Femgenocide and sanación: limits to reparation for gender-based violence in the Guatemalan war and on the objective of a community collective

Abstract

The article analyzes the armed conflict in Guatemala (1960-1996), when military forces, mainly stateowned, committed massive sexual violence against indigenous women, with a high number of deaths.
The study focuses on gender and race, specifying violence against indigenous women, based on the
concept of femigenocide, indifferent to international norms for the protection of human rights and its
failure to provide an efficient process of reparation, during the transitional justice system, which
constituted a “Historical Clarification Commission” (CEH). It is observed in its Final Report, the
absence of more sensitive instruments capable of identifying gender violence and the femigenocidal
intention of the State itself. By not being adequately represented in the CEH document, they cause a
type of invisibility of the experiences of violence, considering above all that the main victims were
women of Mayan origin. Why have there been no advances in massive and symbolic material
reparations for past crimes against indigenous women after the transitions to peace in Guatemala?
Which movements arise from the organization and cosmovision of communities and Guatemalan
community feminism? Based on the concept of femigenocide and cruelty pedagogy brought by Rita
Segato and based on the analysis of new regulations on gender violence in countries at war, we propose
to elucidate aspects of this violence against Guatemalan indigenous women who were made invisible in
the document. At the end, it presents an original proposal and a collective of Actoras de Cambio concerned with the damage, consequences and 'sanaciones', the cure, of all the damage caused by war
on women's bodies.