About MIA

ABOUT MIA
Our Mission
It is MIA’s mission to increase  consciousness in the United States of the mistreatment of women in Guatemala; to improve socioeconomic conditions for Guatemalan women; to remove the gender bias in the Guatemalan government; promote educational programs to reduce domestic violence and  feminicide, and promote equal treatment for women. Our purpose is to help effect genuine and lasting change in the conditions for women in Guatemala.
MIA’s Goals
Insist on the prosecution for rape and  feminicide To encourage the Guatemalan government to honor peace accords made to eliminate discrimination against women. Promote careers in the justice system to women in Guatemala. Press for judicial reform in Guatemala. Insist on progress toward prosecution of outstanding cases. To obtain reparations from the Guatemalan government. Obtain just and fair compensation for the survivors and families of massacred women. To create domestic violence intervention and prevention workshops for abused women in Guatemala. .To improve social and economic conditions for Guatemalan women
In Guatemala, gender discrimination is part of the reality of life, but it doesn’t have to be. Because of laws that discriminate against women and existing cultural values, violence against women is considered normal. Rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence aren’t treated seriously by the justice system in Guatemala, so guilty men get away with crimes against women. This impunity reinforces discrimination enabling continued violence. Callous treatment by the justice system further victimizes women reporting crimes. Organizations including the United Nations and Amnesty International have recognized the unjust treatment of women in Guatemalan courts. MIA was founded to help women organizations change the laws in Guatemala to better suit the needs of the victimized women.
MIA
Mujeres Iniciando en las Américas campaigns against gender bias and domestic violence in Guatemala. MIA provides  support for organizations in Guatemala with similar missions, such as Sobrevivientes, a Guatemalan organization led by Nobel prize nominee Norma Cruz, who works for women’s rights in Guatemala. Norma Cruz was awarded an International Women of Courage Award by Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Sobrevivientes is a major source of information from Guatemala for MIA
Programs and Projects
MIA has applied for and won several grants to aid Sobrevivientes. One such grant from the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Fund (UUWF)  paid for radio ads in Guatemala decrying violence against women. We have also obtained an anonymous grant from a private donor which is paid for Norma Cruz’s daughter to learn English. Another grant we obtained on behalf of Sobrevivientes paid for $12,000 of office equipment: desks, computers and other office needs.
About our Executive Director, Lucía Muñoz
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.
Our Mission
It is MIA’s mission to increase consciousness about the mistreatment of women in Guatemala, to improve socioeconomic conditions for Guatemalan women, to remove gender bias in the Guatemalan government, promote educational programs to reduce domestic violence and  feminicide, and promote equal treatment for women.  Our purpose is to help effect genuine and lasting change in the conditions for women in Guatemala.

MIA’s Goals
Insist on the prosecution for rape and feminicide.  To encourage the Guatemalan government to honor peace accords made to eliminate discrimination against women.  Promote careers in the justice system to women in Guatemala.  Press for judicial reform in Guatemala. Insist on progress toward prosecution of outstanding cases.  To obtain reparations from the Guatemalan government. Obtain just and fair compensation for the survivors and families of massacred women.  To create domestic violence intervention and prevention workshops for abused women in Guatemala.   To improve social and economic conditions for Guatemalan women

In Guatemala, gender discrimination is part of the reality of life.  Because of laws that discriminate against women and existing cultural values, violence against women is considered normal.  Rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence aren’t treated seriously by the justice system in Guatemala, so guilty men get away with crimes against women.  This impunity reinforces discrimination enabling continued violence.  Callous treatment by the justice system further victimizes women reporting crimes.
Organizations including the United Nations and Amnesty International have recognized the unjust treatment of women in Guatemalan courts.  MIA was founded to help women organizations change the laws in Guatemala to better suit the needs of the victimized women.

MIA
Mujeres Iniciando en las Américas campaigns against gender bias and domestic violence in Guatemala. MIA provides  support for organizations in Guatemala with similar missions, such as Sobrevivientes, a Guatemalan organization led by Nobel prize nominee Norma Cruz, who works for women’s rights in Guatemala.  Norma Cruz was awarded an International Women of Courage Award by Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Sobrevivientes is a major source of information from Guatemala for MIA

Programs and Projects
MIA has applied for and won several grants to aid Sobrevivientes.  One such grant from the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Fund (UUWF)  paid for radio ads in Guatemala decrying violence against women.  We have also obtained an anonymous grant from a private donor which is paid for Norma Cruz’s daughter to learn English.  Another grant we obtained on behalf of Sobrevivientes paid for $12,000 of office equipment: desks, computers and other office needs.

 

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