---

BY HANNA KOZLOWSKA

In print | Published October 29, 2009

The blissful marimba music in Science Center 104 created a stark contrast with what was in store for the attendees of Thursday’s “The Day That Changed My Life Forever” lecture. Gladys Monterroso, a 52-year-old Guatemalan lawyer, brought herself and several students to tears while speaking about being kidnapped and tortured in March 2009.

As a part of an ongoing cooperation with the Guatemalan Human Rights Commision, or GHRC, a non-profit organization who brought an indigenous family from Guatemala to speak last year, Monterosso was invited to speak at Swarthmore by Aurora Camacho de Schmidt, associate professor of Spanish.

Monterroso is a political and human rights activist, a law professor at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala in Guatemala City, secretery general for a major political party (Encuentro por Guatemala) and wife of Human Rights ombudsman Sergio Morales. She was kept in captivity, raped and tortured both physically and mentally for 12 hours before she was thrown out on the street tied up, blindfolded and half-naked.

Monterroso is touring colleges in the United States to talk about her tragedy and the situation of women in Guatemala. The Swarthmore event was sponsored by the Forum for Free Speech, the Lang Center, the Intercultural Center and the Latin American studies department.

“I wasn’t sure we should invite her,” Camacho de Schmidt said. “It is very hard to talk about these issues.”

Monterroso’s kidnapping was described in detail during the lecture, first in a 15- minute documentary film titled “Violence Against Women and Impunity in Guatemala” in which the whole event was reenacted, and then retold by the speaker herself.

Three men in yellow masks captured her in broad daylight on a busy street and threw her in a van, blindfolded her and tied her up. When they arrived at their destination, they threw her on a mattress and put a gun against her temple. They raped her, beat her and burned her arms, probably with cigarette butts. They forced her to drink liquor and swallow pills.

It is believed that Monterroso was kidnapped to pressure her husband not to release information about military crimes that he had been collecting for years. Monterroso was taken on the day the documents were to be made public by her husband.

“I’m very concerned about Guatemala. It’s easy to forget about a country so small and seemingly unimportant,” Schmidt said.

Guatemala suffered a civil war from 1960 to 1996, the longest in Latin America. The war was a guerilla conflict with insurgents fighting against the military government. According to the CIA World Factbook, 100,000 people were killed in the war, although other organizations estimate that the number is higher. One million of the country’s 13 million residents were displaced. “Almost every person in Guatemala has been affected by the war,” said the GHRC’s Kelsey Alford-Jones, Monterroso’s interpreter. The country has been in turmoil ever since the war ended. Narcotics trafficking and organized crime are prevalent. According to the GHRC there is a 98 percent impunity level, meaning that only two percent of crimes are prosecuted.

Monterosso’s captor, Oscar Martin Gutierrez Valle, was released. The judges claimed a new investigation had to be conducted.

Monterroso’s lawyers are appealing the case. When talking about the court procedures, Monterroso seemed very upset. “My huge crime was to have survived. I’m fighting with huge ghosts,” she said.
The fact that Monterroso decided to litigate the case is a rare exception to Guatemalan norms.

The crimes that go unrecorded most often are committed against women. “All women live in fear,” Monterosso said, shaking her hands in the air. “On public buses, they wear pants in fear of being raped, right there, on the bus, in front of all the commuters,” she said.

After telling her story she went on to talk about other tragic and gruesome cases. She recounted the story of Heidi, a 14- year-old girl. To become gang members in Guatemala, boys must often rape and kill a woman. According to Monterroso, boys as young as eleven join gangs. Because the three youngs boys who captured Heidi didn’t know how to kill a person, they stabbed Heidi 75 times. Monterroso could barely speak when telling this story, choking back tears.

This was one of the many cases of femicide in Guatemala. “Femicide” is homicide commited against a woman for the sole reason of her being female, according to the GHRC. In 2008 alone over 700 women were killed. And the numbers are increasing. “Statistics make more sense than just a written number when coming from a real person,” said Frances Kvietok ‘10, who helped secure funding for the event.

The lecture was followed by a question and answer session. The majority of the students who attended were from the Spanish and Latin American studies, peace and conflict studies and gender and sexuality studies programs. Many of the questions were posed in Spanish by native speakers from countries like Peru and Mexico.

Students wanted to know how they could help with the situation in Guatemala.

“You feel like you want to do something,” Kvietok said. “It is really frustrating, hearing such a strong testimony and not being able to do anything,” she added. Monterroso told The Phoenix that this was a question posed very often by students in the United States. “It is immensely gratifying,” she said.

Monterroso encouraged the students to form networks, to talk about the problems, to come to Guatemala and try to change the people’s mentality by creating outside pressure. Students were provided with various brochures and fact sheets to learn more about the problem.

After hearing the testimony, it was difficult for students to return to class.

“Having attended such an intense, emotional event, it is hard to go back to real life,” Kvietok said.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »