Mindy’s Nightmare Video

From: noticias.nl
Subject: vídeo testimionio Mindy
To: miamericas.info
Date: Tuesday, October 5, 2010,

Estimadores editores y miembros del sitio Mujeres Iniciando en las Americas, en lazo con el articulo que publicaron el primero de noviembre 2009, hemos
realizado un reportaje con el testimonio de Mindy.

Queremos compartir nuestra producción, la pueden publicar en su sitio internet si lo desean.

http://www.laruta.nu/es/video/la-pesadilla-de-mindy

Aquí es disponible el vídeo con subtitulos ingleses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnGcwyVgvUc

con subtitulos franceses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6fJuPeE9JI

Quizás este vídeo sobre las condiciones de vida de las mujeres en el penal de Sensuntepeque en El Salvador les puede interesar también,

http://www.laruta.nu/es/video/detras-de-las-rejas-en-el-salvador

Pertenecemos a la Agencia de Prensa independiente Noticias.nl de Amsterdam, Países Bajos (http://www.noticias.nl) En estos momentos realizamos un proyecto  llamado LA Ruta en el cual informamos sobre los temas mencionados en los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (ODM’s) desde una perspectiva de la sociedad civil y movimientos sociales. Hemos realizado un viaje por México y Centroamérica publicando una serie de
artículos, reportajes y vídeos en nuestro sitio web (http://www.laruta.nu).

Saludos Fraternales
www.noticias.nl
www.laruta.nu

¿Y LAS NIÑAS QUÉ?

OPINION | Diario de Centroamerica | 5 de Octubre de 2010 | Olga Villalta

¿por qué la resistencia a utilizar un lenguaje e imágenes incluyentes? ¿Qué cuesta decir infancia o niñez y utilizar imágenes de ambos sexos? Será tan difícil para las empresas publicitarias encontrar personas creativas que inventen figuras atractivas para la niñez, más acordes con el respeto a los derechos humanos, en este caso de la niñez.

Hojeando los periódicos en búsqueda de un tema de interés nacional, saltan a mis ojos la diversidad de anuncios relacionados al día de la niñez. Una fundación felicita a niños y niñas. Sin embargo se denomina a sí misma Proniño.  El zoológico felicita a los “niños” en su día. Una compañía de refrescos indica “feliz Día del Niño”. Una pastelería utiliza la frase: “Jamás olvidará el día que fue el rey de la selva” con la foto de un niño. Otra propaganda indica “Los niños son el recurso más importante del mundo y la mejor esperanza para el futuro” (cita de J. F. Kennedy) y a continuación ofrece descuentos para celebrar el “Día del Niño”. Una droguería presenta su producto con la siguiente frase: “Cuidemos a nuestros niños como si todos los días fuera su día”. Una fábrica de ropa indica “Siempre serás nuestro consentido ¡feliz Día del Niño!”. Una empresa de comida rápida indica en su anuncio: “Celebrando la alegría de ser niño”. Una cadena de tiendas presenta su producto con la frase: “feliz Día del Niño”.  Una empresa de ropa utiliza la frase: “Cuando sea grande quiero seguir siendo niño”. Un centro comercial se anuncia diciendo: “Feliz Día del Niño”. Me exaspero y pregunto, ¿dónde están las niñas?

Reconozco que hay un avance en algunos anuncios, al ilustrar los mismos con imágenes de una niña y un niño. Sin embargo, en uno de ellos la niña viste una blusa decorada con princesas y el niño con un superhéroe.

Me da tristeza que las niñas sigan relegadas al segundo plano en la publicidad. Me pregunto, ¿por qué la resistencia a utilizar un lenguaje e imágenes incluyentes? ¿Qué cuesta decir infancia o niñez y utilizar imágenes de ambos sexos? Será tan difícil para las empresas publicitarias encontrar personas creativas que inventen figuras atractivas para la niñez, más acordes con el respeto a los derechos humanos, en este caso de la niñez. No se dan cuenta de que esta manera de ver el mundo es discriminatoria de la mitad de la población. Nuevamente me pregunto: ¿Acaso no se pueden utilizar íconos incluyentes como el cuidado de la naturaleza, el aire, el agua, las nubes? Hoy tanto las mujeres como los hombres tienen acceso a una diversidad de trabajos y roles sociales. Por lo tanto, esos son los que deberían estar en el imaginario cultural, y no imágenes anquilosadas con un mensaje de pasividad para las niñas y de acción para los niños.

Una frase que me llama la atención: “Ser un niño es ser feliz”. ¿Realmente la infancia es la época más feliz de la vida? ¿Cuánta población infantil no tiene acceso a alimentos, juguetes, libros y sobre todo a la dedicación de sus progenitores? Son pocas/os las niñas y niños que vienen al mundo por deseo explícito de quienes los engendran o conciben y por ello son vividos como una carga. Esa es la realidad que vive la mayoría de la niñez guatemalteca. No puedo decir que esta sociedad ama a la niñez, cuando ignora a las niñas.

Fighting Femicide in the Americas

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two articles about resisting femicide in the US-Mexico borderlands and the Americas

In a room hidden away in the basement floor of a campus building, gut-wrenching  images greeted visitors. A “life-size collage” constructed like a statue projected women’s faces, missing persons posters, death masks and other snapshots of sexual violence. Nearby, a poster of a skeleton and blind-folded girl depicted the “duality” of femicide (also known as feminicide) in the form of a victim coming back to life to give a potential victim advice. The works of art were products of New Mexico State University (NMSU) students and staff.

“We just wanted to show (people) what femicides looked like,” said student and collage creator Johana Bencomo. Jose Montoya, a retention adviser for NMSU’s College Assistance Migrant  Program, added that  his art  was meant to encourage people to visualize and think about femicide, the killing of women based on gender,  as the “most extreme form of violence against women.”

The collage and poster were appropriate if disturbing backdrops to a recent presentation of a ground-working book at NMSU’s main Las Cruces campus.  Terrorizing Women: Femicide in the Americas, is a book that examines women’s murders in Mexico, Central America and South America. Its chapters tell the personal stories of  victims and their relatives, delve into femicide theories, portray the cross-border anti-violence movement, and explore the notion of transnational justice.

Published by Duke University Press, the new book is co-edited by Dr. Cynthia Bejarano, associate professor of criminal justice at NMSU, and Dr. Rosa-Linda Fregoso, professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz. “This book is really a call to social action,” said Bejarano, stressing that the book’s concept goes beyond typical academic tracts to incorporate off-campus voices.

Two community women were on hand to discuss the book and share their personal stories: Ciudad Juarez mothers Evangelina Arce and Paula Bonilla Flores. Arce’s daughter Silvia disappeared in March 1998, while Bonilla Flores’ daughter, Sagrario Gonzalez, was murdered the same year. Both women have been committed and outspoken human rights activists over the years.

“We were driven to write this book by our shock and outrage,” said UC’s Rosa-Linda  Fregoso. “We’re writing against centuries of invisibility of violence against women.”

In a panel discussion, Fregoso set a framework when she spoke about violence against women in Latin America and other parts of the world as a kind of “low-intensity warfare on women’s bodies.” In places as geographically and culturally diverse as World War Two Europe, Vietnam, Africa, and the modern Balkans, women have been treated as “war booty,” Fregoso said.

With drug-fueled violence devastating Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, only 40 minutes south of  NMSU, the discussion soon began to consider the connections between femicide and other forms of violence. In the El Paso-Las Cruces area, the violence hits home. For instance, Johana Bencomo recently lost a relative to the violence devastating the state of Chihuahua.

The NMSU student told Frontera NorteSur how her father’s uncle was murdered on a trip back home to a little Chihuahua mountain town. The man had relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the urging of his son, but went back to check the house only to encounter an unexpected and violent end. The relative was not involved in the drug business, Bencomo insisted.

“It’s really scary how much this drug cartel violence has hit every single corner of Mexico and not just Juarez and the bigger cities,” Bencomo said, adding that she has relatives in Ciudad Juarez but doesn’t visit them because of the unsafe situation in the city. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s sad, really sad,” she said.

Dr. Hector Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, an associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas-Austin, also participated in the panel discussion. Dominguez-Ruvalcaba said “impunity” was a common thread linking the femicides with other homicides in Mexico.

“Anyone can kill anyone with the possibility that they will get away with it,” the one-time Ciudad Juarez resident and former NMSU student warned. Mexico, he added, has good laws on the books, but the problem resides with applying them.

Central to their mission, the panelists analyzed strategies and tactics to combat gender violence. Bejarano was a co-founder of the Las Cruces- based Amigos de las Mujeres, a group established to aid the relatives of femicide victims in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City.

She recalled how activists had brought US Congressional delegations to the border and engaged high-level US authorities to put pressure on the Mexican government. Ultimately, she said, the strategy had limitations due to Washington’s stance that Mexico was a sovereign ally of the US and a “friend of business.”

Bejarano criticized other aspects of US policy, including Washington’s failure to ratify the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The US’ inaction on the treaty sets it apart from virtually all the world’s nations.

In recent years, Bejarano added, an increasing number of groups in Latin America have returned to the grassroots to  resist gender violence. The New Mexico scholar cited the example of community defenders in Peru who accompany victims of violence to court and pressure the justice system to uphold women’s rights.

The issue of vigilante justice was debated by Bejarano, Fregoso and others in attendance at the Las Cruces event.

On September 22, residents of Ascension, a small town in the northern part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, rose up and detained a gang of kidnappers which had been terrorizing the populace for months. Two of the suspected kidnappers, young men, were severely beaten by townspeople and later died while awaiting transfer by law enforcement officials.

Residents then took over city hall and disarmed the town’s police force, which had been accused of collaborating with criminals, and vowed to defend their farming community. In subsequent days, the Mexican press carried stories of other alleged rapists and kidnappers killed by outraged citizens in Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez.

In the absence of effective rule of law, the “Ascension Syndrome” represents a double-edged sword, Bejarano said. “Even though I can understand Ascension, it is a dangerous precedent,” she added. “I think we need to reinvigorate or reinvent this movement at the community level… and we’re seeing some of that in Ascension.”

Bejarano cautioned against the Ascension uprising as being misinterpreted in the US as another instance of the violence some contend threatens to spill across the border. In her view, Ascension is an opportunity for people on both sides of the border to come together for the purposes of mediating grievances, restoring the rule of law and assuring genuine justice. “Unfortunately, it will take something like this to be a wake- up call on this side of the border,” Bejarano contended.

For NMSU student Johana Bencomo, fundamental awareness is still lacking at home. As part of a class with Dr. Bejarano this year, Bencomo helped interview 15 randomly selected NMSU students, mostly in their 20s, about their knowledge of femicide in general and the murders of women in nearby Ciudad Juarez in particular. According to Bencomo, only three or four students knew about the Ciudad Juarez slayings, and one student even said the word “femicide” meant “some sort of pesticide.”

“I was unpleasantly surprised how many people didn’t know,” Bencomo said.

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

US medical tests in Guatemala ‘crime against humanity’

US testing that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis more than 60 years ago was a “crime against humanity”, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has said.

President Barack Obama has apologised for the medical tests, in which mentally ill patients and prisoners were infected without their consent.

Mr Obama told Mr Colom the 1940s-era experiments ran contrary to American values, Guatemala said.

The US has promised an investigation.

“We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices”  Statement from US secretaries of state and health

‘Shocking, tragic, reprehensible’

Syphilis can cause heart problems, blindness, mental illness and even death, and although the patients were treated it is not known how many recovered.

Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Prof Susan Reverby at Wellesley College. She says the Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests.

No offer of compensation has yet been made, but an investigation will be launched into the specifics of the study, which took place between 1946 and 1948.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday the news was “shocking, it’s tragic, it’s reprehensible”.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Colom said the test subjects were “victims of rights abuses”.

Professor Susan Reverby: ”They saw these subjects as soldiers in a war”

“There’s been a very strong reaction in the Guatemalan media and by my compatriots,” he said.

“Of course, there may have been similar incidents in other countries around the world, but speaking as the president and a Guatemalan, I would have preferred that these events had never happened on this soil.”

The joint statement from Mrs Clinton and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: “Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.

“We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.”

In his phone call to President Colom, Barack Obama reaffirmed the United States’ unwavering commitment to ensure that all human medical studies conducted today meet exacting US and international legal and ethical standards, the White House.

President Obama also “underscored the United States’ deep respect for the people of Guatemala and the importance of our bilateral relationship”.

Unaware

Syphilis can cause blindness, insanity and even death.

The study by Prof Reverby shows that US government medical researchers infected almost 700 people in Guatemala with two sexually transmitted diseases.

The patients – prisoners and people suffering mental health problems – were unaware they were being experimented upon.

The doctors used prostitutes with syphilis to infect them, or inoculation, as they tried to determine whether penicillin could prevent syphilis, not just cure it.

The patients were then treated for the disease, but it is unclear whether everyone was cured.

Prof Reverby has previously done research on the Tuskegee experiment, where the US authorities measured the progress of syphilis in African-American sharecroppers without telling them they had the disease or adequately treating it.

The experiment ran from 1932 to 1972, with President Bill Clinton eventually apologising for it.

SEE VIDEO HERE:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11457552