GUATEMALA: Murders of Women Recall Counterinsurgency Techniques

[struggle4progress]

Inter Press Service (IPS)

MEXICO CITY, Jun 22 (IPS) - ”Death to the bitches, I'm back” read a sign found next to the body of one of the nearly 1,700 Guatemalan women who have been murdered in the past five years.

The worst waves of brutal, unsolved murders of women in Latin America have been seen in Ciudad Juárez, on Mexico's northern border, where close to 400 killings have been reported since 1993, and Guatemala, where 527 women were killed last year alone.

Congresswoman Alba Maldonado told IPS that it is especially alarming that the methods used in the murders in Guatemala, an impoverished Central American country of 13 million, are reminiscent of those employed against the guerrillas and the residents of rural indigenous villages during the 1960-1996 civil war.

The lawmaker, who belongs to the former insurgent Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) party, also noted that one-quarter of the nearly 200,000 people killed during the armed conflict - mainly by the security forces - were women. <snip>

http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/113856/1/