Su mejor ataque dejó de ser la seducción. Los delincuentes no esperan que las mujeres anden armadas.

Maby López | Nacional, Diario de Centro América

Amas de casa, profesionales, estudiantes, vendedoras… No importa la profesión. Lo cierto es que, por la inseguridad que se vive en el país, cada día las mujeres están optando por armarse y defenderse a sí mismas como a su familia.

En la actualidad, la Dirección General de Control de Armas y Municiones (Digecam) da cuenta de 9,200 armas registradas y 7,500 licencias de portación emitidas al sexo débil, lo que representa el 4% de todos los registros.

El subdirector de la Digecam, Guillermo Mejía, señala que, aunque no es muy común que, una mujer se acerque a la institución, cada día existe más interés por parte de las féminas de portar un arma.

De acuerdo con el funcionario, lo que las motiva a armarse es la necesidad de sentirse seguras y protegidas, pues muchas de ellas son propietarias de negocios fincas, o en determinado momento fueron víctimas de la

delincuencia. Mejía explicó que el tipo de armas preferidas por la población femenina son las pistolas y los revólveres, aunque las primeras tienen más preferencia, así como que los calibres más usuales son 9 y 22 milímetros.

Según él, generalmente las más cotizadas son las de 9 milímetros y compactas, pues se hace más práctico llevarlas en las bolsas, chequeras y el auto.

“No creo que sea capaz de sacar un arma y disparar, pero sí les da una sensación de seguridad”, expresa Mejía.

La información señala que muchas de ellas no han sido capacitadas profesionalmente. Algunas han disparado porque les han enseñado el esposo o los hijos para utilizarlas en determinando momento cuando estén solas.

Rudy Flores, dependiente de mostrador de una armería ubicada en la zona 9, coincide en que las que más venden a féminas son las 9 milímetros, las cuales pueden costar desde Q4,500 hasta Q12,000, dependiendo de la marca y el estilo.

Un arma de dos filos

Ana María de Klein, de Madres Angustiadas (MA), considera que para portar “se debe saber como usarla, tener la sangre fría y la habilidad para defenderse, pues ello significa que en determinado momento va a tener que disparar contra otra persona”.

La activista coincide con Rosario Escobedo, del Sector de Mujeres, en que su portación no es una solución para enfrentar la delincuencia. Por el contrario, se debe exigir a las autoridades competentes brindar la seguridad y protección de todos los ciudadanos.

“La violencia no se resuelve con que nos armemos. Eso también es violencia. No creo que un arma dé seguridad. Como mujer me da protección andar en un país donde se respeten mis derechos individuales y colectivos”, señaló Escobedo.

http://dca.gob.gt:85/archivo/20100208/nacional5.html

Paola Hurtado | El Periódico

La asesinaron en un bar de la zona 6. No era prostituta. Tampoco pandillera ni narcotraficante. Era la agente de seguridad del lupanar desde hacía un mes, se llamaba Gladys y no le dio tiempo de detonar su arma. Dejó seis hijos hambrientos y sucios, un esposo deprimido y una casa a orillas del barranco que se cae en pedazos.

Viven cerca de las pestilencias del basurero de la zona 3, en un terreno escabroso con vista a los osarios del Cementerio General. Su casa es una guarida de gatos peleoneros: los niños riñen todo el día mientras el padre trabaja como albañil en el camposanto. El hombre de 59 años está demasiado ensimismado para que le importe que los niños llegan a la escuela con los piojos colgando, arrastrando los zapatos rotos y la ropa raída. O que cuatro de ellos no existen legalmente porque nunca fueron inscritos en el Registro Nacional de Personas. O que la niña mayor, la que asumió el rol materno a sus 15 años, se sienta en el pupitre con las manos apretándose el vientre y cubriéndose los genitales, y se mantenga sola y enojada con el mundo.

“Es urgente la atención psicológica. Posible abuso sexual”, se lee en el informe sobre la niña. Es el reporte que las dos trabajadoras sociales rindieron después de visitar a la familia para determinar la situación en que vive después de la muerte de la madre. El estado de la niña no era el único preocupante. La hermana de 7 años y el niño de 8 padecían de infección urinaria y anemia. La de 12 años sufría de amenorrea y la de 13, de infección de oído y tos recurrente.

La familia de Gladys es uno de los 29 expedientes de mujeres que murieron de forma violenta y a cuyos hijos investigó un grupo de 10 alumnas de la Escuela de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de San Carlos (Usac).

Las universitarias recibieron el encargo de la oficina de la Comisionada Presidencial Contra el Femicidio de presentar un diagnóstico psicosocial y económico de las víctimas colaterales de los casos de femicidio en el departamento de Guatemala. Trabajaron con base en un listado proporcionado por el Ministerio Público (MP) de mujeres que fueron asesinadas entre 2007 y 2009. La investigación se realizó entre octubre y noviembre de 2009 y los resultados fueron presentados la semana pasada.

Los casos provinieron de las 4 agencias de la Fiscalía de Delitos Contra la Vida encargadas de investigar los delitos que atentan contra las mujeres. Entre 2007 y 2009 la Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) registró más de 2 mil homicidios de mujeres.

Sin embargo, el listado que el MP proporcionó a los investigadores a través de la oficina de la Comisionada se limitó a 29 expedientes por ser las únicas víctimas del departamento de Guatemala, que la Fiscalía tenía certeza de que eran madres y contaba con una dirección para localizar a sus familiares. Todos los procesos estaban en fase de investigación.

A partir de esa lista, Elsa Arenales, coordinadora del departamento de extensión de la Escuela de Trabajo Social, repartió el trabajo entre una decena de estudiantes.

El listado se redujo a 23 casos después de descontar 6 que no correspondían al departamento de Guatemala. Luego el MP les remitió 16 más pero eran los mismos de la lista inicial con excepción de dos. Después de dos meses de búsqueda sólo fue posible localizar a los hijos de 9 mujeres asesinadas, 25 niños en total.

Lo que encontraron las investigadoras sobrepasó sus prudentes expectativas. Ninguno de estos 25 menores, determinaron, vive en condiciones aceptables. Todos requieren de atención psicológica. Muchos viven en situaciones desastrosas: niños enfermos física y emocionalmente, separados de sus hermanos y familiares cercanos, malnutridos, sucios, tristes. Pequeños que fueron arrancados de sus viviendas (algunas aún permanecen acordonadas con la cinta amarilla del Ministerio Público) y, en algunos casos, fueron testigos del asesinato de su madre.

La muerte de estas madres no sólo resquebrajó el núcleo familiar. Provocó, en el mejor de los casos, que sus familiares asumieran la responsabilidad de sus hijos y pasaran de la pobreza a la pobreza extrema. Los pequeños con menos suerte quedaron en manos de parientes lejanos, conocidos o vecinos sin que mediara ningún trámite legal o registro de en manos de quién están. Hay hijos de mujeres asesinadas que se convirtieron en pandilleros. Y eso que sólo se trata de nueve casos. La pregunta que Elsa y sus investigadoras se hicieron fue: ¿y cómo estará el resto?

Las otras víctimas

Alba Trejo, comisionada presidencial contra el Femicidio, se preguntó qué pasaba con los hijos de tantas mujeres que matan en el país. Más de 4 mil mujeres han muerto de forma violenta a partir de 2001, cuando se empezó a llevar el conteo. Según la Policía Nacional Civil, 722 mujeres murieron en 2008 y 716 en 2009. Eso equivale a casi 2 mujeres por día.

En el país se han hecho más de 70 estudios sobre las muertes de mujeres, expone Trejo. La mayoría de ellos fueron financiados por la cooperación internacional y profundizan sobre quiénes son las víctimas, quiénes son los victimarios.

Pero nunca se ha estudiado a fondo a las otras víctimas de estas muertes: los niños.

Trejo enviudó en junio de 2008. El padre de sus hijas, el entonces ministro de Gobernación, Vinicio Gómez, murió trágicamente al precipitarse el helicóptero en el que viajaba junto con su Viceministro de Petén a la capital, un accidente que aún no ha sido esclarecido. Percatarse de que su caso se replica a diario, para cientos de familias, motivó a la ahora funcionaria a promover un diagnóstico de qué está pasando con los hijos de las mujeres asesinadas: ¿qué pasa cuando se rompe de esta manera el tejido social? ¿y qué estrategias integrales se deben definir para atenderlos?

La Escuela de Trabajo Social aceptó colaborar con el proyecto. Los hallazgos del informe preliminar fueron presentados la semana pasada a los periodistas, instituciones relacionadas con la niñez y representantes de la cooperación internacional.

Una de las conclusiones de esta primera entrega del estudio, explica Trejo, es que aunque en el país existe un protocolo de atención a los niños en situación de riesgo este no se aplica para los hijos de las mujeres asesinadas. No hay una instancia que se encargue de detectarlos, registrarlos y darles seguimiento. Los pequeños quedan a la deriva y no se sabe con exactitud en manos de quién. Ninguna institución está prestándoles atención psicológica ni médica. No hay estudios que determinen si las personas que se quedan bajo su cuidado tienen la capacidad de hacerlo. Los niños rara vez forman parte de los expedientes de sus madres asesinadas –prueba de eso es el reducido listado que remitió el MP– y cuando sí figuran nadie asume la responsabilidad de seguirles el rastro. No atender a estos pequeños los sitúa en el alto riesgo de perpetuar la violencia de la que fueron víctimas.

“La mató mi papá”

Los primeros hallazgos de las trabajadoras sociales fueron que en las direcciones ya no vivía nadie que pudiera dar razón por la familia de la mujer asesinada. O al menos así se los informaron los nuevos inquilinos de las casas y vecinos. El miedo de hablar fue una situación recurrente. En otros casos –los menos– sí encontraron en los alrededores información sobre el paradero de las familias y preguntando y preguntando consiguieron dar con nueve casos.

Las investigadoras trabajaron en parejas y los casos pertenecían a barrios populares o marginales. Para los adultos utilizaron cuestionarios de preguntas abiertas; y a los niños los sometieron a dos pruebas que revelaran su estado emocional: les pidieron dibujar un árbol y a su familia. El primero refleja cómo se siente el niño; el segundo, cómo se siente dentro de su familia.

“A mi mamá la mataron”, contó con normalidad una diminuta niña que dibujaba a su madre. Un niño que vive en la zona 5 y que se había negado a pintar aceptó a conversar varias horas con Liliana Ortega, la trabajadora social. De pronto soltó: “Es que mi papá mató a mi mamá”.

Ninguno de los niños encontrados había recibido atención psicológica. Ni siquiera el pequeño de 8 años a cuya madre y abuela masacraron los pandilleros en la zona 18.

“Todos los casos nos impactaron, pero algunos rebasaron lo que creíamos posible de encontrar”, cuenta Arenales, la coordinadora del proyecto. De dos niñas tienen sospechas de que están sufriendo abusos sexuales. Hay un menor que está en manos de sus abuelos que podría padecer de retraso mental y no está recibiendo la atención necesaria. Y hay dos chicos que ya recibieron impactos de bala y quedaron gravemente dañados, presuntamente por su participación en pandillas.

Atención integral

Una de las quejas más frecuentes que detectaron las investigadoras con las familias de las mujeres asesinadas fue que el caso no había sido resuelto. “Aquí nadie había venido a preguntarnos nada. Usted es la primera”, le relató una familia a Ligia Zavala.

El cuadro más frecuente que encuentra el MP cuando se investiga el crimen es que los huérfanos quedan en manos de abuelas o tías. Y en muy pocos casos con los padres o hermanos mayores, cuenta un agente fiscal.

Aunque la mayoría de familia tiene las mejores intenciones de hacerse cargo de los huérfanos no todas están en la capacidad de hacerlo, advierte Arenales. La trabajadora social plantea la necesidad de que el Estado asuma la responsabilidad de llevar un control de qué sucede con ellos. “No estamos planteando que se institucionalicen, no, pero sí que se sepa en manos de quién quedan y si esa persona tiene los recursos económicos y afectivos para hacerse cargo de los niños”, plantea.

A raíz del estudio se propuso la creación de una clínica que brinde atención integral y gratuita a las víctimas colaterales de las muertes violentas de mujeres (incluyendo a los adultos afectados por la muerte de la mujer). Esta debería contar con médicos, psicólogos, trabajadores sociales y nutricionistas. Estuardo Gálvez, rector de la Usac, asegura que esta unidad podría empezar a funcionar en abril en el antiguo Paraninfo Universitario, zona 1, y estaría a cargo de estudiantes que cursan la práctica supervisada y profesores.

Actualmente, la Unidad de Psicología de la Escuela de Trabajo Social de la Usac le da terapia a tres de los niños que fueron objeto de estudio, pero no está en la capacidad de atender a todos.

Según un estudio presentado por el Ministerio de Gobernación en 2008, el 61 por ciento de los femicidios en la capital son producto de la violencia intrafamiliar y el 45 por ciento ocurre en la vivienda de las mujeres. El Programa de Prevención y Erradicación de la Violencia Intrafamiliar (Propevi) adscrito a la Secretaría cuenta con unidades para brindar atención psicológica, médica y legal a las víctimas de violencia doméstica. Sin embargo, las víctimas colaterales de los asesinatos de mujeres no son parte de la población que atienden Arenales reconoce que estos 25 niños y 9 casos que figuran en el diagnóstico sólo les permitieron asomarse a un problema del cual se desconoce su magnitud. “Esta investigación debe continuar y deben ponerse en marcha medidas concretas”, expone. A partir de este diagnóstico la Escuela se interesó en estudiar qué sucede con los hijos de los pilotos de buses asesinados.

Los dibujos fueron tomados de los expedientes de la Escuela de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de San Carlos (Usac).

http://www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20100207/domingo/136565

Today, January 11th, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Earlier this month President Obama issued a proclamation declaring January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month where he acknowledged that “forms of slavery still exist in the modern era, and we recommit ourselves to stopping the human traffickers who ply this horrific trade.” Soon after, the local organization Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking or CAST, based here in LA, launched their “From Slavery to Freedom” campaign. More than 20 events will be taking place now through February 12th to draw attention to the issue of slavery. Each year about 17,000 people are estimated to be trafficked into the US. Los Angeles is considered among the top three points of entry into the United States for trafficked people. As part of their campaign CAST is working with local organizations like CARECEN, the Central American Resource Center, KIWA, the Korea-town Immigrant Workers Alliance, and PAC, the Pilipino Workers Center, as well as local and national law enforcement agencies.

GUESTS: Lisette Arsuaga, Director of Development and Communications at CAST, and Ima Matul, a member of CAST’s Caucus of Survivors

Find out about CAST’s calendar of events at http://www.castla.org/campaign-calendar

…

NO MÁS VIOLENCIA CONTRA LA MUJER, fue el mensaje que el montañista guatemalteco Christian Rodríguez envió desde la montaña más alta de España en la cima del volcán Teide de 3718 metros. La idea es hacer un llamado de reflexión de esta triste realidad.

La violencia de género tiene que ver con “la violencia que se ejerce hacia las mujeres por el hecho de serlo”, e incluye tanto malos tratos de la pareja, como agresiones físicas o sexuales de extraños, mutilación genital, infanticidios femeninos, etc. La estadística que se muestra en la imagen es únicamente en Guatemala, pero el problema se extiende a nivel mundial.

Los montañistas llevaron la bandera guatemalteca hasta el Volcán Teide, una de las montañas más prominentes del mundo, si se le mide desde el lecho oceánico alcanza la impresionante altitud de los 7,000 metros. Con lo cual, lo hace no solo el punto más alto de España y de cualquier isla atlántica sino también el tercer mayor volcán de La Tierra desde su base.

El día 19 de diciembre el guatemalteco inició el ascenso por la ruta más larga hacia la cumbre, junto con 4 montañistas más: Dos mujeres de nacionalidad española, una austriaca, un italiano, otro español y el mismo guatemalteco Rodríguez. El ascenso requirió mucha concentración por parte del grupo en la ultima parte, los vientos fuertes con rachas de más de 100 km por hora estuvieron presentes en los ultimos metros cerca de la cumbre. La temperatura durante la noche y mañana rondaron los menos 10 grados centigrados. A pesar de lo anterior, tanto el ascenso como el descenso del mismo fueron una agradable experiencia para todas y todos los montañistas ese día.

GUATEMALA 2009:

800 Mujeres asesinadas, una de cada 3 sufre algún tipo de abuso, NO MAS VIOLENCIA CONTRA LA MUJER!!

www.christianrodriguezm.com

By Matthew Preusch, The Oregonian

Working as a Peace Corps volunteer, Lincoln High School graduate Laura Kutner (fifth from the right in a black shirt) directed the construction of a school building in Guatemala using discarded plastic bottles. In Guatemala, Laura Kutner noticed, plastic trash was everywhere.

And in the rural Guatemalan community where Kutner was until recently a Peace Corps volunteer, there were classrooms without walls.

Kutner, a 2002 graduate of Portland’s Lincoln High School, saw a solution to both problems. Thanks to her, the village of Granados in central Guatemala now has two new school rooms whose walls are made from discarded plastic soda bottles and other litter.

Kutner, 25, came up with the idea and saw the project through. And in so doing, she learned plenty — too much, really — about plastic and a fair amount about building community.

“First of all, there is so much plastic. Everything is packaged in plastic,” said Kutner, who was in Portland last week during a break from her work in Guatemala, where she remains assigned, but to a new location and job. “I got so sick of plastic.”

Who can blame her? She rallied the agricultural community of 900 people and surrounding mountain villages to collect more than 4,000 used plastic drink bottles from ditches, gutters and trash piles.

Students, volunteers and school staff then stuffed the bottles with plastic bags: potato chip packaging and grocery sacks. As many as 250 were crammed into each bottle using hands and sticks: this to contain plastic trash while adding heft to the bottle structure taking shape.

“We all got blisters from stuffing,” Kutner said.

Stacked side by side and row atop row, bound with chicken wire and coated with a cement-sand mix, these became the building blocks for walls that now enclose two small classrooms for Granados’ elementary school students.

“For me and for the community, seeing these two classrooms standing is truly a dream come true,” Kutner said.

Kutner applied to the Peace Corps while a senior at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she graduated in 2006 with a degree in anthropology and Spanish.

Helping others came naturally. Kutner, whose mother was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, was active in Lincoln High’s service club and other charitable endeavors.

Her father, Douglas Kutner, a Portland psychologist, remembers driving her as a child to Hat Point on the edge of Hells Canyon in the far northeastern corner of Oregon, the Seven Devils range in the distance.

“She said, ‘It’s really hard to look at all this beauty when you know how much suffering there is in the world,’” he recalled. “She was 9.”

Kutner is now based in San Miguel Dueñas, one of 128 Peace Corps volunteers from the Portland area, which ranks 11th among the nation’s metro areas for producing volunteers. Oregon ranks fifth among states per capita for Peace Corps volunteers.

When Kutner arrived at her posting in Granados in April 2007 to teach life skills to children, a metal frame and roof was all there was to the roughly 1,300-square-foot school annex building. The village government didn’t have the money to finish the project.

The elementary school’s principal told her they needed the space, and could she help find a way to finish the school?

Kutner got the idea to use bottles from a Guatemalan group called Pura Vida, which was using bottle-filled “eco-blocks” for community construction projects.

“A bottle project had never been done with metal before, always out of wood, but I figured why not look into it,” she said.

The project ended up costing about $3,000, Kutner said. It was finished with the help of local businesses that donated materials and labor; the goodwill organization Hug it Forward, who sent five volunteers to Granados; and Peace Corps volunteer Rebecca Wike of Washington, who succeeded Kutner in Granados.

In the fall, the gray walls were painted a vivid orange. Welders were still finishing the windows during the inauguration Oct. 26. This month, students will begin using the classrooms.

“I think one of the biggest things I learned is to not just have faith in yourself, but to have faith in other people,” Kutner said. “The end result of what we were able to accomplish was way greater than I ever imagined.”

While it got new classrooms, the community also got a new awareness of the litter all around it.

Kutner remembers being on a bus and for the first time hearing a mother tell her child not to throw an empty bottle out the window, a common practice. Another resident has begun collecting cans and hauling them into the capital, four hours away, to collect the deposit.

And though she got the project started, it was the local community that saw it through, Kutner said.

“With development work, you have to find a real balance. It has to be something the community really wants or needs, but they also have to be able to do it themselves,” Kutner said. “Otherwise it’s not sustainable.”

Kutner, whose name adorns a wall plaque at a new library in Granados she also helped build, has eight more months in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. After that, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in international studies and environmental management, perhaps at the University of Washington so she can be closer to her family, before continuing with a career abroad.

“I miss my family,” she said. “But I feel like I come alive when I do this kind of work.”

Update of PBRC Summer Stipend | Professor Sarah England

Assessing Educational Campaigns against Gender Violence in Guatemala

The primary objective of this project is to observe and analyze educational campaigns carried out by NGOs in Guatemala City targeted at deconstructing cultural ideologies that perpetuate gender inequality and specifically violence against women. My aim is to understand how these organizations conceptualize gender, how they present their material to the intended audience, and to what degree the audience responds to these ideas, especially men. I am also interested in understanding how the members of the organizations themselves have arrived at their own analysis of gender, gender inequality, and feminism. I am especially interested in what has led men to be involved in these campaigns and what strategies they use to get other men to rethink the fundamental premises of patriarchy.

In the summer of 2009 I traveled to Guatemala City with funding from the PBRC summer stipend and began preliminary investigations on the questions listed above. Through the collaboration of the Costa Mesa-based organization Mujeres Iniciando en las Americas (MIA), founded and run by activist Lucia Munoz, I was able to contact several different women’s organizations, observe gender equality workshops designed and carried out by MIA, and interview men and women involved in the campaign for gender equality in different capacities. From this preliminary set of observations and interviews I gained several insights into the way that Guatemalan activists think about gender and gender inequality, and also came up with some new ideas for theoretical and methodological approaches for further investigation of the topic.

The two gender equality workshops that I observed were initiated and carried out by MIA based on a manual designed by the Canadian-based White Ribbon campaign. One of the workshops took place in a primary school in Zona 18, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Guatemala City with high rates of violent crime, and the other took place with university students and activists at the University of San Carlos, the largest public university in Guatemala. During these workshops students were asked to list basic ideologies about the traditional roles of men and women and to question their reality, origins, and validity as models of social comportment. What I realized from observing these workshops is that both the primary school-age students and the university-level students were quickly able to list the stereotypical gender roles and characteristics of men and women that make up what scholars call “the patriarchal bargain” in Latin America-that is the model of gender relations in which men are the heads of household, financial providers, and sources of authority while women are responsible for domestic duties, child rearing, and sexual fidelity. The university students were also quick to recognize the sexual double standard in which men are sexual subjects with a large degree of autonomy over their sexuality and sexual behavior whereas women are meant to be the objects of men’s desire and control. However, upon further discussion it became clear that despite everyone’s ability to recite the model of patriarchal gender relations and roles, the reality of their own lives was much more complex than the model suggests. Children mentioned mothers who work, fathers who do some housework, changing ideas about the ability of girls to get an education and so forth. The university students and activists also questioned the sexual double standard and its role in controlling even women who are students and public figures. Some of the male students also questioned women’s roles in perpetuating patriarchal ideologies in raising their sons and talked about the way that gender ideologies have also limited their ability to act outside of patriarchal norms. I concluded that these workshops are excellent avenues through which to gain an understanding of the models of gender that men and women grow up with and learn through their parents, peers, school, the media, etc. but also to see how their realities are more complicated and how, through various avenues, they are learning to rethink these models. However my preliminary observations suggest that this rethinking has mainly taken place in relation to the gendered division of labor, that is questioning whether women should be able to work, men’s role in the household, and so forth. What I saw less of was questioning the way that the social construction of male and female sexuality plays a large role in limiting women’s spatial mobility and justifying gendered violence.

The second method, interviews with activists, was also very fruitful in beginning to understand the various processes that have led certain men and women to rethink standard patriarchal models of gender and the barriers that they have faced in trying to act outside of those norms. Though the men’s pathways to becoming conscious of gender inequality were various (participation in the revolutionary movement of the 1970s/80s, being raised by single mothers, living with abusive fathers, having to take over domestic duties in the home), one commonality was that all feel that there are still enormous social pressures to enact machismo such that it is very difficult for men to promote and enact a feminist ideology, even within the activist community. This is a topic that I would like to explore in much more depth in future research. What are the models of masculinity that they have been exposed to? How did they develop an “alternative masculinity” and what have been the barriers they have faced in trying to enact that masculinity? Though all of the interviwees clearly articulated a belief that gender inequality is a complex set of social structures and beliefs that disempowers women and make them vulnerable to violence (structural, physical, and symbolic), a few also recognized that gender inequality not only structures power relations between men and women but also between men. Rather than seeing patriarchy as a privilege that attaches to all men, they expressed the idea that patriarchy (in the local form of machismo) not only harms women, but also harms men in that it encourages violence, power struggles between men, abusive relationships, and so forth. This is also an avenue that I would like to explore further as it aligns with much of the recent scholarship on masculinity that questions the degree to which it is a privilege or a liability both for men as individuals and of course for society as a whole.

Based on the insights I have gained from this preliminary research I plan to apply for the Wenner-Gren Post PhD Research Grant, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships, and the Latin American Studies Association “Other Americas Project.” I plan to continue with the two primary methods of observing gender equality workshops and interviewing activists. My primary focus will be on extending feminist theory and methodology to the study of masculinity in Guatemala by 1) recognizing the social construction of gender and sexuality and the ways that these are linked to but not completely congruent with sex (in other words both men and women can be discriminated against for enacting what is perceived to be feminine behavior– being a biological male does not guarantee male privilege) 2) recognizing the way that gender ideologies are always linked to power 3) recognize multiple masculinities, cross-cut by race, class, and generation 4) separating out the models of gender and their actual enactment in people’s lives and 5) trying to understand all of this from the point of view of the subjects themselves, that is from the emic point of view of men and women who both live these ideologies and social structures and are trying to deconstruct them to form a more equal and peaceful society.

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In August 2009, Professor Sarah England of Soka University worked with MIA on “Guatemalan Masculinity and Feminism: A Happy Marriage? Assessing Educational Campaigns against Gender Violence in Guatemala” funded by Soka University’s Pacific Basin Research Center. The idea behind this project was inspired by MIA’s work with the White Ribbon Campaign in Guatemala City which seeks to talk directly to men about issues of gender inequality and gendered violence.

Through my research on these issues in Latin America I have realized that the majority of work being done in this area, both among activists and among academics, seems to still frame gendered violence as primarily a woman’s issue that is discussed among women about how women can cope with it. However, since men are the main perpetrator’s of gendered violence it is very important that they be a part of the conversation about how to resolve the problem alongside women. But in order to do this it is important to understand how men think about the issue, how they conceptualize gender and gender inequality, the role that their own sense of masculinity plays in the construction of gender, and how they think that educational programs can be designed that will get men to think critically about these ideas of gender.

For this project I attended several workshops designed by MIA in collaboration with local Guatemalan NGOs and educators and interviewing facilitators and participants in order to gain insight into the questions posed above.

MIA is a wonderful example of an organization that has this as its explicit goal and has been very active in creating gender equality workshops among different sectors of the population. I first came to know about MIA in 2008 when Lucia Munoz visited the Soka University campus as part of a mini-conference on violence against women in Latin America. I then traveled with her on the summer 2008 delegation to Guatemala and was overwhelmed by the wealth of information, personal stories, and contact with activists that the delegations provide. It was truly an amazing experience both intellectually and emotionally to meet so many people dedicated to improving women’s lives and hearing the personal stories of suffering but also strength. I immediately recognized that the work of MIA aligned perfectly with the goals and missions of Soka University to create engaged, global citizens and asked Lucia to help me organize a Learning Cluster (4 week intensive course) with students from Soka to travel to Guatemala for two weeks to study more intensively the question of gender violence in the country.

The trip was very successful and the comments from the students were extremely positive, stating that the trip had been a life changing experience, opening up their eyes not only to the Guatemalan reality as a whole, but also cementing their resolve to become politically engaged in issues such as gender equality. I hope that this research project will foster continued collaboration between Soka University and MIA specifically, and between academia and activists more generally to tackle such a pressing social issue as gender violence.

By IAN URBINA

Responding to a sharp increase in homicides stemming from domestic violence, the Philadelphia Police Department announced plans this week to change how officers handle domestic abuse cases.

While Philadelphia’s overall homicide rate has dropped about 9 percent and all violent crime in the city is down compared with this time last year, there have been 35 domestic homicides since January — a 67 percent increase from 2008. The police say two additional killings are still being investigated and are likely to be added to the tally.

“It’s something we have to confront because domestic violence homicide is a crime where you know who the perpetrator is and there are often warning signs that the crime is coming,” said Patricia Giorgio-Fox, the deputy policy commissioner.

She added that 21 of the 35 domestic homicide victims had made a total of 178 calls to the police, and some of the callers had restraining orders against the individuals suspected or convicted of killing them.

The new police protocol will involve better data so that officers know when they answer a call if there have been previous reports of domestic violence from the address and whether a restraining order has been obtained.

The increase in domestic violence in Philadelphia is mirrored nationally, and experts say it is linked, in part, to the recession. In fact, data indicate that domestic violence had been falling in the 15 years before the recession took hold last year.

In May, the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation released a study indicating that 75 percent of the nation’s domestic violence shelters have reported an increase in women seeking help since September 2008. The report also found that 73 percent of these shelters attributed this rise to financial issues.

Moreover, the increase has come as services for domestic violence victims have been cut.

“Domestic violence is up, and while the poor economy that helps drive the violence is still not rebounded, states are drastically slashing funding for domestic violence services,” said Sheryl Cates, chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a federally financed emergency hot line.

This year, California cut at least $2 million from the state budget that goes toward financing 94 domestic violence shelters and centers. California accounts for 13 percent of emergency calls, the highest of any state, according to the national hot line.

Legal aid financing in West Virginia has been cut this year by 62 percent, reducing services to help protect victims of violence, according to the National Organization for Women.

In Illinois, the legislature reduced financing for domestic violence programs by 75 percent, and scores of domestic violence shelters, sexual assault and other social service programs have been forced to cut staff, reduce hours and trim other services, the organization said.

In Philadelphia, the new efforts come on the heels of several highly publicized cases involving repeat offenders, including Willie L. Scott, who the police say shot and killed his former girlfriend in February in front of the couple’s 4-year-old daughter. The police had responded to at least 10 calls for help from the house since the start of 2008.

Federal data from the National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that domestic violence remained relatively flat from 2007 to 2008, but no numbers are available for this year.

In 2008, about 552,000 crimes were committed against women by their partners, compared with about 588,000 in 2007. The rate of such violence against women fell by about 53 percent between 1993 and 2008, according to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In recent years, states have experimented with different methods of dealing with repeat offenders.

At least a dozen states have begun using GPS technology to try to keep offenders away from their current or former partners, according to the federal Electronic Monitoring Resource Center in Denver. Those states allow judges to order people to wear monitors that send a warning to the police and the victim when the individual enters an “intrusion zone” — a circle drawn around the victim’s home or workplace or her child’s school or day care center.

Commissioner Giorgio-Fox said the new regulations would take effect early next year. The policy will require police districts to keep their own detailed databases on domestic calls, indicating the nature of the call, whether a restraining order is connected to the address and whether the incident involves a repeat offender.

Dispatchers will be required to provide that data when an officer responds to a call. The department will also begin working more closely with city agencies and nonprofit organizations that offer counseling and shelters for domestic violence victims so that people with more training than the responding officers can arrive in emergency cases and try to persuade the victim to leave the premises, she said.

“All too often, officers arrive, hear from both sides and then we have little ability to convince the victim to leave,” Commissioner Giorgio-Fox said. “The next time we get the call, it’s often too late. So our officers need to be able to judge these situations better and earlier.”

Barclay Walsh contributed research. From the New York Times online edition.

By Daniel Velásquez / M.I.A. / GPDN

While in London, U.K  visitng a friend, I had the luck to bump into the beginning of a march to celebrate the International Day to End Violence Against Women, with an emphasis on rape and male violence against women. The event was organized by the London Feminist Network.

Reclaim the Night 2009 from Daniel Velasquez on Vimeo.

Why the March

According to the British Crime Survey (2001) there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year, around 40,000 attempted rapes and over 300,000 sexual assaults. Yet our conviction rate is the lowest it has ever been, one of the lowest in Europe, at only 5.3%. This means that more rapists were convicted in the 1970s when Reclaim The Night marches first started than they are now. Did you know that the maximum sentence possible for rape is life imprisonment? Probably not, because rarely are rapists even reported or convicted, let alone with a realistic sentence. This situation has to change.

We march to demand justice for rape survivors.

A recent survey by the young women’s magazine More in 2005 found that 95% of women don’t feel safe on the streets at night, and 65% don’t even feel safe during the day. 73% worry about being raped and almost half say they sometimes don’t want to go out because they fear for their own safety.

In every sphere of life we negotiate the threat or reality of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. We cannot claim equal citizenship while this threat restricts our lives as it does. We demand the right to use public space without fear. We demand this right as a civil liberty, we demand this as a human right.

The Reclaim The Night march gives women a voice and a chance to reclaim the streets at night on a safe and empowering event. We aim to put the issue of our safety on the agenda for this night and every day.

The Reclaim The Night marches started in the UK in the 1970s. In America they are known as ‘Take Back The Night’ and the first one was held in West Germany on April 30th 1977. In Britain they first began on 12th November 1977 when marches took place in Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, London and many other cities. The Reclaim the Night marches became even more significant when, in following years, a man called Peter Sutcliffe began murdering prostitute women in and around Leeds. Feminists in the area were angry that the police response to these murders was slow and that the press barely reported on them. It seemed that it was only when young student women began to fall victim to this serial killer that the police started to take the situation seriously. Their response was to warn all women not to go out at night. This was not a helpful suggestion for any woman, let alone for those women involved in prostitution who often had no choice about whether they went out at night or not. Feminists and a variety of women’s and student groups were angered by this response. So they organised a resistance of torch-lit marches and demonstrations — they walked in their hundreds through the city streets at night to highlight that they should be able to walk anywhere and that they should not be blamed or restricted because of male violence.

Over the years the marches evolved to focus on rape and male violence generally, giving women one night when they could feel safe to walk the streets of their own towns and cities.

You may read more about LFN and Reclaim the Night 2009 at http://www.reclaimthenight.org/why.html.

Guatemala será la sede de la campaña del secretario de las Naciones Unidas, Ban Ki- Moon, para poner fin a la violencia contra las mujeres, por dos razones: las cifras de la violencia contra las mujeres son muy altas, pero el país ha adoptado una serie de medidas que pueden ayudar a ponerle fin.

El representante del Sistema de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala, Mauricio Valdés, explicó ayer que los niveles de violencia contra las mujeres alcanzaron cuotas “intolerables”; sin embargo, se han aprobado normas como la Ley contra el Femicidio, la Ley contra la Violencia Sexual y la Trata de Personas, y la Ley contra la Violencia Intrafamiliar, las cuales, “bien aplicadas”, constituyen un marco legal suficiente para combatir ese yugo.

Nadine Gasman, representante del Fondo de Población de las Naciones Unidas para Guatemala, dijo que la violencia contra las mujeres es “una violación a los derechos humanos y necesita ser tratada con un enfoque integral”. “La violencia contra las mujeres es inaceptable, inexcusable e intolerable”, expuso.

El viceministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Lars Pira, afirmó que se han aprobado todas las leyes necesarias para proteger a la mujer, pero reconoció: “Nos quedamos muy cortos, porque vemos que la participación de la mujer es muy baja. En términos de salud mueren muchas mujeres al concebir hijos —tenemos uno de los más altos índices de estas muertes— y todavía impera la impunidad; por eso la Ley contra el Femicidio, que es una buena ley, no se ha aplicado como debe ser”.

“Tenemos que trabajar todavía para que las mujeres puedan gozar de sus derechos plenamente”, expresó Pira.

El representante del Fondo de Naciones Unidas para la Infancia, Adriano González-Regueral, refirió que en el 2008 murieron de manera violenta en el país 722 mujeres, de las cuales el 18 por ciento eran niñas y adolescentes.

Lo necesario, explicó, es acabar con la tolerancia social hacia la violencia contra las mujeres y niñas. “Hay que luchar contra el silencio, debe haber tolerancia cero e impunidad cero, y entonces podremos detener la violencia”, manifestó.

Actividades

El público al que se dirige la iniciativa en forma especial es la gente joven, porque, según representantes de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), en las generaciones futuras está la capacidad de detener la violencia.

La campaña “Latinoamérica, únete para poner fin a la violencia contra las mujeres” se lanzará el 25 de noviembre en Guatemala, en el marco del Día mundial para la Eliminación de la Violencia contra la Mujer, con varias actividades, entre estas un seminario de intercambio de experiencias, una obra teatral, un acto protocolario y un macroconcierto en la Plaza de la Constitución, que contará con artistas de talla internacional, como el colombiano Fonseca y los guatemaltecos Viento en Contra.

La iniciativa durará hasta el 2015, fecha límite para el cumplimiento de los Objetivos del Milenio, ya que pretende impulsar el avance de estos por medio del desarrollo de las mujeres.

http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2009/noviembre/11/355131.html