Lucia Munoz is the Executive Director of MIA, Mujeres Iniciando en las Americas
I
was born in Guatemala in 1963 and moved to the U.S. when I was five
years old. I returned to Guatemala in my teen years (1976), and was
there during some of the worst years of the civil war which lasted
until 1996. I heard gunfire constantly and witnessed military personnel
stop people on the street and on buses and lead them away. My friend, a
teenage neighbor of mine, disappeared in the middle of the night. I
started asking questions but was instructed by my family to ignore all
of these things.
I
moved back to the U.S. to attend high school in 1980. I got married in
1982 at 19 years of age and my husband and I started an import-export
business. As part of this business, I traveled to Guatemala repeatedly.
During these trips I asked questions and began to learn and understand
what was happening in the civil conflict, in particular, that girls and
women were being tortured, raped and killed. I learned that this
brutality towards women was being employed as a means of population
control to keep mothers from raising leftist children. It was also a
tool to instill fear and prevent rebellion.
As
a U.S. taxpayer, I was horrified to learn that the abuse of women was
being taught by the School of the Americas as a counter-insurgency
tactic, and thus that my tax dollars were being spent to promote the
evil and injustice in Guatemala.
The
war in Guatemala ended in 1996, but with the conservatives in control,
the torture and killings of girls and women continue. This became what
is now termed the f.feminicide.
In
2001, Raul Molina and I s co founded an organization with a group of
Guatemalans named Guatemala Peace and Development Network. The goal of
this organization was to help honor the 1996 peace accords. I became
the women’s affairs coordinator for the group, and in this position I
came to learn of the widespread killing of women in Guatemala.
Because
I came from a military family, I was embarrassed to know that my family
could be part of this gender violence. By 2004, I needed to become
more directly involved with ending the feminicide . In 2005, I
founded MIA, Mujeres Iniciando en Las Americas (Women Initiating in the
Americas) to help end this injustice. As founder and executive
director, I work with students and others here in the U.S. raising
consciousness about this sad reality our sisters issue, and also work
with Fundacion Sobrevivientes in Guatemala working to end feminicide.
Sobrevivientes, under the directoin of Norma Cruz, runs a center in
Guatemala City which helps survivors of feminicide crimes and family
members of women who have been killed.
Since
2001, I have traveled to Guatemala at least twice a year for at least
two weeks each time. Last year, I traveled to Guatemala five times for
a total of ten weeks. I just returned from a two-week fact-finding
visit in March of this year. On this trip I had the opportunity to
witness a trial during which a flawed police investigation resulted in
a typical example of impunity. During every visit I meet with survivors
at the Sobrevivientes Center to learn first-hand the true extent of the
feminicide.
Links:
MIAmericas
