Josefina Salomón and Sergio Ortiz Borbolla spoke with Dr. Jo-Marie Burt, a Senior Fellow at WOLA, about the historic importance of two gender violence trials, that of the Maya Q’eqchi’ women of Sepur Zarco, and of the Maya Achi women of Rabinal, the impact they had on Guatemala’s Judiciary, and the crisis the country currently faces when it comes to punishing human rights violations and corruption.
When 15 Maya Q’eqchi’ indigenous women became the first to win a case against former military officials in 2016, they made history. The officials were found guilty of systematically raping them and subjecting them to sexual and domestic slavery for several years in the Sepur Zarco military detachment during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict in the early 1980s. It was the first time that a Guatemalan court found that systematic rape was used by the Guatemalan military as a weapon of war.
Nearly six years later, in January 2022, five Maya Achi indigenous women secured the conviction of five former paramilitaries for the sexual violence they committed in the municipality Rabinal, also in the early 1980s.
Dr. Jo-Marie Burt, a Senior Fellow at WOLA and an expert on transitional justice who investigated the cases for years and was present at the trials, says that while the convictions marked a historic achievement for human rights in Guatemala and beyond, the women of Rabinal and Sepur Zarco are still awaiting for all the perpetrators, including the intellectual authors, to face the courts, and for reparations to be fully implemented.
It is a powerful and insightful piece, and you can read the full article on the WOLA website, with links, here ‘The Indigenous Women of Guatemala had the Courage to Break the Silence’.
Categories: Accompaniment, Femicide, Gender, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Military, Mining, Racism, Resource Extraction, Solidarity in Action, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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