In the Northern Central American Triangle, consisting of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, a dark cloud of economic struggles is deeply entwined with a history of persistent violence and corruption. Amidst decades of civil wars and political unrest, a tangled criminal terrain has taken root, with the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 emerging as the predominant gangs, especially in Honduras. Despite consistently high homicide rates, recent anti-gang efforts in El Salvador have seen some success in reducing murders.
Although there aren’t as many homicides as in Mexico or Brazil, femicide rates in Honduras are the highest in Latin America with 4.6 cases per 100,000 women. According to the Vienna Declaration on Femicide, the term “femicide” could be described as “the killing of women and girls because of their gender”.
Femicide has sadly become a norm in Honduras, with many women accepting it as part of their reality. Today we will be exploring the stories of 3 honduran women who grew up seeing or experiencing the abuse which news channels fail to describe.
Uva: ,,I was sexually assaulted by a male nurse”.
Uva is 20 years old and she is from San Pedro Sula, infamously recognized as “The Murder Capital of the World”. She admits that San Pedro is safer than Tegucigalpa, the actual capital of Honduras, but less safe than the rest of the country. As a woman living in San Pedro, Uva only feels safe walking alone if she is in broad daylight or if she has her male best friend with her. Uva has sadly been sexually assaulted by a male nurse and she hasn’t contacted the authorities: “I was going through a medical emergency that lasted months and I deemed the whole ordeal way too complicated and expensive.”
In Honduras, women generally do not ask for help from authorities, as they are known for being corrupt: “I know plenty of cases of them being corrupt. They killed a woman in 2021 and there is still no justice for her.” When it comes to the reports of femicide on online/tv news, some channels have a tendency to blame the victims: “I haven’t seen newspapers do that, but popular news channel (HCH) has a plethora of very sexist journalists whom victim blame. All of them have a tendency to misgender transwomen and I remember a specific instance when a 15 year old girl was murdered by her 40 year old “husband” but the age gap was not alluded to be wrong in any of the reportings I saw.” We can therefore tell that in Honduras women are usually blamed, not believed or plainly ignored. Uva believes that this phenomenon happens because “they don’t fit into the standard of what the “ideal” honduran woman should be: christian, non-sexworker, not partying, non-white”.
Although there were several anti-femicide protests in Honduras, Uva couldn’t take part in any of them. She has only done efforts inside her circle, because she was too afraid to do it in public: “social activists are purposely killed”. If she could send a message to the policymakers and law enforcement officials in Honduras, Uva wouldn’t know what to say to them, because she thinks they wouldn’t understand: “Politics here are so messed up. None of them understand what they’re doing beyond getting paid and making this a more christian country. I would just punch any of them if I’m honest.”
Based on a dataset from Global Violent Deaths that shows the number and rate of homicides globally, by region and country, between 2004-2021, we could visualize how this phenomenon expressed itself chronologically in numbers. By doing so, we managed to contextualize this story with a dashboard that has three visualizations, correlated to each other.
Between 2013-2014, the peak moments in the topic of homicides for Honduras, El Salvador and Venezuela are highlighted by the deep red formed on the map. According to InSight Crime, initially, the gang truce formed in 2012 succeeded to drop the homicide rate in the country by 53 percent, but the inability of the government to prepare the population for the truce or to conduct the second phase of negotiations with the gangs led to the collapse of the gang truce and hence more homicides. Another reason may be that the Northern Central American Triangle is the “gate” through which latin american gangs are exporting their cargo, hence the probability to encounter danger there is higher.
In 2019, protests against President Juan Orlando Hernández, accused of corruption and electoral fraud, caused the homicide rates to increase again. Alongside, women started to raise their voices in a larger number, directly proportional with the price of the victims they had to pay in order to raise awareness on the femicide cases.
Amy: ,,When there’s news that a woman was murdered by their partner, it’s 99% of the time portrayed as her being unfaithful.”
Amy is a 26 years old woman who is also from San Pedro Sula. Similarly to Uva, she doesn’t feel safe walking alone, which is why she hardly does: “I’m fortunate enough to be able to drive my family’s car, and even when I’m not driving, I’m not alone.” Although she does not carry protection tools, she has considered buying pepper spray or a taser, but they are illegal in Honduras.
She hasn’t been a victim of sexual assault herself, but she knows several women who have felt threatened and have been a victim of sexual abuse: “Out of 10 cases of people (not even femicides only, murders in general) who have gone through any type of violence, perhaps 1 or 2 have a proper follow up or get justice applied to the perpetrator.”
Amy shares the same opinion as Uva, that the news channels blame the victims, not only for femicides, but any type of violence against minorities (LGBTQ+, racialized groups): “The media uses a language which makes things harder for the victims. To give a single example, when there’s news that a woman was murdered by their partner, it’s 99% of the time portrayed as her being unfaithful and almost justifying the partner’s actions, to which a large amount of the audience also agrees”.
Amy managed to be present at feminist protests before. There usually aren’t many people present at the protests, but according to her, there is always “at least one idiot man screaming things like “women love to be hit, and that he’s going to rape us all“. She sent us a video footage from a protest on March 8th in San Pedro Sula.
@geysimiranda Y no quedo grabado donde nos lanzo cosas #sanpedrosula #8marzo💜 #honduras🇭🇳 ♬ sonido original – MIRANDA
As a message for the people in power, Amy has to say: “Feminist groups have quite literally created guides for you people to follow in order to better handle gender-based violence in our country, yet you continue to turn away and to defend the elite’s interests over protecting the people who have elected you to be in power. It hurts but you will never silence us.”
A dataset from dataUNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), that monitorized the count and rate of homicides between 1990 and 2022 in Latin America included the type of the homicide. Thus, we managed to split them into regions, to have a broader view on how the presence of the gangs and the machismo culture can affect different regions. Machismo is a set of values, that sees the value of the man above anything else. It enhances the idea that he has the right of control over his wife and kids and shouldn’t be confronted for his actions.
The numbers show that in Caribbean and South America there is a higher tendency to adopt this type of culture. On the other hand, the presence of the gangs doesn’t eliminate the possibility of machismo to show up all over Latin America, on the contrary, besides the higher number of homicides, it enhances the double-danger the women have to face everyday.
Attached to these factors is the human trafficking habit that is most based on female victims. According to Polaris Project’s “Sex Trafficking in or from Latin America Research Overview”, the victims are usually women and girls from cities, rural towns, and high poverty regions in Mexico, Central America, and South America deceived into romantic relationships, offered fake jobs, coerced by older family members, or approached by other victims.
Alexandra Kelly: ,,In the first 3 months of 2024, 29 women were killed in their own homes.”
Alexandra Kelly is from Tela, Atlántida, but she has lived in San Pedro Sula, Cortés for about 10 years. Just like Amy and Uva, she doesn’t feel safe anywhere: ,,I do not feel safe at home, and that’s not necessarily because of my family, but I’m scared that at any moment a stranger can break into my house and harm me. In the first 3 months of 2024, 29 women were killed in their own homes. Also, public spaces are dominated by violence. In Honduras, violence against women is very accepted by society.”
Alexandra has felt threatened many times, but the moment she was most scared was in a dispute with the military. She has contacted the authorities, but she thinks that they were the problem. At the moment, she has gone to the Supreme Court because of the situation and she is still waiting for a resolution: ,,We do not trust them. In 95% of femicide cases, there is impunity. Also, police and military personnel are attackers of women in the communities. We do not trust them.”
Although some of the media channels in Honduras do blame the victims, the organization Alexandra is a part of works with them so they transmit the news without blaming the victims. She believes that the machismo culture influences the control of women’s lives: “We almost do not have any reproductive and sexual rights. Abortion is penalized. If you decide to have a surgery to prevent having kids, you need to be a 35-year-old woman or already have 3 kids. The Church still makes decisions over women’s rights even though Honduras is a secular country.”
As an activist, Alexandra has been present at protests before. According to her, people would shout offensive words at the crowd and the police would try to intimidate protesters: ,,They also try to run you over with their cars or motorcycles.”
Since the women and organizations we reached out for are from Honduras, we also added a chart only with this country, for a better understanding of the situation.
From the same dataset, a big number of young girls appear to be victims of the femicide phenomenon as well. Girls not Brides provides us a major factor in this scenario: child marriage, that occurs especially in Latin America. But the sad reality is that there is a plethora of factors, and they are all connected to form a vicious circle that is almost impossible for these girls to escape from. It all starts with distancing from education. Many families don’t have the means to pay for school, and the government is said to take the money from public schools so there are no teachers. Since kids often do not go to school, they receive no sexual education, and hardly do at home either, so they either run off and meet someone who takes advantage of them on the streets, or they are arranged to marry by the parents themselves to be able to take off the burden of so many children and so little money. It has been found that young mothers sell off their girls to make money, and remain pregnant again to continue the cycle. Thereby, neither the little girls cannot escape the horrors of the machismo culture. As consequences the victims can suffer from early pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, violence from their partner, and more.
Feminist Research Unit of the Women’s Rights Center (CDM): ,,In 2023, of the 380 cases of violent deaths of women and femicides registered by the Ministry of Security, only 171 entered the Supreme Court of Justice and only ONE CASE OF FEMICIDE obtained a conviction.”
Lara Bohórquez, coordinator of the Feminist Research Unit of the Women’s Rights Center (CDM) told us that in the case of violent deaths of women and femicides, the authorities have different records: “For this, the women’s organizations that we monitor compare and try to have unique data.” Not only does the State and Supreme Court do not recognize the different types of violence women can go through, leading up to a final aggravated case of murder, but it also a common belief that the same authorities work to patch up and cover these cases, in order to maintain a certain image, and simply omit and dismiss these cases to avoid them from ever entering into the data systems.
CDM has been active for 31 years. During this time, the members have accompanied relatives of victims of femicides: ,,A transcendental case was that of Vanessa Zepeda, who for 5 years accompanied her relatives in search of justice.”
Lara Bohórquez told us that in 2023, from the 380 cases of violent deaths of women and femicides registered by the Ministry of Security, only 171 entered the Supreme Court of Justice and only one case of femicide obtained a conviction: ,,Furthermore, impunity can be seen from the beginning of the investigation, in the cadaveric surveys and in the formulation of hypotheses, where they end up wrongly categorizing the causes and types of violent deaths of women.”
The coordinator of CDM also told us that the sexist culture is the great cause of gender violence in the country. She believes that the structures that base and educate the population with “machismo” deepen and normalize said violence: “it is believed that “this is how things should be” or it is “our culture.” This is what generates naturalization and it is believed that “this is how we were born”, “it is natural” and “it cannot be changed.” However, we have had good experiences of deconstruction, but to do so, a real commitment is needed from the State.”
CDM has a long history in social protest and in building a feminist movement. They have gone through several stages, from the tiny steps taken with women and girls to recognize themselves as a political subject, the support for the constitution of a social movement of women and feminists, as well as street action. For example, CDM has contributed to social protest for all attempts to advance human rights: the promotion of the Domestic Violence Law, mobilizations against the Coup d’état and the drug dictatorship, accompaniment to other social movements (people in need, LGTBI+, workers), injustices regarding women’s rights (ban on abortion and PAE (the day after pill), events and marches on women’s commemorative dates, etc.).
The message the organization would like to transmit to the State is: “If they have made laws, they also have to enforce those laws, but let them assume that justice must prevail. There are many unjust laws in Honduras, so it is about going further, from the political conviction that women deserve dignified lives.”
article written by Grădiștean Miruna-Elena, Ionescu Bianca and Melendez Marisa
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