Sexual Violence in Central America

Three recent news stories on sexual violence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua are worth taking a look at. The first article comes from The Guardian and talks about the 100,000 women raped during the 36-year conflict in Guatemala. A Spanish court has recently agreed to investigate 

mass rapes and gender violence as part of the generals' alleged strategy to wipe out a large part of the Mayan population. The investigating magistrate Santiago Pedraz said on Wednesday the rapes appeared to be part of a campaign of terror designed to destroy Mayan society – with soldiers instructed to carry them out.

As is, the survivors of the genocide in Guatemala get little support. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to change with the election of a candidate who doesn't believe that genocide occurred during the conflict and that the EGP is to blame for all the women and children killed. The EGP involved entire families in the war unlike ORPA. He doesn't say it directly, but all the women raped and fetuses and babies killed deserved it because they had been knowingly and unknowingly into the conflict. On the positive side, he does say

So here, the truth of what happened in the armed conflict ... II think that Guatemalans should have a scientific team, responsible, accountable, and on time today since the end of armed conflict, in order to do serious research and could tell the Guatemalans what had happened.

Guatemalans should hold him to this suggestion as president. 

The second article comes from El Faro and is called La Violada. The article tells the sickening story of a young Salvadoran girl who was taken from school and raped by at least 15 members of the 18th Street gang for three hours.

While the story is about a young girl's rape, this paragraph about the generalized level of violence stood out.

But the violence that characterizes Salvadoran society is not just about numbers. El Salvador is a country where they serve you in stores through a fence, a country where you are cached entering a bank, a country where they shoot you for refusing to give up your cell phone, a country that shamelessly recommends that if you hit someone it is best to flee the scene, a country where there are more private security guards than policemen, a country denouncing a fraction of what is happening and will prosecute only a fraction of what is alleged, a country in which teachers know their students are brutally raped and the most they do is help them pass the grade.

It's a terrible story and one that is repeated all too frequently in El Salvador and around the world. In some ways, it also answers why so many young women attempt the trek from Central America to the United States when they know that there is such a high likelihood that they will be raped along the way.

And in Nicaragua,

According to official figures, between January and August 2010; 1,259 women reported having been raped. Two-thirds were girls under 17 years old.

Local human rights activists, however, believe the true numbers are much higher. Many women and girls do not report the abuse they suffer and most of those who commit the crimes are never taken to justice.

Central America is one of the most violent regions in the world, not just because of the high murder rates in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. It's also because of the high level of sexual violence both inside and outside the home. And it's disappointing that when candidates and political officials refer to additional measures to increase citizen security, rarely do they ever talk about it in terms of tackling sexual violence. That has to change.