Guatemala's sexual violence trial continues

The Sepur Zarco trial in Guatemala is a landmark case that addresses sexual violence against women during wartime.

The trial of Valdez and Reyes is based on events in and around a small military base near the tiny hamlet of Sepur Zarco in the eastern department of Alta Verapaz during 1982 and 1983. These were the most intense years of the war when the country was run by military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

According to the prosecution, the women were forced to live in shacks outside the base after the army had first killed or disappeared their community's leaders, and then destroyed their homes and raped them. 

The initial raid allegedly stemmed from an effort by the community to obtain titles to their land. The prosecution argues that this led the military to view the community as filled with dangerous rebels at a time when the counterinsurgency strategy was focused on brutally eliminating all potential sympathy for the guerrilla movement. 

Over a period of about six months the women have testified that they were obliged to report to the base for "shifts" during which they had to cook and clean. At the same time the said they were subjected to systematic rape, sometimes by groups of 15 soldiers at a time.

The victims also tell of being forced to wash soldiers' clothes in a nearby river where they were also repeatedly raped.

As you can see from the summary above, the violence committed against communities during the conflict was often motivated by economic interests. The community was viewed as subversive because they tried to obtain titles for the land.

The case also sheds light on the roles of the self-defense patrols (PACs) and military commissioners in carrying out a brutal state policy and the struggles that the Guatemalan people endured in order to survive a barbaric regime.

The International Justice Monitor analyzes the first days of the trial here. See also my previous posts on Sepur Zarco trials begins in Guatemala (2015), Civil war era trials go forward in Guatemala (2014), and Guatemalan Sex Slaves Testify (2012).