Guatemala 21–25 August 2006. (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2007): 12.
K. Datta and C. McIlwaine, ‘Empowered Leaders? Perspectives on Women Heading Households in Latin America and Southern Africa’, Gender and Development 8, 3 (2000): 42.
Keen: 21 quoting Judith Zur, Violent Memories. (Boulder, 1998).
A. Oettler, ‘Discourses on Violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua’, German Institute of Global and Area Studies Working Paper 65 (2007): 26. For the culture and practice of sexual assault generally see E. Feiser, ‘Guatemala slowly confronts widespread rape of women’, Christian Science Monitor, November 20, 2009 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/1120/p90s01-woam.html
For the term ‘everyday violence’ see N. Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping. The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. (Berkely: University of California, 1992).
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© 2011 Jon Moran
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Moran, J. (2011). Legacies of Violence: Murder and Violent Crimes in El Salvador and Guatemala. In: Crime and Corruption in New Democracies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316768_6
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