Indigenous women raped by paramilitaries during Guatemala’s brutal civil war have triumphed in court, when their aggressors were sentenced to 30 years each in prison. In a verdict hailed as a vindication for survivors who have spent years fighting for justice, a tribunal convicted five former paramilitary patrolmen of crimes against humanity for the rape of five Maya Achi women in the early 1980s. “The tribunal recognized the use of sexual violence during the armed conflict because it was systematic, and it also established how the army used the [paramilitaries] to commit those crimes,” said Brisna Caxaj, a sociologist and gender program coordinator for Impunity Watch Guatemala, who accompanied the women during the trial.
The verdict is also slightly bittersweet. A group of 36 Maya Achi survivors initiated the legal proceedings that eventually led to Monday’s verdict, but three of the women died in the intervening period, including one just last week. Pedrina López, one of the five women whose cases were directly included in the trial, was only 12 years old when she was raped in Rabinal, 80 kilometers north of Guatemala City. She testified during the trial and took the stand again Monday morning to call for justice. “What happened never leaves us,” López told the courtroom on Monday morning prior to the verdict. “My body has been left with everything that happened.”
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