Maya Achi women demand justice for wartime sexualized violence in Guatemala

“We are women who have suffered. The culprits need to realize the harm they caused, the errors they committed,” said María*, one of 36 Maya Achi women who are bringing a case against soldiers who had raped them during Guatemala’s 36-year internal armed conflict, which ended in 1996. Their case also names the Guatemala State for using sexualized violence as a weapon of war. 

The women, all from the Rabinal region of Baja Verapaz, were subject to multiple rapes while detained at a local military detachment, held between three days to months at a time, or in their own homes in the presence of their families.

Six former army commissioners of the Patrullas de Auto-Defensa Civil (Civil Self-Defense Patrols, or PAC) have been charged with crimes against humanity relating to sexualized violence committed against the women between 1981 and 1983. The accused were members of the state-organized PAC and are alleged to have been acting under orders from the Guatemalan military.  

The plaintiffs are represented by the Asociación Bufete Jurídico Popular de Rabinal (Popular Human Rights Law Firm of Rabinal, or ABJP), a local organization working on a range of conflict-related cases with the indigenous population in Rabinal. Lucía Xiloj, Haydeé Valley, and Gloria Elvira Reyes Xitumul—all indigenous women lawyers—lead the case, acting as co-complainants alongside the prosecutors from the Public Ministry. 

A population decimated by violence

Rabinal was targeted by state forces as a strategic region to combat the threat posed by the “internal enemy”: the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias ( Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FAR), diverse left-leaning armed groups that opposed the dictatorial and militarized State's repression of progressive social and democratic movements. 

A total of 28 massacres took place in the Rabinal region, leaving 5000 people dead—or 20 percent of the Maya Achi population—and many more displaced. In fact, a staggering 99.8 percent of the victims were Maya Achi. According to a UN truth commission, the conflict resulted in a total of 42,275 direct victims and an estimated 200,000 dead or disappeared throughout Guatemala as a result of political violence. 83 percent of the conflict’s victims were from the indigenous Maya population.

It was only in 2010, when the ABJP began collecting testimonies from the Maya Achi people to document the genocide, that the sexualized violence experienced by Maya Achi women came to light.

Women break their silence

Aura*, 55, is another survivor who came forward to participate in this case. She is from the village of Xesiwan and was 20 years old when army officers spotted her walking through the main square of Rabinal. They abducted her and her 12-year-old cousin and brought them to the military detachment in Rabinal, where they held them for several days and repeatedly raped them. She told me that she decided to speak up “when I saw they were taking the case for genocide... because the culprits have to recognize what they did to us was wrong.”

María, now 58 and from the village of Chichupac, was raped in her home following the infamous Chichupac massacre in 1982. Several massacres took place in Chichupac between 1981 and 1986, as well as documented acts of torture and sexualized violence. María and the rest of the community were forcibly displaced by the counter-insurgent army and brought to a military-designed and controlled “model village,” a common strategy used by the Guatemalan army to manage the indigenous population during the war.  It was 10 years before they could return to their lands. The impact of the displacement “still fills me with sadness,” María said.

María and Aura spoke of the long-term impact the violence they experienced has had on their lives, including their psychological and physical health. Maya Achi women have had to endure social stigma and blame within their own communities and families for the violence they experienced, particularly in cases where they continue to live alongside their aggressors.

Now, both women insist that those responsible for the crimes committed against them should be made accountable: the men who raped them, the ones who gave the orders, and the State itself. According to Aura, “they knew what they were doing was wrong, but they thought that no one would ever hold them to account.”

Building a legal case

Gloria Elvira Reyes Xitumul, lead lawyer for the ABJP and a Maya Achi woman herself, spoke of how impossible it was for women to have spoken out at the time when the crimes originally occurred. “They [the army] were the ones who made the orders, they had the law in their hands, there was nowhere to go to report what happened. The whole legal system was corrupted, it was a militarized system; there was no possibility of justice.”

But by 2011, the ABJP had identified 11 women who were willing to speak about the violence they experienced during the war, and by 2014, another 25 women had come forward. There are currently 36 women who have joined the case against the State for the violence they suffered, and they have identified both the material and intellectual authors of these crimes.

Arrest warrants were issued in May 2018 for 10 former soldiers on charges of crimes against humanity; another four were arrested within the following month. One of the accused died from complications related to diabetes while in detention in August 2018. There are six arrest warrants pending for soldiers and members of the PAC who carried out the rapes.

Lucia Xiloj said that the ABJP decided to go forward with a separate case relating to the sexualized violence because its consequences carried into the present. “We want to vindicate the women and what they lived through and allow them to rebuild their life projects.”

Sexualized violence as a weapon of war in Guatemala

The use of sexualized violence as a weapon of war in Guatemala has been proved in three separate cases in national courts: the Ixil genocide case against Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez in 2013, the Sepur Zarco Trial in 2016, and the Molina Theissen case in 2018.

The Rabinal case is only the second case of sexualized violence as a weapon of war to be taken in Guatemala. In 2016, 15 Maya Q’eqchi women from Sepur Zarco, in the Alta Verapaz region, won a case against two military officers for the disappearance of their husbands, as well as their subsequent sexual and domestic enslavement at the local military detachment for periods of months to years. The defendants were found guilty and sentenced to 120 and 240 years in prison, respectively. In its ruling, the three-judge court stated that it had no doubts as to whether the women were raped strategically to dominate and terrorize the community. “The violence they experienced transcended the minds and bodies of the women and caused a complete rupture of the social fabric.”

Lucia Xiloj said that these were extremely important precedents for the current case because it showed sexualized violence was a part of the State’s counter-insurgent strategy. “The Sepur Zarco case in particular has a number of important similarities. However, in the Rabinal case, the women were also raped in their houses in front of their families. It was a circuit of sexual violence.”

A delayed and frustrated justice

Preliminary hearings came to a close on June 6, and the presiding judge, Claudette Dominguez of the High Risk Court 'A', will decide by June 21 whether the case will move forward to a public trial. That could take another year or more, and as both the plaintiffs and the accused are getting older, the possibilities for justice become less certain. One of the accused has already died in custody from natural causes. It is also possible, as has happened in other cases, that any of the accused, the survivors, or witnesses could die before the case is heard.

Lucia Xiloj lamented the long delays throughout the process. “It has been a year since the arrests, but there has been little progress with the case... it's frustrating to keep the survivors waiting like this for justice. The State is not complying with its duty to investigate the truth.”

Meanwhile, Aura, María, and other survivors have reported receiving threats and intimidation from the accused and their families since the case began. Intimidations in the courtroom, on the steps of the courthouse, or in the survivors’ communities are commonly adopted by pressure groups, usually made up of ex-military, their families, and sympathizers who are vehemently opposed to justice.

Furthermore, the National Congress, in one of its many attempts to obstruct the transitional justice process and maintain the culture of impunity, is currently considering draft legislation to reform the Law for National Reconciliation. If passed, this reform aims to grant an amnesty for crimes committed during the internal armed conflict, including genocide and other crimes against humanity, which is contrary to both Guatemala’s constitution and international law. Those already sentenced could go free, and new cases relating to crimes committed during the internal armed conflict would no longer have legal standing.

Hope for change

Despite the uphill battle ahead, both Aura and María are hopeful that the case will bring a change in their lives and in their community. Aura said that the State must guarantee “that these crimes are never repeated and that our rights are respected.” María was clear that “the State has to accept its responsibility for what happened [and] provide reparations, not only monetary but for our physical integrity. There was much harm done. We should at least get a medical allowance.”

“There are innumerable other women who have gone through the same,” said Lucia Xiloj. “This case is important because people should know the impact of sexual[ized] violence on the lives of the women. They were treated as things, objects.”

While the ABJP is hopeful that the case will proceed to a full public hearing, they continue to insist that the intellectual authors of these crimes, the army officers who gave the orders and those who designed the counter-insurgent strategy implemented in Rabinal, also must face justice. Ultimately, members of the PAC were forcibly recruited from the local population, and although they are reported to have participated in one out of four massacres committed during the conflict, it is debatable whether they had any power of decision over their actions. No senior military officials have yet been charged, but there is evidence to support a case of this kind. Without accountability for those who planned and ordered the use of sexualized violence as a weapon of war, justice will remain elusive for Guatemala.

*Names of the survivors have been changed to protect their identity.