I spent most of today at a workshop on domestic violence, held by the governmental organization Defensorìa de la Mujer Indìgena (Defense of the Indigenous Woman) for women in the rural communities surrounding Xela. I´ve never been to a domestic violence training course before in the United States, and I´m not sure what I was expecting, but I was surprised that the six’hour workshop was basically Your Human Rights 101.
Example: “¨What is sexual violence? If your husband forces you to have sex and you don´t want to, that is sexual violence. If your husband hits you, that is domestic violence and should not happen. Suffering abuse is not part of being a wife.” Did these women really not know that getting beaten by their husbands was wrong?
And am I naïve for supposing that most victims of domestic violence in the United States know any better? Women raised in a violent environment, who never know anything else? I`ve assumed that most U.S. anti-domestic violence activities revolve more around telling women what resources are available to help them, not so much informing them that abuse is bad. If any of my friends who actually work with victims of domestic violence are reading this and can tell me what really happens, I´d appreciate it.
Not believing that this information really was new to most of the women in the room, I asked Carmen (the coordinator of the social work program I´m participating in at our language school) if the workshop seemed a bit basic to her. Most of the women know their husbands shouldn´t beat them, she said, and some have been involved in other similar workshops and women´s groups. But when they are at home the abuse continues and the women are afraid to do anything about it. The workshop was a bit basic, she admitted, but important from an empowerment standpoint.
The Defensoría is a governmental organization that was created to break the cycle of violence against women that had been institutionalized in Guatemala, and is starting to gear more of its activities toward dealing with domestic violence. Now, only 10 years out from the end of a 36’year civil war, it´s no secret that Guatemala is a violent place (violence against Guatemelan women was
featured on the front page of the Boston Globe just before I came down here). Sometimes my conversations with Carmen and my Spanish teacher leave me wondering if there is any hope that the cycle can be broken. But in a way at today´s meeting I felt like I might be witnessing part of the beginning of Guate´s women´s rights movement, possibly not so different from what happened in the United States decades ago.
The women of the Defensoría plan to continue to have to have these types oif meeting throughout the highlands, and today´s was partly an introduction so the 15 or so women who were there could go back to there communities, share the information, and bring more women to the next gathering. In the afternoon, we broke into small groups that each had representation from several communities and talked about the violence tha teach community deals with. We talked about physical violence in the home and on the streets, discrimination against women in land inheritance and ownership disputes (a big deal since Maya spouses do not always live together, and women are often pressured to give their piece of land to their children), women’s rights to work and to have a degree of economic autonomy from their husbands, the importance of having control over one´s own body, and the importance of women´s participation in the political process. The truth is, even men in many Maya rural communities here are often illiterate and suffer discrimination when it comes to voting. But seeing this group of Maya women starting to build a solidarity movement to support women´s right to vote throughout Guatemala showed me there is some hope. A little. I find myself thinking about the challenges still facing women in the United Sates, and realizing we are at least 40 years ahead of the women here. And at least 40 years ago the United States had a system of courts and laws that generally were functional. Guatemalan women, and men, have a huge mountain to climb just to get to that point. But really, these rural Maya communities existed thousands of years before my idea of “laws” and “courts” even existed. WOemn were well-respected, as women were in most indigenous cultures throughout the world before they were corrupted by colonialism. In many families, they are the major decision-makers even today because so many men have left for the United States. It doesn´t seem like real change is going to come from the Guatemalan government, but from a growing movement of women like those I met today.
