Guatemala 9

August 17, 2010

Guatemala 9

Another, raped by eight men, one man after another. She was also pregnant before the rape. “In one sense,” she tells us, “we allowed ourselves to be raped...to save our husbands, our families.” These aren’t stories from the past, or from the armed conflict, from the scorched earth campaign of the early 1980s. These events took place 14 years after the signing of the Peace Accords. More than a decade after the Truth Commission. This was the second time these women spoke of their experiences, three years after the fact. They tell us of many problems between them and their husbands, but things are getting better. They walk around the table to hug us and look us in the eyes, one by one, and they thank us for listening.