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Empowering women all over the world

How your support helps Trócaire tackle the root causes of poverty in Guatemala

In 2016, in a case that caused shockwaves around the world, 15 Mayan women from the Sepur Zarco region whose husbands were murdered during the armed conflict of the 1980s fought back. They took a case against the soldiers - and won. The landmark case recognised that sexual violence against women had been used as a weapon of war and former members of the Guatemalan military were found guilty of crimes against humanity

Thu Jul 20 2023 - 01:00

Trócaire stands up for the rights of the poor, the marginalised and the disadvantaged around the world.

That is hard to do in Guatemala, the Central American country in which the Irish charity has been operating since the 1980s, the darkest days of its civil war.

Back then, Trócaire’s resources were spent supporting thousands of Guatemalan refugees fleeing the country’s violence and living in camps throughout Mexico and Honduras.

After four decades of civil war, peace was declared in the late 1990s but the country still faced enormous challenges.

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Women and girls continue to experience widespread discrimination in every aspect of their lives, with sexual harassment and the threat of violence a daily reality for many. This problem is compounded by poverty, conflict and climate change, factors which disproportionately affect women and deny them the opportunity to thrive, secure their rights and safeguard their families.

Trócaire opened an office in Guatemala City in 2001 and today has a team of 12 people based there.

Here the charity works with local partner organisations to fight injustice on three fronts: food and resource rights; access to justice; women’s empowerment; and, in a country prone to natural disasters such as volcanoes and landslides, disaster risk reduction.

Violence against women remains a major problem as is, once more, the growing number of migrants

Some of the women of Sepur Zarco region whose husbands were murdered during the armed conflict of the 1980s and who fought back

The need is enormous. Guatemala has one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world. In the UN’s Human Development Index it ranks 135th out of 191 countries. Half of its population lives in poverty.

It also suffers from legacy issues. Of the 200,000 people killed during the conflict, the vast majority were indigenous people. Indigenous Mayan communities remain marginalised today while a powerful minority keeps an iron grip on the country’s political and economic power.

Community leaders, lawyers and journalists are all under threat. Private companies take over indigenous territories with relative impunity, leading to forced evictions and environmental destruction. Those who resist are often criminalised, attacked and even murdered.

Violence against women remains a major problem as is, once more, the growing number of migrants. Trócaire supports partner organisations such as Migrant House in Guatemala City to provide food, shelter, medical assistance and legal advice to migrants from Central America travelling en route to Mexico or the US border.

Blanca Blanco (centre), Trócaire head of programmes and a former Trócaire country director in Guatemala, with Mayan women.

“It’s as if the border of the US has moved to Guatemala,” explains Blanca Blanco, Trócaire head of programmes and a former Trócaire country director in Guatemala. Many are fleeing violence, abuse, death threats and political persecution in countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala itself.

Helping to right historic and current wrongs

Among Guatemala’s most vulnerable people are indigenous communities living in remote rural areas. One of the biggest challenges they face is simply holding on to their land.

Land grabbing has its roots in 16th-century colonialism but continues to this day, whether by local military, economic elites, big business - or a mix of all three.

All too often, major commercial developers in the agricultural, mining and power generation sectors simply push indigenous people off land which they have farmed for generations and to which they possess ancestral rights. Such illegal evictions can be violent, and sometimes deadly.

In these David and Goliath struggles, Trócaire supports indigenous people to stand up for their rights, defend their land and protect their natural resources.

Notable because the case was heard at national court level it drew huge crowds who awaited sentencing

In 2016, in a case that caused shockwaves around the world, 15 Mayan women from the Sepur Zarco region whose husbands were murdered during the armed conflict of the 1980s fought back. When they had gone to the military barracks searching for their husbands they were forcibly enslaved, forced to cook, wash clothes, and were subjected to sexual slavery at the hands of the Guatemalan military as a form of retaliation. They took a case against the soldiers - and won.

It was landmark case that recognised that sexual violence against women had been used as a weapon of war and former members of the Guatemalan military were found guilty of crimes against humanity. It was also notable because the case was heard at national court level, demonstrating that the country had a strong and independent judicial system capable of hearing such a case.

Trócaire began supporting the women of Sepur Zarco in 2009. It helped to pay for the exhumations of mass graves, to identify the remains of murdered husbands and sons, a grim but necessary task to prove land ownership.

It helped pay for the expert witnesses who showed that sexual violence was used as a weapon of war, “and the impact it had on women, their families and the social tissue of their community,” Blanco explains.

It provided protection mechanisms at a time when nefarious forces could have benefited from seeing the women ‘disappear’.

With support from the Irish NGO, the women successfully accessed the national legal system which ensured their evidence was heard and they were no longer ignored. It ensured the women’s evidence was heard in a national court, and not a regional backwater.

Today, some fifteen years later, Trócaire is still working with the women of Sepur Zarco.

“As part of the verdict the judges gave a number of measures that had to happen to compensate the women, including that the case be translated into their own language, be taught in schoolbooks, that the women be given access to land and that medical establishments be set up in their region. Not everything that should have happened has but we are still working with the women to ensure it does,” explains Blanco.

Some of them are now very elderly. “I visited Guatemala at Christmas and asked one of them if taking the case had been worth it and she said, ‘Definitely - they (the military) were put in prison and we were heard’,” she recalls. Today their bravery is still helping to bring other cases of injustice to light.

María Angelica, shown aged 9 outside her home in Parana in the Polochic Valley in northern Guatemala where they live under threat of eviction. María was one of three girls who features on the 2019 Trócaire Lenten box; its Lent campaign aimed to raise awareness of families who have lost their land, their homes and their livelihoods PHOTO: Mark Stedman

Getting families back on their land

Trócaire’s support for Guatemala is funded through a mix of Irish Aid, the Government of Ireland’s official international development aid programme; the EU; and Trócaire’s own funds raised from public donations, including its Lenten Trócaire box campaign.

In 2019, a Guatemalan child, María Angelica, featured on the front of the Trócaire Lenten box. She comes from a family of small farmers in the Polochic Valley who, in 2011, were violently evicted. She had to watch as her home was burned down by a private security firm, accompanied by state forces.

With the help of Trócaire and its partner organisation CUC (Committee for Peasant Unity), the family won the right to return to their land in 2015.

Trócaire and CUC provided legal aid and language translation, vital for people who speak their native Mayan language but do not have any Spanish.

Trócaire supports indigenous people to stand up for their rights, defend their land and protect their natural resources

“Trócaire always works with partner organisations in any country we are supporting because they are the ones that have the connections, and when we leave, it ensures there is capacity there for the work to continue,” explains Blanco, who first went to Guatemala in 2004.

Though now based in Ireland, her heart remains there, she admits. “There is something about Guatemala that means you can never leave, whether it is the beauty of the country or the warmth of the people, or the richness of the culture and Mayan spirituality,” she says.

“You get so hooked. Then you see the unfairness of it, and you think, this can’t be right, something can and should be done about it. And that makes you want to walk the walk with the people.”

For 50 years, Trócaire has been working with supporters, partners and communities to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and injustice and respond to the crises they create. Together we bring about positive and lasting change for a just world. Discover more at www.trocaire.org/onedayhere

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