ANTH Final Paper

Emily Coffin
ANTH
Prof. Doc Billingsley
Final Paper
Mi Cuerpo es Mío: An Examination of Gender-Based Violence in Guatemala
“We live in a machismo and patriarchal society. Women are treated as objects which can
be taken. To be a woman here is like being garbage. This is what our patients tell us,” Mayra
Rodas, psychological coordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Guatemala comments grimly on
the tragic violence that still permeates post-Civil War Guatemala. Described as an epidemic that
is pervading Latin America, gender-based violence has not only been utilized as a weapon of
domination, but more horrifically has been written off as a rite of passage of a female experience.
Women will more often than not endure gender-based violence in one form or another due to
their socially accepted marginalization, rather than be granted the promise of protection or
simply the validation of experience from their governments. Guatemala is reported to have the
third highest rate of gender-based violence and femicide in the world. The use of gender based
violence, femicide, and sexual mutilation of women has been used relentlessly as a tactic of
supremacy. Despite the focus on the masculinized infliction of gender-based violence, it cuts
more deeply than the static occurrence of physical violence itself. Gender-based violence is
destructive to the identity of the victim, for it strips the victim of her agency and integrity within
the community.
It would be naïve and inaccurate to consider gender-based violence as merely an attack
on women inflicted by men, for to do so would depoliticize its existence through neglecting to
consider overarching factors that are more deeply engrained ingrained in social practice.
Therefore, the need to consider policy reformation and implementation goes unnoticed as these

oppressive social practices continue to be executed. Instead, it is essential to examine the causes
of gender based violence as an overarching mechanism, shaped by institutionalized systems of
oppression and inequality. As noted by George Kent, “The common thread in all forms of
violence is the fulfillment of one party’s purposes at the expense of others. Violence entails the
use of power,” (Kent, 55). It is a tool used by institutions of power to exert dominance within
political, economic, and social spheres in which the women, already perceived as subordinate
subjects within Guatemalan society, are further exploited to fulfill the agendas and oppressive
policies of these institutions.
The violence that has plagued Guatemala for decades through a time of civil unrest, as
well as the violence that still persists to this day, is considered to be a consequence of the
everlasting legacy of Spanish colonialism, U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era, and
neoliberal economic reforms. It is largely because of the brutality of militarized life that came to
be throughout the Guatemalan Civil War that oppressive mechanisms against women are
naturally maintained. Yet the persistence of violence, particularly that directed towards women,
is entrenched more deeply in systematic inequalities that have been rooted in institutions of
power and authority. It has been perceived as naturalized while maintaining systems of power
through categorization and hierarchy of entitlement to social agency. It has become naturalized
through its common acceptance within society, due to lack of discourse and popular opinion to
institute change, has allowed for the security of oppressive institutions. These institutional
systems founded on the premise of traditional machismo social culture maintain their authority
through being able to arbitrarily categorize individuals, assign disability to those categories, and
therefore confirm and deploy the subordination of these individuals based on their
categorization. For women in Guatemala, the category of female-- worse the category of Mayan

female-- has been assigned disadvantages that have been the grounds of justified violence against
women manifesting in forms deviating from directly physical.
These causes of violence are severely intertwined and cannot necessarily be distinguished
from one another, as they have inevitably influenced and magnified the repercussions and
contributed to a hostile environment that has left millions of women disenfranchised, exploited,
and violated. Despite prejudice systems, lack of resources, and negative stigmas, some women
courageously combat these inequitable and biased systems, painfully resurrecting their
experiences in order to seek justice. It is critical to consider that violence against women in
Guatemala not be analyzed only in its direct physical form of rape and sexual assault, but also
the structural form it takes such as disenfranchisement, social stigmatization, and labor
exploitation. To utilize this dual lens of analysis is imperative in order to understand how both
forms of violence coexist in order to further systems of inequality and the subordination and
objectification of women within Guatemalan society. Through this paper, I plan to explore how
deeply gendered structural violence against women in Guatemala has allowed for the
proliferation and naturalization of direct physical violence. It is necessary to deconstruct the use
of direct violence through a time of military unrest, influenced by structural violence rooted in
systematic oppression, that has contributed to allow institutionalized inequality as well as the
overall marginalization Guatemalan women to this day.
The history of gender based violence within Guatemala can be traced back to its colonial
era under the rule of Spain in which Mayan leadership and authority in Guatemala were
interrupted by the invasion of Spanish soldiers and colonizers. The colonial judicial process
established by Spanish colonists was perhaps more contributory to overall violence against
women than the direct acts of violence themselves. The gendered perceptions and contingencies

of personal worth and self-conduct were heavily influenced by Spanish colonists. The difficulty
of identifying the atrocity of sexual violence as a mass crime directly relates to the lack of
narratives recorded as archival evidence. It is suggested that legitimization of sexual violence
operated in cohesion with social legitimation or lack thereof. Social legimitzaiton was heavily
influenced by various factors of identity: “In Spanish America, community attitudes determined
what was or was not categorized as a criminal sexual offense. These attitudes, in turn, were
molded not only by the nature of the act itself, but also by the social positions of both aggressor
and victim,” (Komisaruk). Those in positions of social privilege were capable of avoiding
persecution, while the socially disadvantaged were forced to enter a system that would seek to
delegitimize their experience based on aspects of their identity. Thus, in order for a violent
offense to have a chance of entering the record, the victim was expected to report the incident to
officials. This would be followed by a court’s decision about whether or not to try the case, and
finally, the jurists’ decisions as to whether or not the charges were legitimate and the sentencing
that would correlate.
The courts tended to focus on the status of virginity, a construction promoting
masculinity with the goal of preserving purity for passing down paternal lineage. In order for a
woman’s assault to be of interest to the courts, she had to demonstrate that her value within
society was marred because of the abrupt and unintentional loss of virginity. The focus on
virginity further alludes to the essence of purity that Guatemalan women are expected to
maintain, an aspect of machismo culture in which the primary role of women is reproduction.
This perception of a woman’s role within society then directly correlates to her as an object for
reproduction. A woman’s value becomes contingent on her purity, and therefore, the
‘deflowering’ of women was perceived as more legitimate grounds for prosecution of the

perpetrator than a woman vocalizing an unwanted assault. If the assault failed to include a
background context involved with loss of virginity, the victim’s narrative would lose credibility,
“forcing a woman into inappropriate sexual activity is seen less as a crime against her physical
integrity than as a crime against her reputation. This is especially important because a woman
who has lost her honor has also lost the respect of her community and her right to be protected
by male kin,” (England, 2013). Sexual crimes against women, because of the concept of
preserving purity and ‘honor’, were perceived as a crime against the men in their life responsible
for not only protection but upholding the standard of honor within the family. Female sexuality
was seen as an entitlement to their husbands, therefore, marital rape was not only not considered
a crime, but widely condoned use of force. If a woman were to violate or disrupt her honor and
purity, even against her will, her right to the protection and respect by men was further
suspended. Therefore, the communal conceptualization and value of purity served to control and
oppress female sexuality, maintaining obedience through fear of shame and disownment.
By focusing primarily on the notion of virginity and loss thereof, courts erased not only
the narrative of experience—the personal destruction caused by their assaults—but also the
agency of the woman to seek justice for her assault, “Girls' bodies—the appearance of their
hymens—thus had greater evidentiary and legal status than did the narratives of their
experiences,” (Komisaruk). A historical case study documented in the archives illustrates the
pattern of the exploitation of female biology in order to delegitimize sexual violence: Occurring
in 1798, Micaela de los Santos, a wet nurse to a Spanish household, was brutally assaulted and
raped by her mistress’s younger brother (AGCA Sig. A2/leg. 188/exp. 3798). After the assault
was reported and Santos had testified, bravely recounting her horrific experience to the jurists

while risking her own relapse into psychological trauma, an asesor—a jurist responsible for
advising the alcalde—cleared the accused of charges. The judgment was written as follows:
“There is no evidence against don Melchor Ugalde,” the asesor wrote, “beyond the
declaration of the woman who says she was forced. She surely is not married and because
she is a wet nurse, it presumably is the case that it wouldn't be necessary [i.e., difficult] to
force her, and therefore it seems to me, that you should absolve the litigation and inform
the plaintiff, who says he is the father of the one who was forced, that there is no merit
for the prosecution.” (Komisaruk)
Santos’ case was dismissed on the assessor’s presumptions that because of her status as a wet
nurse: she was not only a single woman, but this position implied her sexual promiscuity and
availability to extramarital sex to anyone at anytime, completely erasing any consideration of
Santos’ own free will and her competency to resist. Her role within the domestic labor sphere not
only rendered her vulnerable to assault, but also wrongly ascribed her the position of an object,
without a right to express consent. Institutionalized commodification of women and deployment
of female sexuality triumphed in influencing the final ruling in Santos’ case, freeing her
perpetrator of culpability while assigning the blame to Santos. She was not only denied the
justice she desperately deserved, but like those who attempted to bravely try the court systems
and failed, the exposure subjected her to notions of victim shaming by the magistrates, the
community, and herself.
Such a pattern would manifest throughout history in various forms for women seeking
justice for the atrocities they have endured. It became clear that medical evidence of sexual
violence, i.e. disruption of the hymens as an arbitrary indication of virginity, was an incredibly
necessary component for women to have any chance of receiving a ruling on their assaults. This

also aligned with society’s model role of a prioritized victim of sexual assault, a young virgin
woman stripped of her innocence and purity. The power assigned in institutionalized medicine
intersected with social bias and political dominance. Societal perception of sexual violence
against women, therefore, was vested in the disruption of virginity and purity of the women who
were expected to maintain the purity of lineage. If their purity was not at stake, their societal
value, and contingently, their right to justice was not prioritized and completely invalidated. The
courts tended to rule in favor of the narrative of female seductress unable to resist or say no as
well as the patriarchal right to a woman’s body. These statements not only disrupted the
narratives of the victims, of their resistance and violations, but also promoted intense victim
shaming through community perception as well as individual perception of self. In the case of
Micaela de los Santos, the court not only ruled her perpetrator not guilty, but stated that Santos
was responsible for her own assault. The courts sided in favor of assigning the responsibility of
preservation of purity to females and to relieve their male counterparts of this responsibility. This
has led to massive rates of underreporting of sexual violence throughout Guatemala’s history.
Confusion over what constitutes sexual violence within the court rooms also inhibits
women from coming forward and being able to move on after their assaults. They silently live in
shame of their assault and internalized the idea that the responsibility falls on them: “I was the
only one who knew, because I was sure that if I told other people they would say that I brought it
on myself. Because I was so ashamed, it was better to keep it to myself. I didn't tell anybody, not
even my children,” (San Miguel Chicaj, Baja Verapaz, 1982, Case 5057). This assumption of
female responsibility and impending social rejection of female victims not only creates an
inequitable dichotomy of sexuality for men and women, but fosters a paradigmatic male
entitlement to female bodies. It is evident that from a historical standpoint that violence against

women has strictly been considered a criminal event in the incident that it is a threat to virginity
and purity within the general female population. This consideration is formulated on the valuable
idea that female purity is absolutely necessary in order to preserve purity within lineage. The
regeneration of dominant structures and groupings further promotes the existence of systems of
racial and cultural hierarchies responsible for propagating mass inequality.
Such social hierarchies pervading institutionalized systems have created rigid separations
for minorities and marginalized individuals to gain agency within society. Their rights are often
dismissed, leaving them to navigate institutions that work against them. Intersectional identities
play an intense role in Guatemalan society, in which multiple marginalized identities and forms
of oppression cannot be separated. This again refers to the institution of structural violence
rooted in widespread cultural sexism and racism. Mayan culture within Guatemala is to this day
a demographic that is consistently racially discriminated against, creating an environment for
Mayan women in which multiple systems of oppression are working against them due to an
intersectional marginalized identity. This is partially due to Spanish colonialism but also U.S.
foreign policy mechanisms during Cold War tensions which circulated Western fear of
communism as a strategy of containment.
During its conflicts with the Soviet Union, the United States provided both financial and
ideological support to ethnocidal campaigns directed towards Guatemala’s Mayan population in
order to prevent the spread of communism to nations that potentially were ambiguous (Brown,
10). In 1954, the US assisted heavily in the deposition of Guatemala’s democratically elected
president and later assisted in positioning and exalting the ultraconservative president, Ríos
Montt, who aligned with Reagan’s anticommunist ideologies. Ríos Montt’s presidency was
characterized by participation in mass genocide, including that committed against 22 different

Mayan groups of Guatemala, while the U.S. government stood idly in terms of foreign aid and
intervention, allowing these atrocities to occur (Nimatuj). This genocide was carried out in the
name of ‘anticommunism’ in order to save the greater institutions of Western power dominated
by capitalist societies, yet it tore apart the social coherence of the nation of Guatemala. The
neoliberal role of the United States allowed for the pervasion of mass violence as well as the
intense elevation of inequitable systems that maintain power to this day.
In order to understand the persistence of institutionalized inequality and the role gender-
based violence has played in its complacency, it is vital to examine this time period in which the
instability of civil structure manifested into such an intense exploitation and the violation of
human rights throughout the nation. Those playing the role of victimizer were also victims, and
the psychological justifications mandated individuals to dehumanize their neighbors, their family
members, and even themselves in order to find the means of survival. Mayan boys were recruited
to serve as foot soldiers for the military, carrying out atrocities against their own people. For
women, their role in Guatemalan society was already one of subordination, particularly for
Mayan women, who were pitted even lower on a hierarchy or racial value and therefore
subjected to vast amounts of discrimination. In a time of war and distress, women’s subordinate
status was used as an outlet of dominance and cruelty. Mayan communities were targeted
intensely in the name of eradicating threats of communism that were supposedly traced to
cultural practices. “Thus, as in other politically conflictive societies, women in Guatemala have
been murdered, disappeared, terrorized, and stripped of their dignity; as such, rape and sexual
violence have been an integral part of the counterinsurgency strategy” (Amnesty International
2005).
Throughout Guatemala’s Civil War, counterinsurgency forces utilized gender based

violence to render these communities of women worthless, “Perpetrators acted with relative
impunity, committing sexual assaults that were so widespread in the highland combat zones one
local official commented that it would be difficult to find a Maya girl of eleven to fifteen who
had not been raped,” (Rich, 2). The dedication for upholding traditional machismo culture and
authority encouraged societal discrimination against women particularly in leadership roles and
policy reform. Women were intensely discouraged from taking part in politics and insurgency, as
their potential influence in a leadership role was perceived as oppositional to traditional systems
of power based on their gender, “Once defined as threats through their gender, they became
dispensable,” (Carey, 155). Mayan women were particularly vulnerable and suffered the most
through forms of direct violence, for they were targeted on account of their gender as well as
their indigenous status. Because of women’s ability to reproduce, rape, mutilation, and murder
killed off the possibility of future generations and the transmission of culture. Women lived in
constant fear of these forms of brutality. Counterinsurgency forces entered communities such as
Tzalalá (a remote Mayan village in northwest Guatemala) and brutally murdered the loved ones
of these women while also committing horrendous acts of sexual violence against them. School
teacher Victor Montejo recounts in his book Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village, “With
the rise of power of Efrain Ríos Montt, all remaining human rights were abolished, and the army
became the sole arbiter over the lives of Guatemalans,” (Montejo, 113). The bodies of these
women were plundered, considered mere spoils of war. Sandra Moran of Guatemala’s Women’s
Sector interprets the killing of Guatemalan women to be destruction of the enemy’s property:
Violence against the enemy's woman was the predominant logic of the war. This logic
says: It is my property and I can do with it whatever I want. A gangster punishes another
gangster by going after his woman, his property-his mother, his wife, girlfriend, or

daughter. This was the military strategy used in the war. To take revenge I kill the woman
of the enemy. (Moran)
The personal testimonies of women who fell victim to such savage attacks primarily
against indigenous communities can only begin to encapsulate the horror that was faced. In an
international genocide case tried in 1998 against senior military officials for crimes against
humanity, a trembling victim disclosed her experience of the crimes committed against her and
her people. Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America at the National
Security Archive recounts:
She was raped by soldiers in Rabinal, her husband was forcibly disappeared, her mother
was burned alive inside her house, her aunt and sister-in-law were raped, and the
survivors fled the massacre in her village, where 32 people died. The witness then gave
the judge the details of these crimes: She was taken to an army base and kept there,
bound with rope and naked for 15 days, repeatedly raped by soldiers. Her uncle finally
came to the base and rescued her. “I wanted to die,” she told the judge. (Doyle)
These acts of violence left women responsible for navigating a society in which their rape would
be invalidated, exploited, and twisted against them. The use of gender based violence created
rigid and distinct separations between those in power and those oppressed, giving rise to
communities in which revolution or resistance were out of the question and therefore, the erasure
of potential obstacles to military agenda. The voices of these women, heavily influenced through
cultural ideologies as well as institutionalized perception and oppression, were silenced by a
system that was inherently working against them and the atrocities they had endured. In his novel
The Last Colonial Massacre, Greg Grandin discusses the lack of female agency within a legal
system that was “corrupt, racist, and strongly tilted toward maintaining class and patriarchal

privileges,” (Grandin, 136).
Despite combatting a legal system that delegitimized and failed to protect the
vindications of women, even in the face of receiving a favorable verdict, resulting backlash from
social pressures could very well disintegrate the impact of liberal jurisprudence (Grandin, 137).
Similarly, Jeanne Ward, author of If Not Now, When?, comments: “Guatemala’s laws governing
rape are prejudicial against women, placing the burden of proof on the victim. The Penal Code
requires that violence must be evident in order to prosecute rape, which discourages many
victims from coming forward,” (Ward). Retrieving evidence of rape is a difficult process for
women to undergo, for it often requires the intense medical scrutiny of procedural examination, a
traumatic experience in and of itself if women are even able to access that kind of medical
attention right away. In instances of war and social upheaval, this accessibility is decreased
vastly. Victims may be able to gather witnesses willing to testify, but this poses the inherent risk
of objection or hostility from the accused towards the victim or others involved on their behalf. It
was easier to remain a silent victim than go through the exhausting legal process, in which a
woman’s experience with violence would be undermined and the responsibility of crime would
be shifted away from the perpetrator whenever possible.
The offense of sexual assault for many women, particularly Mayan women, therefore
became an internalized experience that was not addressed or held accountable by governmental
institutions. The traumatic experiences became laden sources of guilt and shame in which
women carried without coming forward for fear of rejection from their communities. This form
of violence, more so than torture, murder, or physical battery, evokes a greater sense of shame
and confusion due to gendered stigmas and stereotypes around sexuality that are engrained in
Guatemalan cultures. The rate of reporting is incredibly low as an indicator of how many

instances actually occur and go unchecked, “it is important to remember that very few
denunciations of rape are reported in comparison to other violent acts such as torture and murder.
This is due to the feelings of guilt and shame caused by this particular form of violence,”
(Aguilar et. Al 1999). The Commission for Historical Clarification released a report in 1999
titled Memory of Silence, which states that rape, particularly in indigenous areas, resulted in
“breaking marriage and social ties; generating social isolation and communal shame; provoked
abortions, infanticide and obstructed births and marriages within these groups, thus facilitating
the destruction of indigenous groups” (CEH 1999, 14). The CEH also claims in this report that
the remaining presence of sexual violence in communities, through lasting social memory of
psychological trauma, has become a source of ‘collective shame.’ Women lost trust in their
government through the madness that plagued it, deploying its citizens on a witch hunt to
exterminate and eradicate the Mayan people and the culture itself. A study conducted in 1982 by
researcher Virginia Rich stated that the overwhelming fear of most female Guatemalan refugees
was that of being raped.
The psychological repercussions of silencing became apparent as women feared cultural
shaming that would be brought upon them through publicizing and drawing attention to the
sexual violence committed against them: “Traditional values among Maya women prevented
victims from seeking help after sexual assaults; and because of their “silent suffering,” many
survivors endured chronic gynecological problems and psychological trauma,” (Garrard-Burnett,
6). Decades later, as these cases are finally being brought to court rooms and charges are being
served to war criminals, the testimonies of these women are crucial in beginning to understand
the detrimental role gender based violence played in the exploitation and abuse of women’s
bodies and overall disregard for their humanity. Yet this period of silencing takes a toll on the

psychological well being and overall integrity of these women that no amount of justice can
compensate for. The prolonged terror that these women were forced to re-experience in their
minds on a day to day basis without resources of support or validation for their healing will
never be taken away.
Yet two decades after the peace accords were signed in Guatemala, post-conflict
Guatemala still suffers from widespread erasure and complacency of violence against women
due to deeply situated systems founded on the principles of sexism. This contributes to the notion
of structural oppression and therefore, forms of indirect violence against women due to these
systems. Although Guatemalan women play a vital role in the leadership of domestic life,
Guatemalan culture tends to condone forms of direct violence towards women, including within
the domestic sphere, “Domestic violence is deeply rooted in Guatemalan society, as evidenced
by the expression, “He who loves you beats you,” (ISHR, 2). Gender based violence within
Guatemala isn’t merely normalized, it is essentially naturalized and therefore, becomes a
disaggregated categorization of violence that is essentially invisible to society.
The military regime and era of genocide has engrained direct physical violence against
women as a natural way of living. The rate of homicide in post-conflict Guatemala as well as the
rate of femicide is one of the highest in the world. Although less women are killed than men,
internationally regarded Guatemalan sociologist Edelberto Torres-Rivas notes that, “women, as
the culturally ideal vessels of the Guatemalan family, were not killed as often as men; however,
when women were killed, their cadavers showed evidence of overkill and rape,” (Torres, 165).
These demonstrations of extreme abuse to the bodies of women mandates the consideration that
violence against women is often motivated by intense rage fueled by gendered ideologies of

ownership of a woman’s body, misogyny, and/or sexual jealousy (GGM, 2010a; Sanford, 2008).
Women unquestionably serve an indispensable role in the function of Guatemalan society
through reproduction and maternal domesticity. Yet they are enslaved in a position of
vulnerability and subordination that subjects them to intense violence when it occurs. Cadaver
evidence of femicide victims shows evidence of specifically gendered ways of torture and
aggression, with direct concentration to sexual torture and mutilation.
Violence against women in Guatemala has become a constitutive—rather than aberrant—
feature of the social fabric because sexism and the civic exclusion, public denigration, and
physical abuse of women have been socially and legally excused (Menjivar 2008). The everyday
occurrences of gender coalesced violence are interpreted and experienced in different ways based
on various components of identity, “Women from different social classes and ethnic groups face
different forms of violence, and they experience, interpret, and react to the same violence in
different ways,” (Menjivar, 112). Although it is heavily evident that ethnic background
influences socioeconomic status, economic class plays a significant role in experiences and
interpretations of violence. Structural violence that is more deeply vested in the culture and
inequity of economic status in Guatemala is defined by Torres-Rivas as:
[It is] rooted in the uncertainty of everyday life caused by the insecurity of wages or
income, a chronic deficit in food, dress, housing, and health care, and uncertainty about
the future which is translated into hunger and delinquency, and a barely conscious feeling
of failure. . . It is often referred to as structural violence because it is reproduced in the
context of the market, in exploitative labor relations, when income is precarious and it is
concealed as underemployment, or is the result of educational segmentation and of

multiple inequalities that block access to success. (Torres-Rivas)
The most intense violence being committed against women is not necessarily as tangibly
recognizable as direct physical violence, which in and of itself is horrifically oppressive and
detrimental to standard of living. Rather, violence manifests itself in ways of further ensuring the
placement of women in Guatemala as a class of humans that will be exploited relentlessly under
systems of oppression, particularly within the economic sector and labor force.
Structural violence secures the subordination of women to men in Guatemalan society by
stripping them of access to resources needed to gain traction within institutions of power. These
vital resources include things such as economic independence, quality education, healthcare,
stable living environments, among others. There is no identifiable actor committing these acts,
rather violence portrays itself in ways of perpetuating unequal power and agency. Income
inequality in Guatemala is staggering, allowing for a labor system to directly exploit vulnerable
social categories and classes. Guatemala’s sweatshops have been a place of psychological and
physical abuse and exploitation for uneducated and lower socioeconomic classes of women. As
explored in a study by Maria José Paz Antolin and Amaia Perez Orozco (2001), the conditions of
sweatshops exploited women for their physical body labor, pushing their limits to stimulate
production disregarding harmful risks or injury. In Alianza Fashion Sweatshop, a sweatshop
responsible for the production of goods for over 60 U.S. mass retailers, workers were paid $1.05
per hour, the lowest wage in Guatemala and well below a livable wage (Kernaghen 2014).
Charles Kernaghen of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights notes that because of
Guatemala’s history of dictatorship and violence over indigenous and marginalized populations,
the possibility of protection under unions is nonexistent, and therefore, the regulation of labor

rights for these vulnerable communities goes unchecked. The International Trade Union
Confederation particularly noted the dangerous threat that participation in labor unions poses in
Guatemala:
Guatemala has become the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. Since
2007, at least 53 union leaders and representatives have been killed, and there have been
numerous acts of attempted murder, torture, kidnapping, break-ins and death threats,
which have created a culture of fear and violence where the exercise of trade union rights
become impossible. (ITUC 2013)
However, despite the abusive manual labor these women undergo for exploitive
compensation, what is perhaps more troubling is the psychological harm that the sweatshop
conditions provoke. Interviews conducted by ITUC reveal that these women believe it is their
fault for their place within the sweatshop, that if they had been able to garner more education that
their lives would be different. Women blame themselves, mentally and emotionally resent their
own actions, for they believe their inability to access education is an individual obstacle rather
than being situated within a larger structure responsible for inequitable resources and access to
education for these women. Sweatshops serve as a sector of the economy that promotes manual
enslavement of these women, and the regeneration of poverty within their families cycles these
women’s children back into a system in which access to education and the resources necessary to
lift themselves out of poverty are essentially unattainable. Menjivar recounts an interview she
posed with a thirty-four-year-old Guatemalan woman, a mother to five children, who claimed her
lack of education was held culpable to an absent father and the need to support her family and
mother from a young age. Yet the lack of education served as a constant reminder of personal

inferiority within society, as the woman recalls, “You know, the shame of having to learn how to
read and write as an adult. . . One feels so bad, ashamed. I was very embarrassed but eventually I
learned.” Illiteracy therefore is an infliction of structural violence, a weapon used against the
poor in order to secure not only society’s perception of their lack of capability, but also degrade
their perceptions of themselves as functioning members of society, with ability and entitlement
of advocating for their rights and against injustice towards them.
Despite the incredibly battered and abused toll the war and Guatemalan institutions have
taken on women, their resilience, tenacity, and dedication to justice has persisted in some of the
most effective and vocal activism for equal rights and protection. Sarah England depicts the vital
role of women’s organizations in the political and social justice sphere, “they hold the state
accountable for the violence perpetrated against women whether directly by its own agents or
indirectly through the absence of laws that protect women. they also hold the state responsible
for having passed laws that discriminate against women, making them vulnerable to
interpersonal violence,” (England, 125-126). The organization the Women’s Sector (WS),
founded in 1994, congregated women’s groups throughout the country in a popular movement to
increase the visibility of women’s struggles and overall presence within society. Before the
formalization of this organization, the women representing their respective groups did not know
each other. Working on the premise of trust, they began to sort through social issues and directed
their attention towards public policy for women, the Peace Accords, and political representation.
They operate under the slogan “Reclaiming our Indignation and Demanding Justice”, and have
created a space for social issues regarding the rights of women and female equality within
Guatemalan society. Through opening this space, they have increased dialogue and the visibility

of female activism in the country, drawing those away from positions of fear and empowering
them to expose their narratives and the correlating injustice committed against them.
Yet the Women’s Sector to this day has been the target of threats and harassment, as it is
seen as a threat to the patriarchal structure that regulates Guatemalan leadership and political
institutions of power. Aggression towards combatting the threat of the rising female voice is seen
in social practice as well, with inexcusable rates of femicide, torture, and sexual violence that
still plague the streets of Guatemala and the rest of Latin America. Sandra Moran of WS
comments on these atrocities:
It is a political strategy to impose fear and terror. As women are gaining space, this fear
operates as a weapon to make them pull back, to stop women's public actions and
resistance and return them to the domestic, private world. (Moran)
Moran notes that the politically charged climate of Guatemala is manipulated through
fear and terror, in which violence against women receives media coverage encouraging a
message for women to be careful, stay home, and behave obediently. TV reports tend to focus on
numbers of femicide cases, failing to assign names and narratives to the victims. Communities
become more and more desensitized to the mass violence that is proliferating the streets on a
daily basis, and the possibility of mobilizing in order to engage in demanding institutional reform
is lost. The failure of Guatemalan to promote the demand for institutional and social
accountability of oppressive forces, and therefore, does not promote or adhere to a standard of
protection for its women.

Feminist oriented work in Guatemala seeks to demand this institutional restructuring,
through legislative reform of laws that marginalize or oppress women, implementation of new
legislation to protect the rights of women both physically and socially, as well as greater political
and economic agency and representation for women. Their efforts have been met with legislative
movements in a direction of promising greater institutional protection and equity for women,
particularly against gender based violence. One of the main endeavors has been to reclassify the
crime of sexual assault and violence, for historically it has been categorized as a threat to a
woman’s purity and gendered expectations of honor:
One of the main challenges for victims of sexual violence in Guatemala has been that sex
crimes have historically been labeled as crimes against a woman’s modesty (pudor),
suggesting that the offense is not so much to her personal physical integrity as to her
social status as an “honest woman.” Thus the laws implied that only respectable women
deserved legal protection from sex crimes. (England, 126)
Because of the implications of purity and social reputation that vested in sexual violence, women
were less likely to report the incidents for fear of marring that reputation. This fear of reporting
allows violence to go unchecked and proliferate, allowing stigmas that oppress and extort female
sexuality to trump the mandate of nationally guaranteed female safety. This perception also
reinforces the role of women as someone else’s object of property, dehumanizing them as
justification to marginalize their rights and protection.
Reformation to preexisting sexist legislation is a necessary tactic of moving towards
prioritizing equitable resources of support and protection for all women. New laws that alter
discursive language to the 1973 Penal Code seek to shift common perception and complacence

of sexual violence and violence against women in the face of rising rates of femicide within
Guatemala. Offenses of sexual violence were listed under six categories, all explicitly stating the
women as victim and the perpetrator as male. Due to the assumptions of maintaining a sense of
‘honor’, these laws are only classified as violations in the instance of ‘serious physical harm.’
Otherwise, it is expected that women over the age of 12 will be able to consent to sexual activity,
“There is no recognition that other forms of coercion (such as psychological or economic) may
have been used or that there may be forms of grave harm produced other than what can be seen
on the body (such as emotional trauma),” (England, 129-130). If women choose to report, they
are subjected to humiliating exams that are incredibly traumatic to endure and difficult to access,
as the amount of equipped clinics and doctors capable of performing rape examinations is scarce.
Their assaults only gain potential of being legitimized if they are willing to immediately open
their bodies as crime scenes and commit to being treated as such. The implications required to
convict a perpetrator of sexual violence as stated in the 1973 Penal Code are a threat to the
integrity and well being of the victim. Fabio Forgoine, head of Doctors Without Borders’
(Médecins Sans Frontières) anti-sexual violence mission in Guatemala, stated, “Survivors are
stigmatized and they cannot easily find treatment in Guatemala yet. There are no resources and
too little comprehension of patients’ needs by the doctors,” (Baldini 2008).
Despite the legal mandate of providing physical evidence of an assault, women in
Guatemala lack critical resources and social support necessary for following through with
immediate reporting. In 1993, a study conducted by the Guatemalan Ministry of Public Health
and Social Assistance on perceptions and attitudes towards domestic violence reported that many
government officials in a position to respond to and address domestic and gender based violence
tended to hold traditional victim-blaming perspectives (Ward, 113; Ministerio). These crimes are

also categorized as ‘private crimes’, implying that they do not have a significant social impact.
The state court system was also not required to pursue the case in the event that the victim
dropped the charges, shifting full responsibility on seeking justice through the legal system to the
victim. For women to navigate this system poses a pathway of intense obstacles, in which her
narrative is continuously delegitimized, subjecting her to further trauma and humiliation, “The
woman or girl has essentially been violated three times: the rape, the humiliation of public
exposure, and the frustration of impunity,” (England, 132). The perpetrator was also completely
exempt from charges if they happened to be married to the victim, reinforcing the ‘honor’
narrative by confirming women’s role as sexual property of their husbands. This was deemed
unconstitutional in 2006, as it was voted to be a violation of Article 4 of the Constitution that
guaranteed equity between men and women:
The norm being challenged is based on the subordinate position of a woman, in which an
act of sexual violence against her is not considered to be the same as an attack on her
sexual liberty but rather is essentially seen as an attack on the honor not of the woman but
of her family. It minimizes the act of sexual aggression, the violence, and the humiliation
caused by the violent act, privileging the fact that the woman can “recover her honor” or
her sexual legitimacy as a “dignified woman” through her marriage to the aggressor. With
this disposition, sexual violence comes to occupy a second rank, subordinated to social
conceptions of the position of women in society. (Corte de Constitucionalidad, 2006)
It is unquestionable that violence in Guatemala, particularly violence against women, can
no longer be a tolerable facet deemed an inevitable manifestation of machismo culture. Violence
against women is inherently a threat to the stability, equity, and both domestic and international

perception of the nation as a whole. Violence against women has existed particularly without
prioritization due to cultural stigmatization against the victim that promotes a culture of silence.
International humanitarian aid organizations, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, have offered programs on gender, reproductive health, and human rights, in which
many refugee women have participated in self-awareness workshops that aim to reinforce self-
esteem and promote empowerment (Ward). Although programs focused on the healing of
women and female perception are incredibly valuable and necessary, it is imperative to address
the larger systems that stand as the roots of this violence in the first place. The physical brutality
against women, taking on highly gendered forms of violence such as rape, sexual mutilation,
domestic violence, etc., has been given the room to proliferate due to deeply engrained systems
of structural violence against women. Institutionalized practices and policies are regenerated in
order to maintain the subordination of women within Guatemalan culture, and by preventing
women from access of independent agency, their voices too often go unheard. The repercussions
of violence against women are numerous, ranging from psychological, to economic, to social
reputation and perception from others. Heavily due to Guatemala’s double standard of ‘honor’
relating to both genders, the historical consideration has been one of an entitlement for men’s
access to female bodies, while a transgression for women who ‘failed’ to resist assault.
It is inarguable that the horror, pain, and destruction to the standard of living for women
in Guatemala cannot simply be erased through systematic change—to assume so would be an
insult to the memory of the narratives and history of millions. However, through prioritizing
programs that value social education for both men and women that value systems of equity on
the basis of social identity, the notions of patriarchal dominance can potentially be converted. It
will take more than legislative reform, it will require female leadership, advocacy, and social

practice. The disconnect between the validation of legislation and social execution is evident in
Guatemala today, as despite reforms to the 1973 Penal Code, violence on the basis of gender is
still ubiquitous. Although it would be false to state that a definite solution exists, strides can and
have been made towards achieving equity, agency, and improving the overall social perception
of women in Guatemalan culture. Much of this work has been motivated by the unrelenting
commitment from women who strive to see the implementation of these improvements. That
being said, there is so much to be done. Yet it is in the best interest of Guatemala, as well as
every nation battling issues of gender inequity, to recognize and celebrate the diligence, passion,
bravery, and dedication to justice that has been demonstrated by its female leaders despite
obstacles they have endured. By advancing towards gender equality, Guatemala would access the
liberation of minds and leadership that for so long have gone unheard or unwanted. These voices
that have overcome mountains of abuse and suppression will unquestionably ameliorate the
future, stability, and overall productivity of the nation as a whole.

ANTH Final Paper

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