Sexual Violence Against Indigenous Women and Transitional Justice: The Case of Guatemala

Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, 5:30–7 p.m.

Visiting Scholar Lecture

This presentation focuses on the problematic nature of court-ordered reparations and the struggle for human rights for Indigenous people, specifically women, in Guatemala. By discussing the Sepur Zarco case, named after an almost unknown Q'eqchi' community in El Estor, Izabal department of northeast Guatemala, Velásquez Nimatuj will show how racism, sexual violence, and poverty coalesced during the Guatemalan genocide period from 1975 to 1988. This coalescence, in turn, not only increased the violent nature of state-sponsored human rights abuses, but also illustrates how those oppressions continue to affect Indigenous war survivors today.

Speaker Bio

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj is a Maya K'iche' journalist, anthropologist, poet, and international spokeswoman from Guatemala who has been at the forefront in struggles for respect for Indigenous cultures. Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj is the first Maya-K'iche' woman to earn a doctorate in Social Anthropology, and she initiated the court case that made racial discrimination illegal in Guatemala. She has won numerous academic fellowships and awards for her journalism. She was a member of the Latin American Consulting Group of Indigenous Leaders for UNICEF and participates in the UN through the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She writes a weekly newspaper column in El Periódico de Guatemala and she seeks to create viable ways to create equality for Indigenous people and a truly democratic and participatory democracy in Guatemala. Her first book of poetry, Lunas y calendarios, was published in 2018.

For more information, contact Dr. Hannah Burdette at hburdette@csuchico.edu.