Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T07:49:54.673Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“What Guarantees Do We Have?” Legal Tolls and Persistent Impunity for Feminicide in Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Shannon Drysdale Walsh  and
Cecilia Menjívar
Shannon Drysdale Walsh
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Duluth. shannondwalsh@gmail.com
Cecilia Menjívar
Affiliation:
University of Kansas. menjivar@ku.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Guatemala has one of the highest levels of killings of women and impunity for violence against women in the world. Despite laws created to protect women, Guatemala, like other countries, generally fails at implementation. This article examines justice system obstacles in contemporary Guatemala to processing cases of feminicide—killings of women because they are women in a context of impunity—comparing two recent feminicide cases. It argues that the sociopolitical context in Guatemala, including structural violence, widespread poverty, inequality, corruption, and normalization of gender violence against women, generates penalties, or “legal tolls,” that are imposed on victims' families and contribute to impunity through undermining victims' attempts to navigate the justice system. The analysis focuses on the tolls of fear and time: the need to overcome fear of retaliation and the extraordinary time and effort it takes to do so in a corrupt and broken system.

Type
Research
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , Winter 2016 , pp. 31 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2016

References

Adams, Richard. 2011 Accustomed to Be Obedient. In The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Grandin, Greg. Durham: Duke University Press. 133–37.Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2002. Guatemala's Lethal Legacy: Past Impunity and Renewed Human Rights Violations. Human rights report. February 28. London: Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR34/001/2002/en/ Accessed September 18, 2016.Google Scholar
Arbuckle, Anne N. 1996. The Condom Crisis: an Application of Feminist Legal Theory to Aids Prevention in African Women. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 3, 2: 413–55.Google Scholar
Auyero, Javier. 2011. Patients of the State: an Ethnographic Account of Poor People's Waiting. Latin American Research Review 46, 1: 5–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Behl, Natasha. 2014. Situated Citizenship: Understanding Sikh Citizenship through Women's Exclusion. Politics, Groups, and Identities 2, 33: 386–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boche, Evelyn. 2015. Trabajadores del Ministerio Público filtraban información a redes criminales. El Periódico (Guatemala City), May 11. http://elperiodico.com.gt/2015/11/05/pais/trabajadores-del-mp-filtraban-informacion-a-redes-criminales. Accessed January 31, 2016.Google Scholar
Brinks, Daniel M. 2008. The Judicial Response to Killings in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brinks, Daniel M. 2012. A Tale of Two Cities: the Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Latin America. In The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics, ed. Kingstone, Peter R. and Yashar, Deborah J.. New York: Routledge. 61–75.Google Scholar
Carey, David Jr., and Gabriela Torres, M.. 2010. Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence. Latin American Research Review 45, 3: 142–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dada, Carlos. 2015. Corruption Charges Turn Guatemala Upside down. New Yorker, September 4. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/corruption-charges-turn-guatemala-upside-down. Accessed January 31, 2016.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Hasse, and Kvatskhava, Ketevan. 2002. Rule of Law Assistance Impact Assessment. Management Systems International, June 17. USAIS Contract: AEP-1-00-00-00024-00, Task Order No. 4.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Ann Marie. 2011. Law on the Books vs. Law in Action: under-Enforcement of Morocco's Reformed 2004 Family Law, the Moudawana. Cornell International Law Journal 44, 3: 693–728.Google Scholar
Ellickson, Robert C. 1991. Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul. 2004. An Anthropology of Structural Violence. Current Anthropology 45, 33: 305–25.Google Scholar
Fregoso, Rosa-Linda, and Bejarano, Cynthia. 2010. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Galtung, Johan. 1969. Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6, 33: 167–91.Google Scholar
Gasman, Nadine, and Gabriela, A. Álvarez. 2016. Gender: Violence against Women. Americas Quarterly. http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/1930. Accessed May 19, 2016.Google Scholar
Gaspar de Alba, Alicia, and Guzmán, Georgina. 2010. Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Bennett, Andrew. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gerring, John. 2007. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass. 2006. Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Linda. 1999. Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Harvard School of Public Health. 2015. Decreto no. 97–1996. Ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population/domesticviolence/guatemala.dv.96.pdf. Accessed May 11, 2015.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen, and Levitsky, Steven, eds. 2006. Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Htun, Mala, and Timothy, J. Power. 2006. Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress. Latin American Politics and Society 48, 4 (Winter): 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, Mo. 2009. The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador. Malden: Wiley.Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund (IMF). 2014. Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean Slows Further. IMF Survey, October 10. Washington, DC: IMF.Google Scholar
Jenness, Valerie, and Grattet, Ryken. 2005. The Law-in-between: the Effects of Organizational Perviousness on the Policing of Hate Crime. Social Problems 52, 3: 337–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, Allison D. 2007. Custody, Maintenance, and Succession: the Internalization of Women's and Children's Rights under Customary Law in Africa. Michigan Journal of International Law 28: 507, 519–20.Google Scholar
Lagarde, Marcela. 2006. Del femicidio al feminicidio. In Desde el jardín de Freud. Revista de psicoanálisis no. 6. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 216–25.Google Scholar
Lagarde, Marcela. 2010. Preface: Feminist Keys for Understanding Feminicide: Theoretical, Political, and Legal Construction. In Fregoso and Bejarano 2010. xi–xxv.Google Scholar
Levenson, Deborah T. 2013. Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Liaw, H. Ra. 2008. Women's Land Rights in Rural China: Transforming Existing Laws into a Source of Property Rights. Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal 17:237–38.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart. 2005. The New versus the Old Legal Realism: “Things Ain't What They Used to Be.” Wisconsin Law Review 2:365–403.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Joe. 2015. The Femicide Crisis in Latin America Is Too Deep for Laws Alone to Address. Global Citizen, August 15. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/the-femicide-crisis-in-latin-america-is-too-deep-f. Accessed May 19, 2016.Google Scholar
Medie, Peace. 2013. Fighting Gender-Based Violence: the Women's Movement and the Enforcement of Rape Law in Liberia. African Affairs 112, 448: 377–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2011. Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2016. Normalizing Suffering, Robadas, and Marital Unions among Ladinas in Eastern Guatemala. In Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context, ed. Yllö, Kersti and Gabriela Torres, M.. New York: Oxford University Press. 75–85.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Nestor, P. Rodríguez, eds. 2005. When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MESECVI (Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention). 2014. Second Follow-Up Report of the Recommendations of the Committee of Experts of the MESECVI. October. Washington, DC: Organization of American States/MESECVI.Google Scholar
Morales, María Cristina, and Bejarano, Cynthia. 2009. Transnational Sexual and Gendered Violence: an Application of Border Sexual Conquest at a Mexico-U.S. Border. Global Networks 9, 3: 420–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morales, Tacuazina. 2011. Honduras: escalada de feminicidios. Semlac (News Service on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean). March 16. http://amecopress.net/spip.php?article6376. Accessed September 18, 2016.Google Scholar
Moser, Robert G. 2001. Unexpected Outcomes: Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Representation in Russia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Diane M. 1999. A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Donnell, Guillermo. 2004. Why the Rule of Law Matters. Journal of Democracy 15, 4: 32–46.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, Guillermo. 2006. On Informal Institutions, Once Again. In Helmke and Levitsky 2006. 285–90.Google Scholar
Peacock, Susan C., and Beltrán, Adriana. 2003. Hidden Powers: Illegal Armed Groups in Post-Conflict Guatemala and the Forces Behind Them. Report. September 4. Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America. https://www.wola.org/analysis/hidden-powers-in-post-conflict-guatemala Google Scholar
Portenier, Giselle. 2007. Killer's Paradise. Film. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Brooklyn: Icarus Films.Google Scholar
Prieto-Carrón, Marina, Thomson, Marilyn, and Macdonald, Mandy. 2007. No More Killings! Women Respond to Feminicides in Central America. Gender and Development. 15, 1:25–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Procuraduría General de la Nación de Guatemala. 2015. Ley contra el femicidio y otras formas de violencia contra la mujer. Decreto 22–2008. http://www.pgn.gob.gt/ley-contra-el-femicidio-y-otras-formas-de-violencia-contra-la-mujer-decreto-22-2008. Accessed May 11, 2015.Google Scholar
Radford, Jill, and Russell, Diana. 1992. Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. New York: Twayne.Google Scholar
Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REHMI). 1999. Guatemala Never Again Official report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.Google Scholar
Sanford, Victoria. 2004. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sanford, Victoria. 2008. From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Guatemala. Journal of Human Rights 7:104–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Secor, Anna J. 2007. Between Longing and Despair: State, Space and Subjectivity in Turkey. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25, 1: 33–52.Google Scholar
Staudt, Kathleen. 2008. Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juárez. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Torres, M. Gabriela. 2005. Bloody Deeds/Hechos Sangrientos: Reading Guatemala's Record of Political Violence in Cadaver Reports. In Menjívar and Rodríguez 2005. 143–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2013. Gender Inequality Index. Human Development Reports. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index Accessed September 18, 2016.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 2012. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012: Guatemala. Washington, DC: Department of State.Google Scholar
Volk, Steven S., and Marian, E. Schlotterbeck. 2007. Gender, Order, and Femicide: Reading the Popular Culture of Murder in Ciudad Juárez. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32, 1: 53–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Shannon Drysdale. 2008. Engendering Justice: Constructing Institutions to Address Violence against Women. Studies in Social Justice. 2, 1:48–66.Google Scholar
Walsh, Shannon Drysdale, and Menjívar, Cecilia. 2016. Impunity and Multisided Violence in the Lives of Women in Latin America: El Salvador in Comparative Perspective. Current Sociology 64, 4 (July): 586–602. First published April 18.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, Daniel. 2004. Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2014. Poverty and Equity: Data for Guatemala 2014. http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/GTM. Accessed January 18, 2016.Google Scholar
World Bank. Central American Unit. 2010. Crime and Violence in Central America, vol. 2. Report No. 56781-LAC. September. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Wright, Melissa. 2006. Public Women, Profit, and Femicide in Northern Mexico. South Atlantic Quarterly 105:681–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Melissa. 2011. Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36, 3: 707–31.Google ScholarPubMed