Violence: 'A very dangerous disease'

“I was kidnapped, I was raped and I was tortured,” Gladys Monterroso said to a room of about 40 students and faculty members in Taliaferro Hall Tuesday night during an event sponsored by the Guatemala Human Rights Commission and the Latin American Studies. “But it’s not about me anymore.”

On March 25, 2009, Monterroso, a lawyer and professor at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, was kidnapped while walking to her office.

Instead of dwelling on the past, Monterroso spends her time educating people on women’s inequality in Guatemala, and attempting to bring justice to those who have been wronged.

A video shown at the start of the presentation dramatized the day Monterroso was kidnapped. It is shown at all of her speeches so Monterroso doesn’t have to relive the day’s events.

The video showed Monterroso’s attackers blindfolding her and taking her to an unknown location. As they held a gun to her temple, then to her mouth, Monterroso prayed for her life. The video then showed her kidnappers removing the gun and feeding Monterroso pills while pouring liquor down her throat. A voice-over explained that as Monterroso started feeling drowsy, her attackers raped her.

Monterroso said she remembers little about what happened to her around the time of the rape and even less after it. Her kidnappers eventually abandoned her at a random location, and a man later found her and was able to call Monterroso’s daughter to come pick her up.

Monterroso said that although Guatemala is a beautiful place, it has a “very dangerous disease — and it’s called violence.”

The country is in a “state of terror” as a result of the hundreds of thousands of gang members, who, according to Monterroso, must pass a test to enter their gangs: rape and kill a woman.

More than 4,700 women were killed in Guatamela between 2000 and September of 2009 in Guatemala, according to a Guatemala Human Rights Commission flier handed out at the presentation.

Women in Guatemala, are “second-or-third-class citizens,” Monterroso said. “At this moment you’re here now, there’s probably two or three women getting raped right now. No one will know about it.” 

Achieving justice - especially as a woman - in the Guatemalan legal system is nearly impossible, Monterroso explained. In Guatemala, rape is always the woman’s fault. And, even when women go to the police to report a rape, they are often raped by the police officers themselves, she said.

Despite her legal background, Monterroso’s case didn’t go any smoother. Her case is currently frozen and the only man who was jailed in connection with the case has been released, according to the video.

Monterroso said she worries if she can’t get justice in her case as a lawyer, professor and a columnist for a prominent local newspaper, then how can less educated, less prominent women get justice?

Many students attending the lecture were shocked by the statistics and facts Monterroso presented. 

Genevieve Page, a women’s studies graduate student, said Monterroso made the statistics real.

“It’s one thing to know what’s happening there, but it’s another to hear it directly from her,” Page said.

For Sergio Rojo, a Towson University student who came to hear Monterroso speak, the topic was even mor e personal — his mother is from Guatemala.

“It’s just really sad hearing the emotions, the corrupt system and what Guatemala is like,” he said.

Monterroso continues to fight for women’s rights in Guatemala and tells the students she teaches that they are the future and they can make a change. 

Monterroso said that in a country with a 38 percent illiteracy rate, she is worried about all the women who don’t even know their rights or how to fight back.

ga at umdbk dot com