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Contested, Territorialized Masculinities, Gender Violence, and Legal Pluralism:?Mam Female Refugees Seeking Gendered Justice in Guatemala and the U.S.Paper Prepared for Radcliffe Seminar on “Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Legal Pluralism in the United States, Mexico and Guatemala,” September 7-9, 2016Lynn StephenDistinguished Professor of Arts and SciencesDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Oregonstephenl@uoregon.eduAugust 4, 2016What are the obstacles to indigenous women’s access to gendered justice in Guatemala that result in their flight to the U.S. as refugees? This paper explores this question through an analysis of one gendered asylum case that contains elements represented in a dozen cases of primarily Mam women who have fled gendered violence in Huehuetenango and are pursuing gendered asylum in the U.S. My analysis suggests that conflicting and overlapping justice and security systems as well as the conflicting masculinities that play out inside and outside of indigenous communities in these systems are some of the primary sources of women’s inability to access justice in their home territories. Initial fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Mam gendered asylum seekers and other Mam refugees in the U.S. suggest a consistent set of practices, narratives, and actions carried out on women’s bodies as a part of competing masculine practices of territorial control that continue the real and symbolic subordination of indigenous women to men in their local communities and beyond. After an analysis of the obstacles to indigenous women’s access to gendered justice in Guatemala, I conclude by examining their possibilities for attaining protection through the U.S. process of gendered asylum. Guatemala’s Femicide and Domestic Violence CourtsInnovative legal frameworks such as the 2008 Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women and specialized tribunals implemented in Guatemala since 2010 that are dedicated to hearing cases of femicide, domestic violence, sexual violence, or other gendered forms of violence offer the possibility of justice for women who have been victims of violence. Specially trained judges, social workers, psychologists, lawyers and women’s rights advocates and organizations have heard thousands of cases in these specialized courts for femicide and violence against women. For example from June of 2013 until June of 2014, 3,539 cases entered into court proceedings with 71 percent or 2, 548 of those occurring in the capital city of Guatemala. In the more outlying departments of Guatemala where a majority of women petitioning courts are likely to be indigenous, the number of cases heard is much lower during the same time period: 192 in Quetzaltenango (department is 51 percent indigenous) and 203 in Huehuetenango (department is 53 percent indigenous) (Unidad de Control, Seguimiento y Evaluación de los ?rganos Especializados en Delitos de Femicidio y Otras Formas de Violencia contra la Mujer del Organismo Judicial 2014: 72). Of those cases that began court proceedings, during this period, 708 cases or 20 percent of those cases were either settled through plea bargains or were discontinued for various reasons. The majority of the cases (80 percent) that went through complete trails resulted in 1,487 convictions and 407 acquittals, with an overall conviction rate of 79 percent for those cases that completed trials and 42 percent conviction rate of all cases that started court proceedings (Unidad de Control, Seguimiento y Evaluación de los ?rganos Especializados en Delitos de Femicidio y Otras Formas de Violencia contra la Mujer del Organismo Judicial 2014: 75). In 2013, The National Statistics Institute (INE) together with the Presidential Secretariat of Women (Seprem) reported that during the period of 2008 to 2013 that 51, 525 complaints were received by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in relation to crimes covered by the 2008 Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women (Urizar 2014). For that same period of time (2008-2013) there were a total of 4,389 violent deaths of women reported (Red Feminista Centroamericana Contra la Violencia hacia las Mujeres 2016). Of these reported violent deaths, 1,008 or 22.9 percent of these murders became legal cases processed in different kinds of courts as femicides. Roughly 195 or 20 percent of those 1,008 cases tried as femicides resulted in sentencing, according to the Central American Network Against Violence Against Women (2016). 00000000These statistics suggest that the 2008 law and new courts have been somewhat effective in providing a new brand of specialized justice to a significant number of women. In addition, recent court cases in 2016 such as that of Sepur Zarco where Supreme Court Judge Yasmin Barrios gave sentences totaling 360 years of imprisonment to two military commanders for sexual violence, sexual slavery and domestic slavery they forced on indigenous Quiche women 36 years ago, have also broadened the legal space for prosecuting gendered and racialized violence. Nevertheless, indigenous women who are able to achieve justice in the Supreme Court and in specialized courts are very limited. What are the obstacles to access for most indigenous women, particularly those who are poor, live in marginalized rural areas, and who do not speak Spanish? And if they cannot access relief from multiples forms of gendered violence in Guatemala, is making the dangerous and expensive trip from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. worth the risk taken to attempt to access gender justice through the U.S. immigration court system? I begin my answers to these questions by first introducing one asylum case that represents the elements of 11 other cases I have worked on. Teresa’s storyI first met Teresa Perez in a small town in Oregon. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was nervous as she sat on the edge of her seat. We were meeting in a small office of a non-profit that helps to provide food, clothing, housing assistance, and access to social services for low-income and impoverished families. We were meeting to begin the process of preparing Teresa’s case for gendered asylum. We talked for more than two hours. This was the first of several extensive interviews to document her life story in order to assist in building her declaration of gendered asylum in the U.S. She lodged her asylum application with the Oregon immigration court in the spring of 2016. Her story lays out many of challenges faced by indigenous women who have not been able to access gendered justice in Guatemala. I use her story as a lens onto the analytical discussion that follows.I was born in a small village in the Department of Huehuetenango. There is no public transportation to the hamlet I live in except once a week when there is a market held in the center town of our municipality. Most of the time we have to walk if we want to get anywhere. When I was growing up and even when I was married I had no money to pay for transportation even on those days. I am a twenty-three year old indigenous woman. I only speak Mam and I grew up following the customs of the Mam people. I don’t speak Spanish. My parents and many of my siblings still live in the small hamlet I grew up in. I have two small children who I was not able to bring with me. They live with my sister who cares for them. My childhood was difficult. We were very poor and often we were hungry. I only went to school for 3 years. In order to get to my school, I had to walk for two hours. Going to school was really difficult and I couldn’t understand much because all the material was in Spanish and I don’t speak Spanish. When I was nine I had to stop going to school because my family was very poor and my father could not afford the cost of the books, notebooks and the uniform. Also it is more a custom for boys than girls to have an education. So I only went for a few years. Our house is in the country and there are no other houses nearby. It has only one big room. My typical day at home as a child was very busy. I used to collect wood, make tortillas, wash dishes, wash clothes, weave and put compost on the coffee crops. In my spare time I would weave traditional textiles, and make clothes. Sometimes I was able to sell the clothes I made to other people. My brothers would help my father by clearing the coffee fields of weeds with machetes, and fertilizing the plants. We had a small plot with coffee growing. When I was 16, I started dating my boyfriend Carlos who was three months younger than me. After a while, my boyfriend Carlos asked permission father if we could live together in his house. His father accepted so I moved into Carlos’ house. A lot of people do that before they get formally married. While we were together, I got pregnant and I had a son who was born on in 2009. We were happy together for a few months. I wanted to marry Carlos but we were very young and we needed to wait some time. We also didn’t have any money. Later that year, Pedro who is a Mam indigenous man from my community and who was at that time was four years older than started approaching me and explained to me that Carlos was a child and he was not man enough for me. The same year Carlos left the house and went with his father to the coast, to the state of Escuintla to work. They went there because Carlos wanted to make money to provide for our family. Carlos stayed there for over a year. Because of our separation, I remember feeling alone and insecure about me and Carlos. On top on that Pedro kept approaching me and telling I was wasting my time with a child like Carlos.Feeling lonely and insecure I decided to leave Carlos’s house and went to my sister’s house with my baby. Then Carlos came back, but in a little while in March of 2011 Carlos left for the United States. While Carlos was back, Pedro had been threatening him and telling him to stay away from me. Then, after Carlos left for the U.S., Pedro became more direct and he told me that he wanted to marry me. He promised me that he would take care of my son and me. He said he had the means to take care of me and that he would treat me with respect. I started believing him.At that time I wasn’t sure what Pedro was doing for living. I knew that he was wearing blue clothes that meant that he was part of the Blue Gang, but I was not sure of his involvement. I think I was hopeful that he was only a sympathizer of the blue group. He was always wearing nice blue clothes and he looked strong and self-confident.Around 2011, I was taking care of my sister in the center of Todos Santos. She just had had a baby, so she needed some help. That day when I went to the plaza I ran into Pedro and he asked me to move with in him. I was alone with a baby and I felt I didn’t have a better option, so I accepted Pedro’s offer and we moved in together. I moved with him at his house in which was also his parents’ house. This was outside of the town center, maybe about 45-60 minutes walking. At first everything was ok, but when he got me pregnant, little by little the problems began. Pedro began to drink alcohol and beat me. He wanted me to abort our child and he claimed that the baby I was pregnant with was not his baby. He left bruises on my mouth and my belly from hitting me. He treated me as if I was an animal. He would hit me wherever he wanted to.Nobody could stop him. We lived with his parents and they tried to protect me and stop Pedro. But Pedro was very disrespectful and he even threatened his father with death. He told him “I will kill you if you bother me. Let me do whatever I want to do.” His father could not do anything to stop the violence. Pedro actually hit his father several times. At this moment I started to understand that nobody could stop Pedro from hitting me.At the same time, Pedro started yelling that he didn’t want my other son to be in his house because he was not his son. Pedro began beating him, too. Over time, the situation got worse.Every time that I tried to complain, Pedro told me that I didn’t have any escape and I couldn’t go to the police. He said if I did, he would kill the children and me too. And the police were in the center, far away, and they don’t speak Mam.Things also got strange between us. I started feeling that Pedro was not telling me the truth. He would disappear for a few days and come back drunk and with money. He didn’t work, but he always had money. He always had nice clothes.After a year and a half of living with him, before the baby was born I escaped to live with my parents in the small village I was born in. It is about two hours away from where I was living with Pedro. I was pregnant and my body could not tolerate the abuse. My second son was born in 2012. I was living with my family at the time. Pedro did not want to give our son his last name. He claimed that our son was not his son I was hopeful that Pedro had forgotten about me and that I was safe at with my parents, but that was not the case.One day in March 2013 I was out walking with my two sons. They were six months and four years old. We ran into Pedro on the road. Pedro came after us and tried to strangle me. He told me, “I am going to kill you with your sons.” I was terribly frightened. I was saved when a person came walking down the road and Pedro ran off. He told me that he was going to find me and kill us all. After this incident, I was afraid for my life. I spent my days inside with my siblings and my parents and I never left the house for fear of seeing Pedro. I lived for a year and a half like that, with my family, but then my father told me he could not support us anymore because he was elderly. I couldn’t keep living with my parents, but I had n where else to go. I was terrified to leave. At that time and because of Pedro’s behavior toward me, my children and his parents, I understood that he was an active part of the Blue Gang. I also understood that he was very dangerous and had friends who would help him to carry out his threats to kill my children and me. Where I lived, our territory is divided in two. On the one side in particular hamlets are the Blue gang members. In other hamlets are the Red gang members. They are enemies and often they fight and kill each other.As I said Pedro was always wearing blue clothes and a handkerchief around his hand. He also used his fingers to show a sign, something kind of weird. When I was living with him I started to understand his involvement. I also think that at the beginning he was not that active in the group but overtime his involvement grew.At the beginning he was self confident, but then he became defiant and scary. I decided to come to the United States to live a life without fear of dying at the hands of my husband Pedro. I did not report any of this to the police, although I wanted to, because Pedro told me if I went to the police, he would kill my children, my parents, and me immediately. I was too frightened for my life to continue living in Guatemala. Also, I live really far from the center and I could not afford to go there and whom would I tell? They only speak Spanish. I borrow some money to pay for the coyotes to come to the United States. I could not bring my children with me because it was too expensive. They stayed in Guatemala with my sister who is taking care of them. I am very worried about my children. I know Pedro could kidnap them or kill them. Right before I left in June of 2014, there was a little boy who was eight years old who was kidnapped. They cut his neck with a knife and killed him. He was on his way to school. That really scared me. In August of 2014, I came through La Mesilla, Guatemala (about 85 kilometers away from the hamlet she lived in) to Mexico. I went all the way through Mexico by bus. Thankfully, nothing bad happened to us during this trip, although the Mexican authorities did demand that I pay a fine in order to pass through part of Mexico while I was on the bus. I arrived at the town of Altar in Northern Mexico. From there I walked through the desert with a group of people from Guatemala. After walking all through the night, I was tired and I could not walk any more. I finally arrived in a town with many lights, although I do not know where I was exactly. The immigration patrol caught me there. I spent one day and one night in a jail in la hielera (reference to very cold holding cells) and then I was transferred to Eloy, Arizona. When I arrived at the prison there, I had blisters on my foot. They took me to a hospital where a doctor helped me. I made friends with other women there at the prison and they loaned me calling cards to call my brothers who are in the United States. From there they transferred me to San Ysidro, California where they did an interview and other legal processes. I did the interview and I passed, I think (meaning she was deemed eligible to apply for gendered asylum). My brothers, their friends, and a neighbor from our village who lives in the United States pooled their money to provide me with funds to post a bond for $10,000. They bought me a bus ticket to come to Oregon. I have been in the United States for more than a year and I work in the mountains picking the plant known as salal. I speak with my family and my children in Guatemala every week on the phone. They tell me that Pedro is still looking for me and has said he is going to take my children and kill them. My family is protecting my children’s lives. I am still terrified of Pedro going after my children or me. If we are careless, he could find my children and me and kill us. 12 Cases of Violence and Lack of Access to Justice in GuatemalaTeresa’s story distills a series of common characteristics that run through a majority of gendered asylum petitions from Mam refugees in Oregon from the municipality of Todos Santos Cuchamatán in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. I have worked on seven other women’s cases from Todos Santos, one Akateco case from Huehuetenango, one Mam case from a neighboring municipality of Todos Santos, and two cases of Mam women from San Marcos. The chart below summarizes these cases. Most have children, are living without male protection—usually an absent spouse, have suffered from ongoing harassment, sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, kidnapping, and extortion. Most report that local National Civil Police (PNC) do not protect them, listen to their complaints seriously, or work to prosecute criminals. Most mention the presence of local gangs who they believe are connected to their experiences of assault, robbery, attempted or actual sexual assault, extortion and intimidation. Some attribute possible involvement of local police. Several are fleeing violent husbands who subjected them to severe domestic violence in addition to other violence they experienced. TABLE 1. ANALYSIS OF COMMON ELEMENTS IN 12 ASYLUM CASESAge Dept. of Year left Lack of Harassment? Sexual Presence Kidnapping/ Ethnic Origin Children? Male Assault or of gangs/ extortion? Group Protection? Attempted? Police Protection? 31Huehuet.2014No, but 4 left in HuehueYes. Fleeing violent husbandYes.Yes. By husbandno, but no police protectionUnclearAkateco24Huehuet.2014noneYes. Living with elderly motherYesYesYes, gang, no police protectionExtortion, attempted kidnapingMam24Huehuet.2014Yes, 1, 3 yrs. old Yes. Living alone, husband in U.S.Yes.Robbery, daily harassment by local gangYes.Yes. Local gangs. No police protection, paid off by gangs NoMam22Huehuet.20143, but left in Huehuet.Yes. Fleeing violent husband. Living with elderly fatherYes. Yes. Yes. No police protection. Said police will do nothing, paid offNoMam12Huehuet.2014noYes. Living with elderly grandparentsYes. By local teacher. Yes.Yes. States police are with gangsNoMam14San Marcos2014NoYes. Living with aunt and uncleYes.Yes, actual and attempted in transitYes. Maras surrounding community. No police protectionYes. Both. Mam18 San Marcos2014NoLiving with godparents, no male protectorYes. NoYes. Maras, no policeNoMam41Huehuet2013Yes, 4, 3 left in Huehue, 2 girls 16, and 10 living alone in parent’s homeYes. Was living with 3 children, husband fled to U.S. when attacked multiple times. Yes, robbery, harassment by local gang. Yes. Raped by local gang.Yes, reported by her, other locals. Police do nothing of catch and release local criminalsPossible extortion of daughters left behindMamAge Dept. of Year left Lack of Harassment? Sexual Presence Kidnapping/ Ethnic Origin Children? Male Assault or of gangs/ extortion? Group Protection? Attempted? Police Protection? 42Huehuet.12/20133, but left in HuehueYes. Absent Husband.Fleeing robbery and rape by 4 men, not localsYes.Yes. yes, no police protectionNoMam45Huehuet.2015Yes, 2 accompanied.Yes. Absent husband. Threatened by security committee with rape, torture, husband/she don’t comply. YesYesYes, gang, no police protectionExtortion, attempted kidnapingMam26Huehuet.2015No Fleeing husband who beat her severely, threatened her with death.Yes.Yes.Yes. local gangs. No police protection, paid off by gangs or by people like husbandNoMam26Huehuet.20153, left in Huehue, Husband in U.S. YesYesYes, extortion, death threat, no police responseYesMamAll of these cases have involve women who have suffered from multiple forms of interlocking violence in which domestic violence is often just one end of a violence continuum that includes militarization, paramilitarization, state security interventions, local gang activity, and hypermasculinties. The fact that these twelve women made it to the United States and were able to successfully even get to the point of filing asylum petitions makes them a select group. In what follows, I use an in-depth analysis of Todos Santos Cuchamatán in order to suggest the ways in which conflicting justice and security systems have produced a situation that leaves women with few options other than to flee if they wish to pursue gendered justice effectively. I base my analysis on the rich ethnographic research of anthropologists Jennifer Burrell and Ellen Sharp, very initial fieldwork done over four days in June of 2016 in Todos Santos and Huehuetenango, and analysis of 12 in-depth interviews done with gendered asylum seekers from Todos Santos in Oregon and with several others from that community in the U.S. Differential Legal Systems, Violence, and Security in Todos SantosAccording to multiple sources, prior to the early 1980s, there was no national police or military presence in Todos Santos (Bossen 1984:101, Burrell 2013:27). Young men appointed to lower level civil cargos as part of an age-based hierarchy of civil and religious positions of authority used to govern the community did community policing. This system of community protection changed abruptly in the early 1980s and has been significantly transformed by decades of militarization and paramilitarization. The Mam municipality of Todos Santos Cuchamatán was briefly occupied by guerillas from the Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP) in 1981. Several months of military training was carried out by the EGP for men and boys and by mid-1981. The EGP also had their own Justice of the Peace in the town hall in the center (Burrell 2013: 28). Businessmen and local landowners were targeted by the EGP and some were killed and left in the town square. In April of 1982, the Guatemalan military arrived. A platoon of two to three hundred Kaibiles arrived and burned 150 houses in the aldea of El Rancho and then advanced towards the municipal town center. On the way they raped and otherwise attacked women, some of who later died of their injuries (Ikeda 1999, Burrell 2013: 28). The Kaibiles then called all the residents to a meeting in front of the Catholic Church and the captain of the Kaibiles unit called out more than two hundred names of “subversives” that were collected by local informers. According to an eyewitness account published in the 1996 thesis of Mitsuho Ikeda, the Kaibiles captain then asked guerilla leaders to identify themselves. Several men stepped forward after the captain threatened to shoot the entire community from helicopters. The Kaibiles then systematically tortured and slow dismembered those men who were named in the meeting. Ten other men were made to march five hours away and killed slowly on the way. Locals carried the bodies to the local cemetery and buried them (Burrell 2013: 29, 172, note 9; Ikeda 1999). This action was followed by disappearances, murders, and kidnappings and may people fled. Others left to join the EGP. In March of 1982, the army returned, gathered all the villagers in front of the church and locked the men inside and told them they would all be burned. The men waited through the night until dawn and discovered that the army had been recalled due to a coup carried out by Efrain Rios Montt (Burrell 2013: 29).Following the militarization of the community first by the EGP, and then by the Guatemalan military, a culture of fear, insecurity, and suspicion set in. The Guatemalan state under Rios Montt appointed rural mayors and brought the state to local communities through “The Thesis of National Stability. “ As part of this plan, men between eighteen and sixty were organized into civil patrols known as PACS (Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil) and were required patrol in 24-hour rounds. This was used to suppress the EGP and other guerillas, but also was used to control communities through what was a mandatory labor tax. In addition, civil patrolling empowered locals who were active in leading patrols and linked them to local military bases and commanders. Researchers who have worked in Todos Santos reported that the civil patrols there did not engage in armed combat during their first seven years (1982-1989) (Perera 1993, Carrescia 1989) and even later on were non-aggressive (Burrell 2013: 35). The PACS did, however, contribute to a consolidation of power among PAC leaders and to a general culture of distrust. This climate, a shortage of land, and the pressure on men to remain and serve in the PACS are linked to the earliest migrants to the U.S. Burrell states:Intracommunal and even intrafamiliar distrust, the omnipresent threat of denunciation by parties to a conflict, financial pressure, lack of democratic alternatives, continuing impunity, rumors of orejas (literally “ears” but used colloquially to refer to spies), and the accompanying economic crisis all contributed to the earliest wave of men migrating to the United States. (2013: 36). After the PACS had been in operation for a little more than a decade, the Guatemalan state established local-level state institutions of justice. While before the war, justice and local policy was administered through fiscales, ixcueles, regidores, and mayors (elders who held the highest positions in the civil-religious hierarchy (Burrell 2013: 157-158), during the conflict authority shifted to PAC leaders linked to local army commanders. As noted by Rachel Seider, “the civil patrols effectively became a part of community authority structures and norms” and were a “form of communal collective defense” (2011:175). The patrols were both part of a state system through the everyday actions and normalization of patrolling and also a state effect, demonstrating the “power of the counter-insurgency state” (Seider 2011:175). As discussed below, the gendered cultural forms and relations of power through which the PACs operated also laid down a template for later local security committees that appeared just a few years after PACs were officially terminated in 1996. It appears, however, that in Todos Santos, the local PACs may have endured unofficially for several years beyond 1996. Prior to the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, the Guatemala state established a system of minor courts known as “Juzgados de Paz” which are responsible for hearing cases of minor crimes. Judges in the Juzgados de Paz are required to live in the area they serve in and in the early to mid-1990s began to establish offices throughout Guatemala. In many cases, their arrival clashed with and certainly overlapped with local forms of indigenous justice that were being exercised by local authorities. According to the website of the Judicial Branch of the Guatemalan Government, Juzgados de Paz do the following: Judge in cases of crimes against persons and property considered less serious so that the penalty to be imposed is a fine. These courts intervene where there is no trial court . They also can take statements from people who have been detained (Organismo Judicial de Guatemala 2016). In addition these courts can decide to not engage in penal action if the crime is minor and/or if the sanction for the crime as prescribed by law is not appropriate.The Todos Santos Juzgado de la Paz opened in 1993. According to a study carried out by the Institute for Juridical Investigations at Rafael Landivar University, for the first three years of its operation, the first judge spoke Mam, while the other five court employees did not (1999:71-72). The investigators noted that there was an official interpreter, but he did not speak Mam. He spoke Kakchiquel—another indigenous languages of Huehuetenango, but not that spoken in Todos Santos. The judge who did speak Mam was, according to the investators, able to effectively hear cases—but did not have the confidence of most locals. He heard 172 cases in 1993, 75 in 1995, and 85 from January to October of 1996 when the study ended. They did note that of 415 cases heard, 70 of them or almost 17 percent of them were not concluded for various reasons, including “the Mam custom of resolving problems with local municipal authorities” (Instituto de Investigaciones Juridicas , IIJ 1999:72). The investigative team also interviewed local authorities who were serving civil cargos in the municipality in the center of Todos Santos. According to their report, these authorities “did not have confidence in the new courts because they thought the judges could be bribed.” They also noted that the judge and court employees did not know about the customs of Todos Santos and did not respect local Mam ways of doing things (IVJ 1999:77). The local authorities did note, however, that the Juez de Paz did acknowledge and support the resolutions that they worked out as indigenous authorities. While the Juez de la Paz heard hundreds of cases over the three years of the study, the investigators indicated that many people continued to rely on local authorities to resolve conflicts rather than going to the Juzgado de la Paz. Local distrust of the Juzgado de Paz was expressed as “the kind of treatment received in the Juzgado for us is not equal to that received by Ladinos.” The investigators reported that local people said the court “deceived people and corruption exists, like in the cases of unjust condemnations, the purchasing of testimony and other anomolies” (IIJ1999:78). This article suggests that the customary law as carried out by local authorities continued to dominate, despite the existence of the Justice of the Peace, who apparently supported the legal decisions made by local authorities who at the time still were operating in close collaboration with civil patrollers in Todos Santos. Following the signing of the Peace Accords in Guatemala, the Guatemalan National Police ,who were notorious for working with the Guatemalan military to carry out counter-insurgency operations during the conflict , were demobilized. Researcher Mary Louise Glebbeek says of the National Police:Under military command the police forces formed death squads responsible for many killings and disappearances during the armed conflict. The objective of these death squads was to eliminate alleged members, allies or collaborators of 'subversives' using the help of civilians and lists prepared by military intelligence. The concepts of public security and military defense were fused (Glebbeek 2001: 434). Under the rubric of the peace accords, a new National Civil Police force was to be established that would be autonomous from the military, be subject to new security law, be trained in a new six-month course at the National Police Academy, and be subject to community involvement in recruitment in order to reflect the multi-ethnic character of Guatemala. The force was also to be increased in size and officers were to receive regular salary increases (Glebbeek 2001: 438). Unfortunately, most of the old national police officers were rehired. By 1999, the PNC had 17, 399 members deployed, and only 36.5 percent were new officers (Byrne, Stanley, and Garast 2001: 1). Post War Security: From PACS to Security Committees and the PNCIn an effort to deal with widespread insecurity in 1996 following the signing of the Peace Accords, the Arzu government quickly trained, expanded, and attempted to deploy the new PNC, but incorporated much of the old National Police ranks and officers into the new structure. In addition to having the PNC engage in joint patrols with military, “the initial PNC higher ranks consisted exclusively of officers from the old police force, infamous for their corruption, abuse and incompetence” (Glebbeek 2001: 452). On the ground, this meant that little would change. In remote areas of the country such as Todos Santos, the presence of the PNC had little to no impact in decreasing crime. According to Jennifer Burrell, several PNC agents were assigned to Todos Santos in 1999 and their presence was welcomed as it was anticipated that they could help in the local campaign against gangs. This assistance failed to materialize, and the presence of the PNC “became highly problematic and polarizing.” In fact, as seen in the analysis below of 47 asylum cases from Todos Santos from the years 2001-2007, police persecution, violence, and rape committed by PNC officers was common, according to these asylum declarations. Before turning to that analysis and its consequences for women and its continued impact on the normalization of gendered violence in the region, I first turn to the local response of Todos Santeros and other indigenous communities to the security vacuum many experienced from the late 1990s into the present. Several years after the PACS were ended, Todo Santeros formed local security committees. Anthropologist Emily Sharp (2014) refers to the emergence of the local security committees in Todos Santos as vigilantes, contrasting with the terminology of Jennifer Burrell (2013: 139), who uses the local term comité de seguridad or “seguridad” as the committees are referred to by locals. Both agree that the appearance of “seguridad” in the early 2000s to fill what was perceived as a security vacuum, involved past practices linked to civil patrols such as “constant surveillance within communities, rapid and collective response to detain interlopers and the occasional summary and spectacular use of physical violence” (Sieder 2011: 176).Fransisco Portes Lopez, a Todo Santero living in the U.S. who lived in Todos Santos until 2015, recounted the formation of “seguridad” in a conversation we had in the summer of 2016. We had a period of relatively tranquility from maybe 1998 until 2000. You could walk around with no problem. But what happened after that? Why did the security committees get formed? Well, this started to happen everywhere, not just in Todos Santos. People were drinking. They were getting drunk of the street. The people would fall down in the street, but then they would go home. There was not a problem with this. But between the drunks, and the bars the maras, gang members began. They were delinquents, kidnappers. …Then they started fighting among themselves. They started to beat one another up and then one and then another started to rob people. A lot of people said that people’s animals (livestock) were disappearing. They would also break and enter into people’s houses. ‘But who are they? Who is doing this?’ asked the people. Is it possible that they are coming here from other towns? What should we do? So the people began to keep watch among themselves. …they said that they found some of the policemen were among the robbers? …Then people said that we had to do more than talk. So we formed the security committees. Anthropologists Ellen Sharp and Jennifer Burrell both suggest that local security committees were able to achieve a great deal of power and continue the culture of surveillance, use of physical violence, and empowerment of male leaders that emerged under the PAC system. Both Sharp and Burrell attribute the emergence of “seguridad” to the emergence of a strong youth culture fueled by identification with the cultural and fashion trappings of U.S. hip-hop, usually coded as gangster style. Sharp notes that the ability of at least 1000 Todos Santeros to achieve citizenship through political asylum in the U.S allowed large numbers of people from the community to come and go after they were legalized (2014: 28). Some of those who were mobile included young people who had grown up in California, primarily in and around the San Fransisco area and brought back hop-hop culture and gangster fashion to Todos Santos. Identified as belonging to gangs or “maras,” local youth began to wear hip-hop inspired clothing, hang out together, drink, grow their hair long, sometimes stealing from community members, and perhaps to taking drugs (Burrell 2013: 139-141, Sharp 2014: 112-151). This description roughly coincides with what Fransisco describes above. Both also note that local youth in who were identified as gangsters in “maras” were often from more privileged circumstances than other youth, having completed high school and in some cases receiving regular remittances in U.S. dollars from parents in the U.S. who were supporting them. Burrell documents two local gangs in Todos Santos in the early 2000s called the “Cholos” and “Rockeros” whose activities included “forming posses of?local youth, drunkenness, theft, fighting with other so-called mareros, abusing drunks, and threatening townspeople” (Burrell 2010: 99). She notes that “no associations with gangs in Guatemala or the United States existed and the internationally recognized markers of such groups—guns, drugs, tattoos, or headwear—were nonexistent” (Burrell 2010: 99). Some but not all mareros had migrated to the United States and return; some had green cards. They were not, planting corn and beginning to carry out low-level cargos in the civil-religious hierarchy, traditional activities for young males. Burrell states that these gangs in their local formed, granted Todosanteros a means by which to grasp “the essence of machismo’s ideal of manhood,” quoting Roger Lancaster (1992: 195) in Burrell 2010: 100). Burrell and Sharp both analyze the emergence of local gangs as an inter-generational struggle for power as young men seek ways of obtaining social recognition and power. These groups of youth became came, in the words of Burrell, “the scapegoats for all that was intolerable, uncontrollable, and threatening” (2013: 143). Their activities, at least while she and Sharp were conducting research (from the mid-1990s through 2011) were distinct from the urban gangs that came to dominate Guatemala City. In her gripping book Adiós Ni?o, historian Deborah Levinson describes how urban youth who formed gangs in the mid-1980s in Guatemala City that focused on dance contests, supportive social ties, and petty thievery changed to violence-center groups dedicated to protecting ever-shifting turf and killing rivals. While Levinson acknowledges the influence of deported Guatemalan gang members from Los Angeles on this evolving culture of gang violence, she also documents a deliberate campaign to criminalize youth as “mareros”, blame them for a wide range of social ills, and to justify remilitarization after the war. Following their criminalization and intersection with organized crime through Guatemala’s prison system in the mid-2000, the gangs later became the violent stereotype they were earlier portrayed as (Levinson 2013).Burrell makes an observation about gangs in Todos Santos that echoes Levinson’s analysis. She notes that after two PNC officers killed the local leader of one of the gangs in October of 2003 (further discussed below), that “the extreme reaction to these gangs of youth may have pushed them toward behavior that was more troublesome” (2013:” 143). A local, self-acknowledged leader of the gang known as Sure?os who had a long conversation with Sharp in 2011 hinted at darker activities by that year (2014: 139-152). Testimonies from recent female refugees who have fled Todos Santos suggest that the two local gangs may have escalated into more serious crimes such as extortion, kidnapping, rape and attempted rape that build on a pre-existing culture of hypermasculinity and control “adaptable across a range of anxieties, worries, and contexts” (Burrell 2013: 37). This culture of hypermasculinity builds not only on local experiences in participating in patrols, but continues in the record of gendered violence linked to the presence of the PNC in the 2000s. The first Todos Santos “comité de seguridad” was established in the early 2000s. Apparently an initial version of the security committee “wore masks” (Sharpe 2014: 79), and according to Jennifer Burrell was established in relation to a continuing vacuum of power. All adult males were required to participate in patrols. They operated much like civil patrols and enforced a local curfew. According to press reports from 2003, the patrols clandestinely imprisoned their captives, held people without legal recourse, sometimes in outhouses, and carried ropes and whips that they used to administer physical punishment. Nevertheless, seguridad attempted to address the reality of poorly trained, under-funded and often absent PNC agents, none of whom spoke Mam or were familiar with local cultural norms and systems of governance and justice. Security committees as Burrrell writes “were empowered to patrol by foot, with machetes and nightsticks as weapons, and to capture criminals and bring them to the PNC for booking and prosecution 2013:163). Fransisco recounted that the security committee did administer physical punishment, but that he always tried to talk to people first. First we would try to talk people when we got complaints. Someone would come and say that there was a problem in my family because of this gang, or a gang member came and beat up my son…So what is it like? Well we all know one another. We know the people in the gangs and they know us. So if I am assigned to the security committee, what am I going to do with that person they complain about? I can’t just go kill the person. We are all neighbors. We know one another. So what I would do is to go talk to them and say, “Don’t do this. Leave this gang. Leave it alone. That way you will live in peace…but some of them don’t listen. There were some people who I punished because they didn’t understand that they needed to quit doing what they were doing. So what we would do is lock them up for some time so they would learn. We would shut them up or sometime we would put them in the water so that they would learn. Some of the would stop their activities because of this punishment. But others, would come after us and say, “Why did you punish me? “ And so that is a problem now. I had to do this for many years and now they want to come after me. It’s not like I was living in a city and I was an official authority of policeman. That way they might be afraid of me, but not here. After the mayor of Todos Santos was called into Huehuetenango in 2003 to meet with a supreme court judge regarding illegal actions of the comités de seguridad, the groups reformed somewhat, but pressed ahead with an anti-gang security campaign that resulted in a death threat to a judge, and consolidation of political power and influence by leaders of the security committees. Sharp describes the seguridad structure as each canton having its own patrol as did the rural aldeas (hamlets). The number of days men were required to patrol varied. Those who did not show up had to pay a fine and if men were in the U.S. and not able to pay the fine, women had to pay the 25-50 Quetzal fee ( U.S. 2.75-$5.50) (Sharp 2014: 30). While it is quite unusual for women to actually participate in the seguridad activities, one of the women seeking asylum I have interviewed reports extreme pressure put on her to join in the security patrols, including a physical beating by some men from seguridad. Her husband served for several years in a local seguridad committee and then was elected to the general security committee (see below). He fled after no long wanting to meet out punishment to locals he knew. Once they were both gone, a neighbor wrote a letter stating that men from the security committee and the PCN came to her house looking for Demetria and her husband. They destroyed her belongings and told the neighbor if she didn’t state where they were, that they would grab her and burn down her house. Demetria stated in an interview with me:First I paid someone who would take my turn on the security committee so I wouldn’t have problems with the community. Then in 2015, the people from seguridad insisted that I had to take up this job and that I could not pay anyone to do it for me. I hid inside my house when they came knocking on my door. I didn’t open it up. They broke down the door and confronted me. They beat me in the head, stomped on my feet and knocked me down. My daughter was so afraid that she fainted. I think that they did this on purpose because they know that my daughter is sick. A neighbor told me to go to the police to denounce what had happened. I went to the police (PNC) and they didn’t do anything. They told me that this happened because I didn’t take on the cargo in seguridad. I felt completely unprotected. The security people have power and if you don’t obey them, then they will put you in jail and physically punish you until you do what they say. There is no way out. If you work with security, then the gangsters will attack you. And if you don’t go with seguridad, then they will torture you until you accept their “invitation” No hay salida. According to Sharp, each security committee had an all-male governing board that “included a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and several spokesmen” (2014: 31). And the leaders of each of these lower level patrols in cantones and aldeas elected leaders to a general security committee at the municipal level who made policy for the entire municipality and met every Saturday. The general security committee also heard petitions every Saturday, the market day, thus setting up another local-level justice system that appears to have worked in conjunction with most municipal authorities, who are also authorized to hear legal complaints. According to Sharp, the “cases” heard included arranging restitution for injuries, mediating debt-repayment plans, settling land disputes, and some security committees also intervened in cases of infidelity, lack of child-support payments, and domestic violence (2014: 31, 103). Sharp notes that most people preferred to bring their petitions to the security committee or the mayor because of language and cultural barriers (2014: 31-32). Most preferred to work with “la ley del pueblo,” (the law of the community) rather than “una ley grande” (a big law) that involved the formal justice system, lawyers, documents, payment of fees, and Spanish fluency (2014: 104). “Ley grande” refers to the Justice of the Peace. Burrell and Sharp both condemn the culture of “seguridad” that came to take hold in Todos Santos and dominate daily life. Burrell writes that seguridad “exercised control over the local judiciary, publically humiliated community members by dunking them in the fountain; and in short, brought back the kinds of ‘forcivoluntary’ paramilitarized forms that characterized the war years” (2013:156, McAllister and Nelson 2013). Sharp documents fathers having to flog their sons and engage in other forms of physical punishment to exercise authority over unruly youth. If they did not, the security committee would (2014). By the time that Demetria fled Todos Santos in mid-2015, refugees in Oregon and their family members described many people as being persecuted by local authorities including seguridad, the PNC, and municipal deputy mayors if they did not wish to submit to the wishes of those authorities. Some noted that the kinds of laws and punishments that were being forced on people did not square with the political constitution of Guatemala. They clearly identified conflicting legal systems in their own communities. In early 2016 a new mayor abolished the security committees and was attempting to work with a reinforced PNC to provide security to Todos Santos. PNC, Comités de Seguridad,” and Competing MasculinitiesIn October of 2003, a local man whom Jennifer Burrell calls Alfonso (a pseudonym), was shot and killed by two members of he National Civil Police who fired eight shots into his back. The mayor requested that the PNC leave and the military arrived to keep order until new police offers were assigned (2013: 138). No one was every charged with Alfonso’s murder, although his attribution as a “marero” or gang member served to justify his shooting in the eyes of some locals. The PNC clearly acted with impunity and this act is suggestive of other behavior documented by Michael Smith, Refugee Rights Program Director of East Bay Sanctuary. A co-founder of the Affirmative Asylum Program of East Bay Sanctuary in 1992, he has helped to process more than 4,000 asylum cases, at least 1000 of which are from Todos Santos (Sharp 2014:77). Political asylum petitioners from Todos Santos who filed their cases through East Bay Sanctuary suggest consistent criminal behavior on the part of the PNC, including assassination, rape, attempted rape, severe beatings, and robbery. In 2012, Michael Smith published a summary of cases of persecution of indigenous Guatemalans that were found credible by an Asylum Officer or Immigration Judges (Smith 2012). The summary includes information from 47 cases from Todos Santos Cuchamatan. The log makes clear reference to the murder of the person Jennifer Burrell calls “Alfonso” by the PNC. Police, according to Smith’s log, also persecuted six other relatives of Alfonso. One of them, a cousin, was threatened with rape by police and then a few weeks after the murder, she stated that police threatened her twice, and she went to the local judge who laughed at her and called her crazy. She was granted asylum. (Smith 2012, Person G).Another case filed by a women in 2003, refers to robbery of remittances by a local Ladino and a group of gang members. The Ladino later appeared outside of the police station in a police uniform (Smith 2012, Person I). Cases from 2005 and 2006 refer to police threats and beatings in Huehuetenango (Smith 2012, Person J) police who entered a home in 2005, had the family members’ names on a piece of paper, beat up the person filing the petition, raped his sister and forced them to destroy statues of saint’s used by his grandmother during healing ceremonies (Smith 2012, Person K). Other cases also document police violence from 2002-2007. The document describes 17 cases of rape and two cases of attempted rape among the 47 cases documented in addition to other forms of severe physical violence carried out on women from Todos Santos (Smith 2012). According to the case summary, a majority of the cases of rape or attempted rape are by police (PNC) and some by soldiers with only one case of rape or attempted rape by a local Mam man from Todos Santos. Collectively the cases strongly suggest that rape and attempted rape was a systematic form of intimidation used with impunity by PNC during the time period of 2000-2007. Other forms of intimidation used against women (and men) include severe beatings and death threats. Many of the summaries include reference to the conflict and accusations made against people that they were guerillas or supported the guerillas. Such threats are most often carried out by police or soldiers, but ten cases make reference to persecution by neighbors and local patrollers (i.e. people from seguridad), sometimes in conjunction with police. These cases of persecution by neighbors and some references to patrollers suggest the kind of climate of fear and distrust that Sharp and Burrell document with regard to local security committees. Both Sharp and Burrell make reference to the ways that the security committees built a culture of masculine power that in many ways mirrors the kind of masculine power that PNC agents appear to have selectively exercised in the area through shootings, beatings, rape, and intimidation. Burrell writes: “generational conflict is expressed through the criminalization of youth rebellion and the subsequent remilitarization that quells it” (2013: 158). This remilitarization and the youth rebellion are built on a complex and hybrid historical culture of masculine control and impunity. While the culture of masculinity promoted by seguridad is very different than that of local youth gangs, both are about defining masculinity through patrolling and controlling territory. Women figure as subordinate or even disposable parts of both cultures of masculinity. Sharp provides an ethnographic glimpse into the gender policing and ideology guiding the security committee’s punishment of younger men perceived as being gangsters. According to people Sharp discussed confrontations between security and youth with, the security committee confiscated and destroyed the gangster-identified clothing of local youth in the local square (baggy pants and knit caps). People mentioned that the security committee cut the youth’s baggy pants into shreds. Effectively turning their pants into skirts, elders then taunted the youth by calling them ‘women.’ Along these lines, that same year some longer-locked young men found themselves cornered on dark streets by the security committee and forced to undergo haircuts while being subject to homophobic slurs” (2014: 96). This could be followed by public stripping and dunking in the town fountain or by being forced to drink sewage water, according to Sharp. The masculinity of the older generation may be built on policing that of the younger one, but in a later chapter on “gangs” Sharp focuses on the disrespect shown by one young man reputed to be in a local gang member to his wife. She also documents the way that women are seen as replaceable by another man she identifies as Ricardo. He admits that there is a gang and that he belongs to it. He comments about how it seems to bother some women in the community that a local gang member they are discussing had a lot of women. “Then he laughed, ‘we have a joke among the sure?os that when are done with our women we give them to the norte?os” (2014: 142). This remark references the local “Blue Gang” which also identified as Sure?os 13 and the “Red Gang ,” which some identify as Norte?os (see below). Sharp decides to put “the misogyny of this statement aside” and does not pursue it. The remark, however, suggests something deeper in how Ricardo and perhaps other young men in gangs view local women. Self-documentation is available from one of the gangs in Todos Santos who have posted videos during the past two years (2014-2016). Sure?os 13 (known as the Blue Gang) publishes its own videos on YouTube. On February 15, 2014, a YouTube video was published titled “Sure?os 13 Guatemala Todos Santos” by Rolix Carillo (2014), which featured photographs of local young men dressed in the Todos Santos traditional red striped pants. Another similar YouTube video was published on June 28, 2014 anonymously from Todos Santos Cuchamatán titled “La Vida De Un Sure?o.13” (The Life of a Member of Sur 13). A third video titled “Sur 13 chapines.todos santos rifa sur 13” (Sur 13 Guatemalans Todos Santos), was published on June 16, 2015. All of these videos have clear photographs of local young men often sporting blue handkerchiefs (known locally as los azules) and with clear references to Sure?os 13. Posting these videos on line may be an additional way for local youth to claim public space and build their social prestige. The video posted on June 16, 2015 ends with a picture of a blue affiliated-gang member from Todos Santos aiming a rifle at another man who is kneeling and bound, looking like he is about to be executed. The image, whether “real” or posed for the purpose of the photo and video sends a chilling message. The photograph at the end of the video also suggests that the person to be executed is a part of the red gang, the opposition of the blue gang. A Final video posted on March 18, 2016 titled “todos santos sure?os de por vida” is similar to others, but features some photographs clearly taken in the U.S. as well as pictures of women, some with their faces covered in Todos Santos, and others undisguised in the U.S. This video repeatedly features a picture of a large knife lying on top of a blue handkerchief. The video begins with the words “These are my homies of my barrio calvario, in reference to the neighborhood near the local cemetery where some of the pictures are posed. This is followed by a photo of Sure?os Matias, with reference to another neighborhood in Todos Santos. Other photos follow in specific locations. The rap song in the background makes repeated references to “our territory.” These four videos feature local young men with red and white stripped pants, some with shirts off, in a variety of poses the suggest masculine strength and toughness. The young men in them perform a stereotypical gang masculinity through the flashing of gang signs, tough poses, implied potential violence through poses with a gun, a photograph of a hand wrapped in a blue handkerchief clutching a knife and a photograph in the local cemetery of about 30 young men labeled “sure?os criminal” (Pablo Lokito El del barrio 2016). Historical Subordination of Women, Contested Masculinities, and the Consequences for Indigenous Women TodayNumerous scholars have analyzed the ways in which post-war Guatemala is characterized by contested sovereignties through the overlap of indigenous systems of justice and security, state-sponsored legal systems and police, and the additional presence of globalized ideas about justice and security remitted through migration and media (Sieder 2011, Burrell 2013, Nelson 2009). A gendered analysis of that reality would also reveal contested masculinities that operate on a local level, but also incorporate regional, national, and transborder influences. These contested masculinities are part of the post-war landscapes of justice and security and strongly impact women. This impact is most clearly reflected in their difficulty in achieving justice through customary law where male authorities continue to dominate, in local tribunales de la paz where a majority of justices and staff do not speak indigenous languages and often continue to regard domestic violence and sexual violence within marriage as “private matters” that can be solved through reconciliation. And although significant progress has been made in the establishment of Tribunals Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women, very few indigenous women, such as those from Todos Santos, can actually access these courts. Those who have achieved justice for gendered violence have primarily achieved it through fleeing, making the long and dangers journey through Mexico, and filing gendered asylum cases in the U.S. While masculinities continue to be reshaped by internal and external migration, new national discourses and media stories about the meaning of misogyny and women’s rights to control their sexuality, reproduction, physical, mental and economic well-being, the structural and daily-life reality of the systematic subordination women is inescapable. As stated by Cecilia Menjívar, we need to “expose the links between macro- and micro-expressions of violence, economic and political structures that lead to suffering, and the routine violence in Guatemalan women’s lives…Less visibly violent but equally harmful acts, where multiple forms of unequal power relations converge, must be recognized as violence for projects of gender justice, or projects for justice more generally to succeed” (2011: 238). The acceptability and normalization of the subordination of indigenous women is even more evident, particular when put in a historical lens. In a powerful article, David Carey Jr. and M. Gabriela Torres argue that the precursors to today’s alarming numbers of feminicides in Guatemala (an annual average of about 700, see Bevin 2011) is linked not just to “La Violencia,” or the civil war that raged for 31 years. High levels of feminicides and gendered violence, they suggest, is but also linked to early 20th century social constructions of gender that “restricted women’s roles and possibilities as well as customary and state law that asserted women’s subordination to men and reinforced (and at times explicitly condoned) gender-based violence” (2010: 160). Their historical perspective is important in documenting the transition from women who did not meet society’s expectations to be diligent, docile producers and reproducers deserving to be beaten to today deserving to be killed for female gender transgressions. They also note another alarming trend. Their court data suggests that in the first half of the twentieth century, “when women reported gender based violence the accused were arrested.” They cite, for example, the case of the Macheteador de Mujeres” who was pursued form San Juan Sacatepéquez to Guatemala City in 1931 for the savage murder of Christina Chicoj and arrested (Carey and Torres 2010: 161). By contrast, between 2000 and 2009 when 5,027 feminicides were committed, “only eleven perpetrators were convicted” (Carrey and Torres 2010:161). They further suggest that even under the “democratic regimes” of Juan José Arevalo Bermejo (1945-1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951-1954) sexual violence went largely unpunished. Cindy Foster suggests in her study of sexual crimes through court cases in San Marcos during the period from 1936-1956 when Guatemala passed from dictatorship to Revolution and back again, that a “pervasive acceptability of hateful acts towards women seeped into work, politics, and economic change” (Foster 1999:72). Rape, she notes, “entailed male violence against women who belonged to other men, rather than proven sexual violence, which was often overlooked if practiced against Indian women and, in fact, tolerated if practiced against one’s wife or ‘dishonorable’ woman” (Foster 1999:71). She notes the racial subordination of indigenous Guatemalans to Ladinos and the strong presence of class hierarchies permitted men of all classes to “abuse working-class and Indian women without fear of repercussion.” This, she suggests, laid the groundwork for a political ethic of natural domination that rested on violence.From the 1950s to the 1980s, acceptable violence against women expanded not only in scope and kind, but also in the ways that it was packaged by the military and the press to send messages of fear about what happens to women who violate gender norms as well as the political ideology and practices of the Guatemalan dictatorship. Rape, murder, mutilation of women’s bodies, and their display in prominent public places and documentation in local newspapers was a practice that became magnified and normalized during the height of “la violencia,” from 1974-1984. This pattern, observed by Carry and Torres, builds on the prior categories of gender behavior transgressions for women and expands them to include any women who are seen as having sympathy for Marxist or progressive ideology, participate in politics or public life in any form, or are linked to insurgency. Carey and Torres document full-page advertisements which appeared in the early 1980s which depicted particular women as dangerous to Guatemalans and the nation.” For example the Prensa Libre on December 6, 1982, published an advertisement that read in part, “because of her subservise and extreme acts, Lidia Samparo Santos Chacón, alias ‘Yali’ or “Julia” is a danger to you and your loved ones (cited in Torres 2004: 17-18). The implication from these ads was that such women were going to be targeted for disappearance and murder and when it happened, the justification had already been disseminated. This is similar to the state narrative that accompanied the massacre, murder and rape of indigenous women during the war because they were associated with guerillas (see Sanford 2008, Green 1999). Once the war was over, the same narrative was recycled to justify the killing and brutalization of women because they are affiliated with maras, gangs, or organized crime—part of the shift in defining “La Juventud” (youth) in Guatemala as a source and hope and “the future” to blaming youth for crime and many other social ills plaguing post-war Guatemala (Levinson 2013:2-3). A wide range of academic research (Carey and Torres 2010, Menjívar 2008, Sanford 2008, Leiby 2009) and reports (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación 2003, United Nations 1999, De Pablo, Zurita and Tremlett 2011) document the ways in which gender violence was systematically used as a tool of generalized terror—primarily carried out during invasions or massacres of villages (Leiby 2009: 459)--but also as a racialized and gendered spectacle of violence (Carrey and Torres 2010: 158-160). Statistical analyses of truth commission reports suggest that 90 percent of the victims of sexual violence during La Violencia were believed to be Mayan (United Nations 1999). More than 100,000 women have been reported raped during the Guatemalan civil war (De Pablo, Zurita, and Tremlett 2011). A more detailed analysis of the incidents of sexual violence events/incidents from the report Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico sponsored by the United Nations (1999) found that forms of sexual violence included rape (84%), sexual humiliation (14%), sexual mutilation (7 %) and that perpetrators included the official military (70%), paramilitaries (7 %), and police (2%) with the remainder unspecified (Leiby 2009: 456). This historical legacy is very difficult to discount or forget as the backdrop for the continued types of contested masculinities seen in communities like Todos Santos even today. The practices of the army, in some cases of the guerillas, and of civil patrols involved cultures of masculine violence, which certainly varied in their intensity, but which established hierarchies of control and domination run by men over other men and women. The generational contest for masculine power, control, and authority so well documented by Burrell and Sharp continues to take a toll on women, girls, and children as well as on many men. While it is difficult to know for sure, it appears that the kind of more serious criminal behavior Burrell suggests might be a consequence of anti-gang discourse and persecution may actually exist now in some parts of Todos Santos, if the testimonies of recent women gendered asylum seekers are to be believed. Territorial Control: Women and Their Bodies as Part of TerritoriesDuring the Guatemalan civil war, the army, guerillas, and civil patrols were vying for control of indigenous territories in the western highlands of Guatemala. As outlined above, the establishment of “seguridad” in Todos Santos was also about control of indigenous territory, that of Todos Santos Cuchamatan and defending it from the occupation of local youth gangs. Strongly linked to ideas of indigenous sovereignty, control of territory is one of the baselines of autonomy. This sovereignty and control of territory continues to be contested by the presence of the security apparatus of the Guatemalan state through the presence of the PNC and through the local legal apparatus of the Tribunal de la Paz. The gendered occupation of territory identifies not only geographic space and specific places tied to the sacred local landscape, but also operates on the gendered bodies found within indigenous territories. In the power struggle that has emerged between seguridad and maras in Todos Santos, women’s bodies are understood as part of the territory each group strives to control, as are men’s bodies as well. While I have amply discussed the type of control seguridad attempted to exercise and its consequences, here I explore in more detail how the occupation of specific places and their identification with either the “Red” or “Blue” gang in Todos Santos reads onto bodies. Conversations with two men who recently fled Todos Santos Cuchumatán in revealed details about local gang activity. One man reported that the two gangs Los Azules and Los Rojos had divided up the territory of Todos Santos, using the Spanish word territorio. He fled after gang members threatened him because of involvement with a woman that one of them indicated interest in. The threat was based on claiming the body of the woman as part of gang territory and as a possession of the gang. Another man stated that the local gangs could call in their larger affiliates when they needed them. He suggested that the Los Azules might be affiliated loosely with organized crime groups who controlled routes through the municipality, into Huehuetenango. Interviews carried out in July of 2016, suggested that local women strongly believe and have observed violence against women that they believe is carried out by gangs. Cristina, age 20, related to me an incident in 2015 of rape and femicide, when I asked about violence against women and girls. There is violence here for women. They killed a girl. She was walking to school, but she never arrived. They found her raped and dead in the hamlet of Chicoy. They also found a handicapped person who had been killed there in Chicoy as well as a boy who was killed there. Lynn: Why there in Chicoy? Cristina: There is no PNC in Chicoy. A lot of families are afraid there…. You have to really watch what you wear because of the gangs. For example, if you are walking around with red shoes or a red sweater, they (the Blue gang) will tell you that you can’t wear that. This happens in the center of town too. Cristina then shared a story about her younger brother who fled to the U.S. because of gang threats, suggesting again, a strategy of territorial control. The Blue gang is very aggressive with the men here. My brother was working. He wasn't afraid of the gangs and he didn’t pay any attention to them. One day when he went to leave some food for people at the cooperative, there were some guys from the Blue Gang hanging out. They said he was in their territory. They wanted to stab him with a knife, but he ran away. They told him, “the next time we see you we are going to kill you.” That is what finally pushed him to leave. He wanted to be a farmer, but he told me, “I am going to go. He left in July of last year in 2015. Cristina went on to describe how the Blue gang can also police women and what they wear. She warned me and that you have to be careful about what color you are wearing if you cross into their territory. “If you have on something red and they see you, they will take it off of you and beat you.” She suggested that corruption in the PNC worked to the advantage of local gangs who are able to easily get out of the local jail, even if they are arrested. She also hinted at a low-level presence of the army in some of the more remote hamlets of Todos Santos. While the soldiers may persecute gang members, they also pose a heightened risk for women. Now there are soldiers from the army that are also patrolling here. They have more force. The gangs used to beat up the PNC. And there also was a problem with corruption of the PNC. They would let the gang members out of jail for a bribe. And they hardly every go to the more distant hamlets. If they do detain a gang member, then they just pay a bribe of Q2000 or Q 10,000 and they are let out. …The soldiers are more in the hamlets. They bring in a truck. I don’t know where they stay. But there is a problem because some soldiers also rape women. But the gang members take the soldiers more seriously. If the soldiers grab them, then they take them directly to the jail in Huehuetengango where its much more difficult to get out. …but there is a problem because there are some soldiers who rape women.Lynn: And what about the local security committees? Do they protect women? Well, the people from seguridad threw those from the maras into the drainage ditches, they broke rocks on their feet, and they beat them up. But the community here rose up recently against the security committee because they started to punish everyone. If you disagreed or fought with them, they would throw you in jail and throw you in cold water. Women too. There was a girl from here who was out taking pictures and they captured her and threw her in the water. My conversation with Cristina reaffirms the vulnerable position of women within the logic of male territorial control, whether it is in relation to the two gangs, seguridad, the PNC or the Guatemalan army. In June of 2015, local news reports highlighted the kidnapping and murder of a young Mam girl as she was walking to school in Caserio Chicoy, the story told above by Cristina. The father of the kidnapped and murdered girl identified the male who was part of a couple accused of the kidnaping as being the leader of Sure?o 13 in Todos Santos (Notivisión CVC 2015). The couple was detained in Caserio Pajón, Todos Santos Cuchumatán, Huehuetenango (see Castillo 2015) by locals who turned them over to the PNC. The young girl’s body was unearthed in the Caserio of Chicoy. A newspaper article states that the couple maintained their innocence but “admitted to having carried out the crime to keep from being lynched” (Castillo 2015). Regardless of who carried out the kidnapping and killing of this young girl, the story and the fact that many locals believe that the accused committed the crime, suggests the continued force of narratives of gang violence and the struggle for territorial control. The log of asylum cases written by Michael Smith as well as my analysis of interviews and declarations of refugees from Todos Santos and the ethnographic accounts of Sharp and Burrell suggest that gendered violence in the form of physical beatings, rape, attempted rape, and death threats are not infrequent. Whether perpetrated by PNC, soldiers, security committee members, spouses, family members, local gang members or neighbors, violence against women appears to be common. If women attempt to bring cases of violence forward, there are other structural obstacles they face within the different formal justice systems available to them. Ethnic, Linguistic, and Racial Marginalization and Access to Specialized CourtsWhile Guatemala has a majority indigenous population of 60 percent (International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs, IWGIA 2016) with 24 different indigenous ethnic and linguistic groups, long-standing discrimination and economic marginalization of indigenous peoples endures. The indigenous population is 2.8 times poorer than the non-indigenous minority, have 13 years less of life expectancy, and only 5 percent of university students are indigenous (IWGIA 2016a: 82). The Department of Huehuetenango is classified as majority indigenous (47 percent) with Mam and Q’anjob’al as the dominant indigenous languages spoken along smaller populations of Jakalteco, Acateco, Chuj, Aguateco, and Tectiteco (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Guatemala 2014: 12, cuadro 8, see also IWGIa 2016 b).Teresa and eleven other women with similar cases from the same region of Huehuetenango I have worked with are monolingual Mam speakers with very limited or no formal education. When they are in their own communities and if they are able to travel to the center of Todos Santos municipality and further to the department capital of Huehuetenango, they can likely get along in Mam. Once they are in Huehuetenango, however, Spanish becomes the common language. As soon as Spanish becomes the language that information is communicated in, access to knowledge is limited for monolingual Mam speakers. This includes knowledge about the 2008 law against femicide and domestic violence as well as the existence of the specialized courts for gendered violence. The Huehuetenango branch of the Defense of Indigenous Women (DEMI), has processed 179 court cases in Huehuetenango, including in Courts for Crimes of Femicide and other Forms of Violence Against Women in Guatemala. In an interview with DEMI staff in Huehuetenango, one of the workers told us: “The women in indigenous communities here don’t know about the process. The women don’t know about the system. They have not heard about the Femicide law or the specialized courts.” Another staff member who is indigenous herself added, “They have not done any publicity of the law or of the existence of the courts in our languages.” She continued to speak about the problems of women who have suffered sexual violence (often as well as domestic) and who are required to have a medical exam by doctors from the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Forenses de Guatemala (National Institute for Forensic Sciences of Guatemala, INACIF) as a part of the investigative process. We continued to discuss linguistic, cultural, and racial barriers to gendered justice for indigenous women. She continues: For us in DEMI, one of two biggest obstacles to getting women to bring their cases of rape and domestic violence forward is, first, that they won’t let anyone accompany them in these medical exams AND the doctors don’t speak indigenous languages. Women or young girls go in there and they can’t explain to them what happened. If a young girl or young woman goes in there, for example, and they can’t even talk, then they can get revictimized. The doctors are all-powerful. They won’t let anyone go with that young girl. That just increases the damage for the girl. Those doctors don’t have any cultural competency. It is VERY hard for women and girls who come forward. These women risk their lives to file formal charges and a lot of time they are treated really badly. Lynn: And what happens when women try to report an incident of violence to the National Civil Police in their municipalities? DEMI staff person: They police are never from the same municipality. They do not speak local indigenous languages. Here in the Police Academy for the PNC, only 10 percent of the people who are being trained are even from Huehuetenango. What we really need is to reform the justice system so that they are people who are from the same linguistic communities as the people who are using the justice system. The majority of people who are in the justice system are monolingual in Spanish. Geographic Isolation and Reconciliation by Municipal Juezes de la Paz in Cases of Domestic ViolenceAs exemplified by Teresa’s case, geographic isolation can also be an additional factor limiting indigenous women’s access to specialized courts for violence against women. Most women in rural hamlets in places like Todos Santos have not heard of the specialized courts for femicide and domestic violence. If women have access to any kind of legal system it is likely to be through channels of customary law and adjudication. As seen above, the justice system in Todos Santos was in the hands of the centralized security committee and municipal authorities. Even accessing the local Justice of the Pace is unlikely to yield any change in their daily situation. Local women we interviewed in 2016 were not encouraged about women receiving justice from the local Jueza de la Paz in cases of domestic violence. We asked how likely they thought the judge would be to channel cases of domestic violence, sexual violence, feminicide and other forms of violence against women to the specialized court in Huehuetenango for gender violence. Norma Ramirez Pablo, who has participated in women’s groups in the municipality that include projects such as rotating credit and savings associations, food production and marketing, and domestic violence workshops, responded to ur question with a kind of stunned silence. I asked, “How much support have you seen in the local Juzgado for cases of domestic violence?“Well, “ paused Norma for at least a minute…. “There is a phone number people can call…..” I asked, “What happens if people want to do something about domestic violence?” Norma responded, “ Well if they want something to happen…. and we will take them directly to Ministerio Publico in Huehuetenango.. We have also supported cases of the abuse of children as well.” In other words, if a woman came to Norma seeking support to end domestic violence, her first response would be to get them out of Todos Santos and away from the customary justice system and the local official justice system. Mariana who has a job with the municipality was even more direct in her criticism of the Juzgado de Paz. Well, if the women come here to complain about domestic violence, we are supposed to pass them on to the Juzgado de Paz. There is a woman there who is the judge, but she doesn’t pay much attention to women. She wants them to reconcile with the people beating them….We have also sent two women to the DEMI office in Huehuetenango and they support us. There were women who are beaten and they go to the PNC, but many of them flee to the United States with their kids. …Sometimes the PNC ask for money, like Q1,000, Q1,500 or Q2,000 to get the men out of jail. Both Mariana and Norma suggested that most women would not fare well if they took their cases of domestic and other forms of violence to the local Juzgado de la Paz. Mariana strongly suggested that a majority of women decide to flee to the U.S. and are willing to borrow sums of money as large as $8,000-$10,000 to escape domestic and other forms of violence. This echoed what one of the DEMI employees stated, citing cases of women who borrowed large sums of money with interest to pay coyotes to get to the U.S. and the gave up their houses and family lands as collaboral in case they cannot pay. Conclusions: U.S. Gender-Based Asylum and the Possibilities for Indigenous Female RefugeesMy interviews with Mam women in the U.S who fled communities in Huehuetenango, with Mam women and others who work with women in Guatemala trying to help them achieve justice in cases of gendered violence, as well as ethnographic and legal accounts all suggest that poor, rural indigenous women’s chances of achieving justice for gendered violence are slim in Guatemala. Contested masculinities within overlapping systems of security and justice in Guatemala continue to significantly diminish women’s access to gendered justice. For those like Teresa and the eleven others whose cases I am working on, what happens to them once they get into U.S. asylum courts? In a recent article, Blaine Bookey who is the Co-Legal Director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the UC Hastings College of Law, states that despite the critical advancement of gendered asylum law in the 2014 ruling in a case known as Matter of A-R-C-G, that “arbitrary and inconsistent outcomes have continued to characterize asylum adjudication in this area of the law” (2016: 2). She suggests that there has been signifcant advancement in that most judges no longer reject domestic violence as a basis for asylum categorically because they see domestic violence as personal and private. She finds, however, that despite the fact that the landmark ruling of A-R-C-G does cement the broader legal principle that domestic violence can serve as a basis for asylum, this nevertheless leaves judges a great deal of discretion, particulary in terms of “its muddled defintion of ‘a particular social group’” (Bookey 2016: 4). Bookey suggests that the issue is the limited scope of the “social group” advanced by Aminta Cifuentes’s case. Although the earlier Guatemalan case of Rody Alvarado established that a social group of “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” and “were survivors of domestic violence” could quality for asylum, the Immigration Board in the case of A-R-C-G went on to consider whether the terms used to describe this group have comonly acceptable definitions and create definable boundaries. The slippery slope of the requirements of proving with each case the “social distinction” and “particularity” of this social group, sets a high bar for the kind of evidence each gendered asylum seeker must establish. This evidence is likely to include country conditions, law enforcement statistics, and expert testimony (Bookey 2016: 9). Bookey’s article raises a series of of important questions about access to gendered asylum that I can add to through my analysis of Mam refugee women fleeing multiple gendered violences.These include: ? How should judges analyze cases where women are not legally married to their abusers, but are in domestic relationships? ?How do women demonstrate they are not able to separate from partners if those partners refuse to let them go and continue to send them threats through tranborder community networks? ?How do judges weigh the fact that Guatemala has strong laws against violence against women and even specialized courts, but such courts are inaccessible to many women? ?How do judges evaluate a reformed security system and the National Civil Police that does not respond to most women’s complaints of violence? ?How can judges’ own pre-conceived ideas about indigenous societies and indigenous women frame how much credibility they give to the testimonies of indigenous women giving testimony in their own languages in court? ?How do judges evaluate cases where women did not report their abuse in contexts where customary and local official justice systems are likely to counsel women to reconcile with their abusers?Bookey’s article analyzes 67 decisions from cases of women seeking asylum based on domestic violence. The outcomes include 45 immigration judges and 22 Board decisions. The cases primarily consisted of women from the Northern Triangle countries of honduras, Guatemala, and El El Slavador, but also included Carmeroon, Colombia, The Domincan Republic, Ecuador, Egypt and Nicaragua. The judges presided over cases in 22 jurisdictions ranging from across the country (see Bookey 2016: 11, note 43 for a list of cities). In her analysis of the cases, Bookey found common obstacles to protection in the cases of women fleeing domestic violence. These included discrediting women’s testimony, denying protection to women who were not formally married but in long-standing relationships, denying protection to women who did not divorce or formally move out or separate, not believing men were influenced by local systems of masclunity that grant men rights over women’s bodies, and not considering country conditions with regard to whether or not states are able to truly protect women who suffer from violence (Bookey 2016: 12-18). Bookey concludes that there is “a dearth of binding standards” and a “lack of trianing for immigration judges on the dynamics and sensitivities of domestic and other-gender-based violence” (2016: 19). Bookey’s analysis presents a very pessimistic forcast for indigenous women petitioning for gendered asylum in U.S. immigration courts. To some degree, this forecast fails to take into account the agency of indigenous women such as those from Todos Santos and their ability to leverage long-established community networks and experience in the U.S. asylum system. If it is true that more than 1000 people from Todos Santos have been granted asylum and some of these people go back and forth between Todos Santos and communities in San Fransisco, Grand Rapids, and other places where Mam Todo Santeros have settled, then the vehicle of asylum is well known in Todo Santos. In the work I have done with female refugees from this community, I have seem women advising other women about the possibility of gendered asylum and serving as translators and informal advisors to one another. Thus Mam refugee women demonstrate significant agency, first by seeking out people to help them to file asylum applications and then in their actions to support one another. The primary obstacle for most is access to an asylum lawyer and expert witnesses who are willing to do pro-bono work. In the cases I have been working on, we have established a collaborative project that involves a local NGO where Mam refugees go to access social services that makes referrals, a network of immigration lawyers willing to take cases pro-bono and myself and two graduate students who work on initial intake interviews and preparing materials for the lawyers. In Oregon all of the cases are heard by just two judges, both of who are very well educated now on the range of issues involved in the cases, and treat women seeking asylum with a great deal of respect and care in their courtrooms. What both Bookey’s analysis and my own experience in working with women seeking asylum suggests, is that we do need to offer specialized training to immigration judges on the the continuum of violences that affect women coming from Guatemala and other Central American countries, the complexities of overlapping legal and security systems, and the persistence of competing cultures of mascluinity that continue to bar indigenous and many other women from access to justice, even in the specialized courts for gender violence in Guatemala. What we might also do here in the U.S. is to take a cue from the Guatemala justice system and require that all judges who do hear cases asylym involving gendered violence go through the same time of systematic training that Guatemalan judges do who sit in specialized courts. While the specialized tribunals in Guatemala are not accessible to many women, for those women who do get their cases heard and are able to follow through the legal process, conviction rates are significantly higher than in regular courts. I would venture to guess that if U.S. immigration judges had to complete an intensive course not only in gender violence and its causes but also in understanding the complex origins of the continuum of gender violence in Latin America and the role of U.S. foreign and immigration policy in that continuum, that their rulings would change significantly. Sources Cited Bevan, Anna Claire. 2011. Feminicide: Guatemala’s Growing Epidemic. New Internationalist. August 22, 2011. Available at: , Blaine. 2016. Gender Asylum Post-Matter of A-R-C-G: Evolving Standards and Fair Application of the Law. Southwestern Journal of International Law 22:1-19. Bossen, Laurel. 1984. The Redivision of Labor: Women and Economic Choice in Four Guatemalan Communities. 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Berkeley: University of California Press. Leiby, Michelle. 2009. Wartime Sexual violence in Guatemala and Peru. International Studies Quarterly 53: 445-468.Levinson, Deborah T. 2013. Adiós Ni?o: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Menjívar, Cecilia. 2011. Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. ___________________.2008. Violence and Women’s Lives in Eastern Guatemala: A Conceptual Framework. Latin American Research Review 43 (3): 109-136. Nelson, Diane and Carlota MacAllister, eds., 2013. Aftermath: War by Other Means in Post-Genocide Guatemala. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Nelson, Diane. 2009. Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala. Durham and London: Duke University PressNotivision CVC. Acusan a pareja de secuestrar y dar muerte a ni?a. June 19, 2015. Available at: Judicial de Guatemala . 2016. Informacion Judicial. 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