Can health workers stop thousands of women being killed in Guatemala?
Manuela Garcia can still vividly remember the last time she saw her daughter, Maria, alive. Everything seemed normal; Maria was happy and in good health. Little did Garcia know that 24 hours later, she would find her daughter lying dead on the bedroom floor, her body covered by a rug.
“It’s so painful,” says Garcia, choking back tears. “Two years on, and I haven’t forgotten. It’s one thing if your child dies in an accident, but at home? That’s what hurts the most. I’ll never be able to forget.”
Garcia’s daughter was a victim of violence against women. She was strangled, aged 17, by her husband, who was 18 at the time. He lost his temper because she had hidden the house key in an attempt to prevent him from leaving to visit his girlfriend. When Garcia rushed to her daughter’s house after hearing that she had been killed, she found him sitting on the bed holding the baby and texting. Her daughter’s body was on the floor, next to him.
Guatemala has the third highest rate of femicide in the world. Between 2014 and 2016, there were 2,264 violent deaths of women in Guatemala, of which 611 were formally reported as femicide. During the same period, 59 perpetrators were imprisoned. Garcia’s son-in-law was one of them.
“Women fear reporting the crime because there’s a culture of machismo and they’re scared of living without financial support, or of their children growing up without a father. Women think of everything but themselves,” says psychologist Ligia Gomez.
“It’s so painful,” says Garcia, choking back tears. “Two years on, and I haven’t forgotten. It’s one thing if your child dies in an accident, but at home? That’s what hurts the most. I’ll never be able to forget.”
Garcia’s daughter was a victim of violence against women. She was strangled, aged 17, by her husband, who was 18 at the time. He lost his temper because she had hidden the house key in an attempt to prevent him from leaving to visit his girlfriend. When Garcia rushed to her daughter’s house after hearing that she had been killed, she found him sitting on the bed holding the baby and texting. Her daughter’s body was on the floor, next to him.
Guatemala has the third highest rate of femicide in the world. Between 2014 and 2016, there were 2,264 violent deaths of women in Guatemala, of which 611 were formally reported as femicide. During the same period, 59 perpetrators were imprisoned. Garcia’s son-in-law was one of them.
“Women fear reporting the crime because there’s a culture of machismo and they’re scared of living without financial support, or of their children growing up without a father. Women think of everything but themselves,” says psychologist Ligia Gomez.
Source: theguardian
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