OUR MISSION
It is MIA's mission to increase public awareness in the United States of the maltreatment 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 femicide, and promote equal treatment for women. Our purpose is to effect genuine and lasting change in the conditions for women in Guatemala.
MIA'S GOALS
Insist on the prosecution for rape and femicide
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 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 financial 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.
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) will pay for radio ads in Guatemala decrying violence against women. We have also obtained an anonymous grant from a private donor which is paying 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, LUCIA MUNOZ
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 continued. This became what is now termed "the femicide."In 2001, I started 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 from a distance. I became the women?s affairs coordinator for the group which is how I learned of the numbers of killings 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 femicide. In 2005, I founded ?MIA,? Mujeres Iniciando en Las Americas (Women Initiating in the Americas) to help end this injustice. As executive director, I work with students and others here in the U.S. raising awareness about this issue, and also work with Sobrevivientes in Guatemala working to end femicide. Sobrevivientes is a center in Guatemala City which helps survivors of femicide crimes and family members of women who have been killed.Since 2001, I have traveled to Guatemala at least once a year for at least two weeks each time. Last year, I traveled to Guatemala twice for a total of four 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 femicide.
