By Catalina Lobo-Guerrero, Sunday Review, Opinion, Sept. 2, 2017<\/p>\n
SAN SALVADOR \u2014 I don\u2019t want to go back to El Salvador. I felt afraid as a woman there more than in any other country in Latin America. I realized I had entered hostile territory while chatting with the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport, the first Salvadoran man I met. He told me he had a baby, a little darling called J. J., and showed me a photo.<\/p>\n
When I asked him if he\u2019d like more children, he said yes, but only boys.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know you can\u2019t choose,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know, but I don\u2019t want a girl,\u201d he answered. \u201cGirls are a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girls are indeed considered a problem in a country where women are raped and killed daily. For the past few years El Salvador has been listed among the world\u2019s deadliest countries for women<\/a>, and ranks first in Latin America.<\/p>\n In 2016 alone, 524 women were killed<\/a>, according to the Institute of Legal Medicine, the organization charged with identifying the dead and figuring out what killed them \u2014 one in every 5,000 women. But this number understates the extent of the slaughter. Only the bodies that are taken to morgues are counted, not those found dismembered in clandestine dumping grounds.<\/p>\n Dead Salvadoran women are not considered a problem. They are, at best, an afterthought. Over the past few years, the Salvadoran government has attempted to establish truces with the criminal gangs, known as \u201cmaras,\u201d that operate in nearly every Salvadoran city in an effort to curtail the horrific trail of dead men left by the gang wars. The level of violence rises and falls \u2014 it\u2019s tempered when truces between the maras and the government are brokered and soars again after government crackdowns. In contrast, the murder rate among women has remained steady, according to the Observatory of Violence Against Women<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is the women who survive violence and sexual assault \u2014 10 per day \u2014 who pose a problem for Salvadoran society. Even more so when they turn to the police, the district attorney\u2019s office or hospitals for help, or when they dare report their attackers.<\/p>\n I understood this after spending a morning at the office of Dr. Zulma Jennifer M\u00e9ndez, who leads the H.I.V. program at the San Rafael Public Hospital here in San Salvador. For hours, I listened to her patients\u2019 stories. One had escaped from the gang that kidnapped her. Her brothers didn\u2019t want to join the gang, so they were killed in retaliation. Gang members raped her and gave her H.I.V.<\/p>\n Doctors who help Salvadoran women who have been victims of gang violence \u2014 including female gang members \u2014 are horrified by the brutality their patients have suffered. But gang members are not the only ones responsible for the violence against women. The men who rape them are also their husbands, fathers, uncles, acquaintances, neighbors. Nearly three out of every four acts<\/a> of sexual violence take place in the victims\u2019 homes, and seven of every 10 victims are under the age of 20<\/a>.<\/p>\n And the victims who become pregnant and do not want to be know not to expect help from the authorities. Abortion in El Salvador is illegal in all circumstances, even in cases of rape. Some women who have had abortions \u2014 or like 19-year-old Evelyn Hern\u00e1ndez, who gave birth outside of the hospital and whose baby didn\u2019t survive \u2014 have been convicted of aggravated homicide. The punishment is a 30-year prison sentence, the same as for a gang member who is convicted of murder. It\u2019s common for doctors to report women who have had an abortion or attempt to obtain one.<\/p>\n \u201cI was threatened with jail time once,\u201d Dr. M\u00e9ndez told me. \u201cI wanted to help a woman whose emergency contraception didn\u2019t work after she was raped. Na\u00efvely, I called the Institute of Legal Medicine and told them what had happened. I was told not to get involved, as I could be put behind bars.\u201d<\/p>\n What kind of society threatens those who try to take care of the physical and mental health of women? A society that is also incapable of protecting them and taking care of women when they are the victims of violence. The kind of society that lets crime go unpunished.<\/p>\n Many Salvadoran women feel that they cannot trust the system. Despite laws passed since 2010 to protect them \u2014 notably one that ordered public institutions to begin providing special attention to the needs of women \u2014 the state at all levels has been slow to respond.<\/p>\n Special courts that deal in violence against women are only just beginning to operate, a district attorney told me. While the police have created dozens of \u201cunimujer\u201d units that focus on women who are victims of violence and their children, they cannot keep them safe from retaliation by their attackers.<\/p>\n If I were one of these victims, or if I had to face the Salvadoran system and society, I would have most likely left the country. Nothing happened to me while I was there, but I was constantly being told by Salvadorans I could be in danger just by doing what I normally do: walking down the street by myself, taking taxis or buses, going out at night. Thousands of women have fled El Salvador in the past few years because they don\u2019t believe they can live peacefully in their own country. They don\u2019t want their sons and daughters to grow up in a society that accepts, perpetuates and often justifies violence against them.<\/p>\n I asked various specialists and Dr. M\u00e9ndez, \u201cWhere does this machismo and misogyny come from?\u201d I wanted some clarity and, above all, some hope. Several of them responded, with the kind of answer a foreigner never wants to hear: \u201cThat\u2019s the way we are.\u201d<\/p>\n If society dismisses these patriarchal attitudes or excuses them as normal, programs by the public sector or civil society organizations geared toward changing the way women are treated will have little impact. Machismo and misogyny are not genetic traits. They are sexist behaviors that must be changed.<\/p>\n \n Catalina Lobo-Guerrero is a Colombian journalist. This essay was translated by Chantal Connaughton from the Spanish.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n