Guatemala City: US Legacy to blame for Massive Murders of Women

Women murdered in Guatemala--AP


The country of Guatemala was first terrorized by the USA in 1954, when the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by the CIA, after the Guatemalans had the audacity to claim untilled land owned by the United Fruit Company. The decades following were an endless parade of American-government sponsored terrorism and war against the people of this suffering nation. In the later years of the war, which ended in 1996, hundreds of Mayan villages were destroyed in a policy condemned by the world community as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The civil, political, and economic society of Guatemala was devestated by the interminable, murderous conflict. The vacuum left in the wake of such violence was quickly filled with massive criminal gangs, similar to the notorious ones found in nearby El Salvador, which are also found on the streets of Los Angeles. Thus do the chickens come home to roost!
Today, Guatemala and its capital are suffering a new wave of massive violence--the murders of thousands of women. The victims are often raped, tortured, and mutilated. Some of the bodies discovered are disemblowed and dismembered. The corrupt Guatemalan police does not bother to even pretend to investigate most of the crimes and blames the victims for their deaths. Up to 70 percent of the cases of murdered women are never investigated and only two arrests were made last year, said a report released by Amnesty International last month. "The government does absolutely nothing," said Jorge Velasquez, whose 19-year-old daughter, Claudina, was found shot to death last August.
The government of Guatemala must be pressured to stop this terrible violence against its women and held to account for its gross incompetence in investigating the murders. The USA is currently sponsoring Guatemala's quest to be on the Security Council. In the light of tacit approval by the Guatemalan police regarding this wave of violence and the political neglect required to allow it to continue, I do not think such a sponsorship should be supported.