Killing Guatemala's women
In Guatemala, something terrible is happening to women. They are being murdered in growing numbers and with a terrifying savagery. They are dumped often far from home, and in most cases there is no police investigation and they are never identified. Carlos Reyes-Manzo visits the scenes, meets the families and communities most affected, and tells the story so far...
Words and images
Carlos Reyes-Manzo started out as a teenager training for a 'proper job'. His father saw that he was a dreamer and insisted he went to train as an engineer. His studies went well, but the dreaming won. He joined a queue for a job as trainee photographer in Santiago, got the job and won an award with his first roll of film. It was the first of many awards - one, taken during a bank strike, started a heated debate about whether a 'political' photograph could be art.
Since then, his camera has become an essential extension of himself and how he tells the stories of people all over the world. Travelling widely in Chile, he became increasingly involved in politics, driven by a passion for human rights and justice as he witnessed poverty, exploitation and the marginalising of indigenous people. With the election of the left wing President Allende came a US-backed military coup under Augusto Pinochet. The liberal and socialist movement was ferociously crushed. Thousands were arrested, disappeared, tortured, killed.
Carlos himself became a target and his journey from then to now is itself an extraordinary story. He was detained, tortured, escaped with his young family to exile in Panama, was abducted to be taken back to Chile but freed when senior church officials intervened. A second attempt to abduct him was foiled when he fled his captors. Amnesty stepped in and later enabled his family to join him in the UK where he was given asylum.
'I owe my life to Amnesty,' he says. Amnesty also helped recover his films and equipment from Panama. 'This was a special gift - all my films from years of documenting people and events in Chile, were taken when I was arrested. I still dream of those lost images. I thought it was going to happen again with the work I did in Panama.'
Through poetry, Carlos tells his stories in a very different way. His first book has attracted critical applause: Oranges in Times of Moon, APA, Spanish and English. 020 76135417.
The man beckoned. I followed him. We scrambled down the slope, away from the
street. He took my camera bag, helpfully. I knew he was a local gang member, a
mara, and realised I could be going into a trap. But I somehow knew I was in no
danger.
We stopped - a bit of wasteland, grass and ivy-covered ground. I looked questioningly at my escort. There, a woman has been killed, he pointed, she was dumped here. Then I saw scattered garments and asked, what are these. They are the girl's clothes, he said. These items, sweater, skirt, underwear, told a sad and terrible story.
Who is she? We don't know, he said. She is not from round here.
It seemed clear she had been brought to this place alive before being forcibly stripped, raped, tortured and finally killed. The remains of this woman or girl - the wounds were so extreme it was hard to tell her age - were recovered and taken to the morgue. Her clothes were left scattered on the grass and undergrowth.
It was June last year that I found myself at this stretch of wasteland at the
edge of Guatemala City. I was following the story that has haunted me for several
years - the killing of women in Guatemala. Last year alone, official figures say,
at least 665 women were murdered - and not a single
murderer brought to justice. Local people believe those figures tell a fraction
of the real story.
As the photos show, the crime scene was still rich in evidence that could lead police to the killer. But there were no police. All the time I was there, not one police officer came to investigate or secure the site. So many passers by walked across the site that all the evidence was soon contaminated.
In the UK a murder of this kind would attract massive police and media attention. All efforts would be made to track the killer down. In Guatemala it goes virtually unnoticed by all except the devastated family and loved ones of the victims. The fact is hundreds of Guatemalan women are being murdered every year in the most brutal and sadistic manner. And next to nothing is being done about it.
To understand these terrible crimes of violence against women in Guatemala, you have to go back in history. In 1954 a US-backed coup overthrew the country's elected left wing government, sparking 36 years of internal armed conflict. During that time over 200,000 civilians were killed or 'disappeared' and more than 400 villages were razed to the ground. Most of the violence was directed by new government forces against the indigenous Mayan people. And the favoured tools of repression included the rape, torture and murder of women. The conflict officially ended with a UN peace agreement in 1996.
The crimes against women, however, have never stopped. In fact they are on the rise.
Records show that nearly 1,700 Guatemalan women have been murdered in the past five years. In 2005, more than 10 women were killed every week. But many of the killings go unreported and unrecorded, so these estimates are conservative. An ongoing, low level war is being waged against women.
Homicide is rife in Guatemala and there are many male victims too. But what sets the killing of women apart is the extreme cruelty and brutality involved. Bodies, like the one found on the wasteland, are often grossly mutilated. Many women are kidnapped and tortured for days before being killed. Bodies of girls and women of all ages have been found scalped, tortured, decapitated, dismembered. Trussed naked in barbed wire and dumped in empty oil drums. Sometimes messages of hate, such as 'death to bitches' or 'vengeance' have been cut into their bodies.
The response by the authorities has been virtually non-existent. It is only in the last few months that the police have set up a specially dedicated unit. It consists of 15 officers with no special training and one mobile phone, one car and one computer between them.
As I saw for myself on that early June dawn, they seldom even visit a crime scene, let alone examine evidence. As a result, the killers continue to operate with impunity. By failing to investigate these horrific crimes, the Guatemalan authorities are failing their people. They are denying bereaved families any recourse to justice. They are leaving women vulnerable and unprotected. And they are effectively giving the killers an all clear to continue their ghastly campaign of hate.
Telling the story
Why do I do this work, tell these stories? I know what it is like when people are in these terrible situations and there is no-one to hear their story. Because for many, many years I was not able to tell my own story - and I know that today I am privileged to be alive, I owe this to so many people. And I owe this to Amnesty International. I am privileged that I have a 'voice' through my camera, and that I can use this.
Following this story of murdered women over the past few years, I know that this pattern of mystifying violence is not only in this area of Guatemala, it is all over the country, and many fear it is on a scale many times greater than official records suggest. It is happening in Mexico, and other parts of Central and South America.
The methods, the savage torture and mutilations, were the same used in my home country, Chile, three decades ago. A military coup under General Pinochet brought years of repression. Thousands of opponents were detained, tortured and murdered and 'disappeared'. We saw this kind of sadistic, vengeful cruelty against women. It is terror, it is terrorising poor communities - and anyone who stands up for people's rights.
Who is to blame in Guatemala? Crime levels are high in areas like Guatemala City. Street gangs, the maya, are rife in poor communities. The gangsters are, according to comments from police and others in authority, the ones generally assumed to be to blame for the killings. But are they? The man who took me to the scene at the beginning of this article was emphatic, dismissive. Why, he said. Why would we kill our mothers, our sisters, our daughters? I was told the same thing, many times, in my journey.
More and more women are dying. Every age, every class, workers, students, mothers, daughters, sisters - mostly young, with life before them, and mostly poor. And no-one is brought to justice. Why?
Amnesty Magazine, November/December 2006
