Circle leaders collectively chose a project name and logo; developed a theory of change; mapped community needs, resources, and stakeholders; and pilot tested group methodologies. Group activities drew on games (dinámicas), art-based methods and group psychosocial therapy to build trust, self-esteem, and social cohesion. Women’s interest in developing livelihood-sustaining skills prompted us to also incorporate productive activities (i.e. doll-making, crochet, cooking) as vocational therapy and potential income generation. Local women in the Mam communities requested a group intervention – Women’s Circles – that could help and provide support for women in their communities, following earlier involvement in a participatory research project with the lead author of this paper . We chose a participatory research approach to optimize community engagement and optimize cultural safety, acceptability and feasibility. UNFPA is now buttressing efforts both within the Guatemalan government and civil society to tackle the situation.
I didn’t find this to be the case in all Central American countries (in Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica, specifically, I didn’t find the women — or the people in general — to be as friendly as in Guatemala). During the activity, a medium-term project was presented by the Law Society, which aims to build an evidence-based business case for women in the legal profession. Studies have shown that when women are successful, they invest beyond themselves, in their children, and in their communities. We are a registered 501 nonprofit organization creating opportunities that empower women in Guatemala to build a better life. During the day, we rested a little but at night we walked all the time in order to finally arrive at different little towns, intersections, and fincas where we would meet with agrarian workers to talk about their struggle. There for the first time since I had first seen Indians in the service of my father, we talked together as equals, as comrades. Within all of the groups that struggle for the interests of the great majority of oppressed people, there are remnants of typical bourgeois machismo, and there, fundamentally, the revolutionary woman has a well defined task.
Community Participation
Born in San Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango, in 1993, Curruchich witnessed how happy her mom was when she whistled and loved to spend time with her dad as he taught her to play the guitar. She wrote her first song in Kaqchikel while being fully aware that singing in an Indigenous language would possibly attract racist remarks. In 2012, she graduated from music school, began playing with a local marimba group, “Teclas en Armonía,” and was invited by popular Mayan rock group Sobreviviencia to sing at one of their concerts. In 2014, the Dresdner Philharmonie Orchestra invited her to sing with them in Mexico City and later offered her to record and film a video for her ballad “Ch’uti’xtän (Niña),” which achieved great airplay on social networks in Guatemala. In 2016, she toured the United States and performed at the United Nations headquarters in New York, during the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Issues. Her songs blend Kaqchikel and Spanish, celebrate Mother Earth, her ancestors, and Indigenous women, but also offer encouragement to Guatemala’s Mayan struggle for justice.
This is the first time a case of sexual slavery during armed conflict has been considered in court. In Guatemala, it was the first time any form of sexual violence during a conflict had been settled in court. Maya women in Guatemala face what is known as three-pronged discrimination—they are indigenous, they are poor, and they are women. Guatemalan women dating It is extremely rare for marginalised indigenous women to contact the police or hire a lawyer if they are a survivor of sexual assault or interfamilial violence. Take Carmen, a Guatemalan woman from Xesana, a small village in Totonicapán. Carmen married at a young age and had a son, but soon realised her husband drank too much.
In December 1980, she and her driver went missing in Guatemala City, without a trace. She was presumably tortured and killed by undercover police agents linked to the military government of General Romeo Lucas Garcia. In Mack’s experience, it is common for women to be threatened in this way or even killed by their attackers. Violence against women is still considered a domestic matter, she says, despite new laws against femicide and other forms of violence against women. In 2008 Guatemala became the first country to officially recognise femicide – the murder of a woman because of her gender – as a crime.
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The hypothesis is that with increased uptake of the implant there will be longer continuation rates and more satisfaction in the intervention clusters. For comparison, a former legal services lawyer reported seventy-five to be a heavy caseload in the United States.
- In terms of other sectors, the collaboration means that the local field officers of the ombudsman accompany ALIANMISAR monitors and can cover a wider geographical area in monitoring the right to health because the number of areas monitored is greater than they would cover alone.
- They need continued support and solidarity during this period, for example to buy seeds, materials for weaving fabric, fruit trees, and basic grains.
- In December 1980, she and her driver went missing in Guatemala City, without a trace.
- When a community is occupied or destroyed, an entire community of women may be subjected to rape and sexual or domestic slavery, affecting the prosperity and health of the community after a conflict’s end.
Indigenous women especially struggle to access justice and face additional discrimination. The lead plaintiff in the ACLU’s case, a Mayan woman going by the pseudonym of Grace, was raped and beaten continuously for 20 years by her non-Indigenous husband, who “frequently disparaged her and mocked her for being indigenous and unable to read and write,” the ACLU said. In rural areas, there are few outposts of the public prosecutor, few specialized judges, and little police presence. “There’s discrimination against women wearing Indigenous clothing, and they often aren’t bilingual, and the judicial system is all in Spanish,” said Hilda Morales Trujillo, a pioneering women’s rights lawyer and activist. The means to be used are legal , pedagogical , and communication . Organizations have been fighting this situation by organizing activities, festivals and meetings where survivors of rape during the armed conflict can speak out and receive support, such as the Regional Festival for Remembrance which took place in 2008 and 2011.
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This analysis reveals the importance of including place alongside more commonly studied categories of difference such as gender, ethnicity, and class. It also illuminates the nature and sources of the gaps between policies and their impacts, demonstrating that many Guatemalan women remained marginalized from security and justice, despite attempts to protect them, for two reasons. First, the reforms isolated VAW from other structural sources of inequality based on gender, ethnicity, class, and place, undercutting their impacts for indigenous women in communities like Santa Nimá. Second, the reforms’ impacts were undermined by historically constituted patterns of state-society relations and the uneven nature of the Guatemalan state across space, groups, and institutions. Service user monitoring generates knowledge and evidence that can be used to advocate for change and improvements. Monitoring by Indigenous women is therefore key to ensuring the availability, physical and financial accessibility, cultural appropriateness, and quality of health and care services.
And it is one of the reasons behind the continuing surge of women and children from there fleeing the country, trying to reach the U.S. border. They explained to me that there was a group of women who sat and talked about human rights, violence, discrimination, racism and all of that.
More recently, social groups advocating for gender equality in Guatemala helped reform the age at which a girl is able to legally be married. The Angélica Fuentes Foundation and Girl Up together put forth an initiative to change the legal age of marriage in Guatemala from 14 to 18. These advocates had integral roles in the passing of the legislation in January 2016. The leaders of both The Angélica Fuentes Foundation and Girl Up stated that their main goal of pushing for a higher marriage age was to aid the children in Guatemala.