El Faro English presented an English version of a piece by Edward Grattan relating to the tiral and sentencing of those found responsible for the deaths of the 41 young girls in the fire at the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción.
It took eight grueling years for Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice to place charges on those accused in the 2017 tragedy at the shelter home Hogar Seguro where 41 young girls were killed after being locked in a dorm room fire. The facility’s name rings like a cruel joke: “Safe Home.”
The morning of the sentencing, this past August, the courtroom was filled to capacity with journalists, international observers, family members and many of the 15 survivors. The air heavy and hot, they sank into their plastic seats or clung to what wall space was left, painted in pale yellow from the windows’ tint. The few fans in the room were turned on minutes at a time because their jet-loud motors drowned out the voices in court. One man in the audience yelled for the judge to speak louder and was threatened to be kicked out.
One survivor, Elba Alina Contreras Ixjotop, had been to many sessions before. She anticipated the cameras and all the extra eyes in the courtroom that day. She was wearing gloves covering her now-healed hands, a teal hoodie pulled tight over her head, oversized dark sunglasses. She spent time choosing where to sit, nervously whispering with other survivors and family members. She settled on the center of the first row.
[…]
The memorial altar for the girls killed at Hogar Seguro, squarely in front of the National Palace of Culture at the Constitutional Plaza in Guatemala City, had been defaced 19 times by the day of the sentencing of six public officials for the crime. The grassroots Colectiva Plaza de las Niñas repainted it — again. They have led an effort for Guatemalans in the heart of the historic downtown Zone 1 to refer to the public square, the starting point for all highway kilometer markers across the country, as the Plaza of the Girls.
You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, Nine Minutes in the Fire, Eight Years For the First Light.
Categories: Accompaniment, Criminalisation, Criminalization, Femicide, Human Rights, Impunity, Poverty, Racism, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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