WHEN JUSTICE IS MORE ABSENT THAN BLIND

The 16-year-old girl, her face already bloodied, tries to escape

but is surrounded by the mob. Minutes later her body would lie

ablaze on the ground, as the perpetrators watched her burn.

A recent series of lynchings in Guatemala has once again drawn attention to that Central American country’s reputation for violence.

News reports point to at least a score of lynchings in Guatemala so far this year, in which mobs attack, beat and often then burn to death individuals suspected of crimes.

The latest Guatemala lynching went viral in the social media, in a video that showed how a mob of at least 25 people in the village of Río Bravo first savagely beat and then burned alive a 16-year-old girl. The girl, said to be the daughter of a convicted gang member, was suspected of taking part in the gang murder of a taxi driver, allegedly for not paying a “protection fee” to the gang. She was reportedly accompanied in that crime by two males, both of whom managed to escape from angry local residents.

Observers blame a long history of civil war and subsequent deterioration of institutions for Guatemala’s increasingly violent vigilantism. According to the renowned Carter Center, founded by former US President Jimmy Carter, “The people of Guatemala endured a brutal civil war between 1960 and 1996 that resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 people...The trauma to the nation has been profound, and...the social fabric remains fragile due to the continued presence of armed groups operating with impunity.

“Guatemala is plagued by a culture of impunity, from individual murders to the mass killings of the civil war. According to the United Nations, 98 percent of cases never make it to a court. Since 2001, more than 2,000 women were murdered, but most of these cases were never investigated. Mass graves have been discovered since the civil war, where almost entire villages were buried; still, no one has been held responsible for these murders.”

Increasing vigilante violence would appear to be a response to such impunity. An Associated Press report from several years ago pointed to “a string of violent and mysterious killings targeting gang members and criminals in Guatemala,” which had prompted rumors of a "social cleansing," aimed at weeding out undesirable members of society.

The latest string of street lynching, like the one in which the 16-year-old girl was beaten and burned to death last week would appear to be a more open manifestation of “vigilante justice” at the hands of mobs of common citizens tired of the impunity of gang law, but who, for lack of proper institutions, have chosen the same violent course as their erstwhile victimizers.

Comments

MILTON FRIEDMAN: A CONSERVATIVE VOICE FOR FREE MONEY FOR ALL

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman, who died in 2006 at the age of 94, was for decades considered, a leading US economist, who garnered worldwide renown. Winner of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his many achievements, Friedman criticized traditional Keynesian economics as “naïve” and reinterpreted many of the economic theories broadly accepted up to his era. He was an outspoken free market capitalist who acted as an honored adviser to emblematically ultra-conservative world leaders such as US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and his theories on such key areas as monetary policy, privatization and deregulation exercised a major influence on the governing policies of many Western governments and multilateral organizations in the 1980s and ‘90s. Such a staunch conservative would seem like an unlikely academic to go to in search of backing for the controversial idea of giving spending money away to every person and family, no strin

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME—INTRODUCTION TO A CONTROVERSY WHOSE DAY IS COMING

For some time now, the warning signs have been clear to anyone studying the evolution of free-market economies worldwide. Job creation is not keeping pace with job attrition and demographic expansion. The tendency is toward a world with ever more people and ever fewer jobs. While most politicians and world leaders praise the technological revolution that has served up extraordinary advances to billions the world over, the dwindling sources of legitimate employment belie optimism for the average individual’s future work possibilities. Among possible solutions, one of the most salient is the controversial idea of some sort of basic “allowance” to ensure coverage of people’s personal needs. But this is an idea that is still in its infancy, while its practical application may be more urgently required than is generally presumed. In Western capitalist society there has long been a conservative idea that the capitalist makes money through investment and that the worker makes a living wi

A CASTRO BY ANY OTHER NAME...

Although many Western observers are already showing optimism over the semi-retirement of Raúl Castro and the rise to office of the previously obscure Miguel Díaz Canel, what just happened in Cuba is not a regime change. In fact, for the moment, it appears that very little will change in that island nation, including the severe restriction of human and civil rights with which Cubans have been living for the past six decades. Miguel Díaz Canel While it is true that Díaz Canel is the first person other than Fidel and Raúl Castro in nearly 60 years to ostensibly take charge of the country, he was handpicked by Raúl to ensure the continuation of a Castro dynasty that has been ensconced in power since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. He has garnered Castro's favor by eschewing personal power quests and adhering to the regime’s main political and economic lines in his most recent post as the country’s First Vice-President, after long years as a grassroots regime champion

Versión en español:

Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

Search This Blog