"BEATING WOMEN IS A WAY OF LIFE HERE"

JANE Magazine February 2001

"BEATING WOMEN IS A WAY OF LIFE HERE"

By Gigi Guerra
Photography by Margarita I. Montealegre

Three out of four married Nicaraguan women are abused. Gigi Guerra goes to their homes, relives their nightmares and meets an abuser.

It's a bright Monday morning in Managua, Nicaragua, and the only sound at the National Police Women's and Children's Center is the loud clack of manual typewriters, the punch of each keystroke bouncing off the paint-flaked aqua cement walls, echoing through dark, dusty halls and drowning out the sound of the ceiling fans battling the stifling heat. There's no competing din of Xerox machines churning out copies, computers announcing "You've got mail!" or air conditioners chugging. For that matter, there aren't even any ringing , phones. In this dirt-poor country, no money exists for these frivolities. But the typewriters are a necessity. They create important contracts-ones that abusive men sign, promising not to beat the shit out of their wives.

From far left: Rosa in the National Police Women's and Children's Center
waiting room; smiling Kenia at her desk; Elyn claims her husband beat
her and threatened her children; what the center looks like from outside.

A woman with sad eyes and chipped brown nails walks into the center. She sits down on a rusted metal chair in the waiting area. Within moments, she moves to the desk of Jenny Velasquez, a 29-year-old police officer who is trained in holistic medicine (she sometimes gives acupuncture to stressed-out victims). "My husband and I got into a fight on Friday night," begins the sad-eyed woman, named Rosa. She clutches a balled-up tissue.
"He hit me on my head and back," she claims robotically as Jenny starts to type the police report. Rosa parts her hair and shows a lump. It pains me to look. "Then he knocked over our house [they live in a shanty] and chased me down the street with an ax. I've been staying with a friend to get away from him." Rosa tells Jenny all she did was suggest a separation. She goes on to claim her husband is a glue-sniffer, too. "I want to be alone," she says, start- ing to sob. A guy from the street strays in, trying to sell pinatas. "My husband doesn't respect me. I'm afraid to leave my children with him." Right now, she says that two of her three kids are at her sister's house. Her 14-year-old son is already working on the streets, selling lotto tickets. Rosa is unemployed, which isn't shocking-Nicaragua has an unemployment rate of 50 percent. But what is shocking is that when women do find work here, one out of every five "sick" days is due to domestic abuse.

About domestic violence statistics: Exact numbers are tough to get. Even in the U.S. women are often ashamed to mention their abuse to family members, let alone the authorities. And in many developing countries like Nicaragua, there's the sad belief that domestic violence is no big deal. Thirty-two percent of rural Nicaraguan ladies say that it's okay for a husband to beat his wife if he even suspects that she's been cheating on him. {What's worse, 23 percent of those women also give men the green house without permission.) A few Nicaraguan women I talk to blame the blase attitude toward violence on "machismo," a lame concept embraced by many Latin males, which, among other I things, decrees that women are the "property" of their husbands. "Violence can be considered a normal part of life," I says Alba Alvaro, an obstetrician who also helps educate low-income women about domestic abuse. "Some even think that it's an expression of love and caring." The United Nations estimates that 75 percent of married Nicaraguan women have been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some way, including psychologically. A recent Johns Hopkins Medical Center survey found that a whopping 69 percent of women in Managua say they've been physically abused by someone they've slept with. For comparison's sake, based on the few stats we were able to scrape up, only 10 percent of all Paraguayan women say they've been abused, while 13 percent of Puerto Rican women reported abuse. Scarily, 22 percent of American broads have suffered domestic violence.

So why the soaring rate of abuse in Nicaragua? Well, only a thousand possible reasons. Among them: debilitating poverty, an incredibly high teen birth rate and one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in Latin America. Put it this way: More people and no new jobs means increased tension and lots of poor young women who are forced to rely on men. Grim.

But women aren't just taking this crap anymore. In 1993, places like NPWCC started to open up around Nicaragua. Supported in part by various European governments and the United Nations Population Fund, there are now 18 locations, which handled 14,000 cases in 1998. The exclusively female cops refer abused women to doctors and psychologists and help them prepare their cases for court-no matter what their economic situation. The centers are sprinkled throughout both urban and rural areas, which is good, since Alba tells me that rural domestic violence more often ends up in the woman's death. Rosa found out about the Managua center from a friend. The word is spreading in other ways, too: Banners hang above muddy streets to alert women about their rights; volunteers make house calls to educate women; and anti-violence posters are plastered up in public restrooms. All this effort has led to an increase in domestic violence complaints over the past few years. It's kick-ass chick power in action.

Left: Jenny gets Rosas's side of the story.
Right: Elyn in her home, getin her son ready to go

from far left: Elyin's Daugther; Elyn and some of her kids;
a serious-looking Claudia talking to me.

As soon as Rosa finishes her story, Jenny types up a restraining order. Rosa has to sign it. She can, but many people here are reportedly illiterate and have to use a thumbprint as authorization. The center will now try to get Rosa's husband to show up so that they can get his side of the story and possibly try to talk the couple through an agreement. Cases only go to court if they deal with one of two laws-one that involves sexual abuse and another concerning family violence-and if the woman is willing to see it through the system.

Jenny sends Rosa to a clinic for physical and psychological exams to help build her case. It's about five miles away, but the cops can't give her i a ride because the only police car for the 300,000-person district is out on call. Rosa can't afford to take public transportation. So she walks.

By mid-afternoon, the temperature is soaring. My knuckles are actually I sweating. Outside, vendors lazily peddle tamarind ice and plastic baggies full of lukewarm Kool-Aid. A guy with only one ear ambles by on his way from the adjacent police station. Mangy half-starved dogs drag their bony frames past, kicking up dust. Inside, the center's captain, Claudia Sancho Rodriguez, is getting caught up on paperwork. In her office are stuffed animals, inspirational posters and silk roses with fake dewdrops. A taupe vinyl exam bed lies in one corner under across.

Claudia tells me that she first got interested in helping other women after writing her thesis on domestic violence in college. "My job is difficult," she says, eyes boring through me {I'm not sure she likes me too much-she later tells me that she doesn't care for my blond hair and, ironically, wants to know why I'm not married). "But I'm helping, and it makes me feel good. Nicaraguan women are starting to stick up for themselves and their rights. Our revolution [Nicaragua fought a civil war in the '80s where women battled alongside men gave the women freedom. It gave us more rights and options to get jobs. It emancipated us." But now that the war is over, Claudia says the men have typically tried to push women back into positions of subservience. No way, Jose.

I ask Claudia if she was ever abused herself. She stares at me for a minute. "I don't think there's any woman in this country who hasn't been abused," she responds.

One of the few guys I see all day is a husky, scruffy-looking boob roaming the center. At one point, Jenny hands him a mop and tells him to clean the floor. I ask who he is. Claudia says that he's being held for 24 hours for "insulting" his wife. "He told her that she was a bitch," Claudia says. It seems like a harsh punishment, but I guess they don't mess around here. On the other hand, it can be hard to prosecute abusive men-it's not uncommon for them to ditch appointments at the center, and there just aren't enough resources to go after them. The floor-mopper looks at me and starts smiling. I don't sense an ounce of guilt. He has different letters tattooed on three of his fingers. I learn that they stand for each of the women he's slept with. Klassy, dude.

Later in the afternoon, a 31-year-old woman named Elyin shows up. A female officer takes her to a desk and they fill out a police report. Elyin's been here once before to allege abuse by her husband, but for unexplained reasons, she decided not to press charges. But now it's evidently the last straw. "I'm no longer in love with my husband. He beats me, and now he's threat- ening to beat my children," Elyin claims to the officer. "I want to take my kids to my mother's house where they will be safe."

Since the one cop car still hasn't returned, I hire a 'tab" to take Elyin and two officers out to her house to get her children. The rickety Toyota is missing the back window and can barely make it over the bumpy dirt roads. We wind out of town and pass through a dangerous gang neighborhood.

Ten minutes later, we're in farmland. The setting sun filters through the surrounding yucca fields. We find Elyin's husband pacing by the road as if he were expecting us. We hop out, and the cops confront him. Suddenly, half the neighborhood is engaged in a circular screaming battle. "My son is not a criminal!" shouts Elyin's mother-in-law. Elyin sobs. Her son clutches her thigh I and wails. Two stray dogs bark, then I hump. It's mayhem.

After 10 minutes, the situation is resolved: Elyin is going to take the kids. She treks over a scraggly foot-path to her squat cinder- block house to collect some stuff. I follow her. It's dark inside and smells like rotting fat. Everything is . crammed into two tiny rooms. Elyin hastily yanks garments from the hangers, shoves them into a beat-up backpack and shuffles her kids back to the cab. We take off back holes. I swear I'm going to hurl. We finally get to the bus station and drop Elyin and her kids off. They're on their way to her mom's house in another part of the country.

Elyin will ultimately be awarded custody of her children in court. At press time, Rosa's case was before the courts. They are an exception. Only 17 percent of women here report abuse. A slim 12 percent of those women will ever take their case to court. One lawyer I meet at the center claims that many women don't follow things through in the courts because they don't have the economic resources to wage a battle or often choose to get back with their partners. The lawyer also cites the perception that judges here tend to favor men.

It's now early evening, and back at the center things are quiet. Claudia is sitting in the waiting area. Mosquitoes buzz in through the open front door and hover around a lone fluorescent ceiling light. Now that it's quittin' time, Claudia seems to loosen up a little toward me. "When I first started working here, I could feel the bad energy," she says. "It really affected me. I'd bring my problems from the office home. But I don't do that anymore."

I ask her why, as a single mom with two teenagers at home, she puts herself through such daily grief for such little money (she earns the equivalent of 90 bucks a month). She pauses for a long time, gazing out at the dark streets. "I started thinking about what I do," she finally says, "and I realized that I'm making a difference." But who knows how long she will be able to do that. Funds for the centers are dwindling.To help, go to www:uscommittee.org

If I had to see misery the way these women do on a daily basis, I'd probably jump off a cliff. But somehow they manage to put their emotions aside and instead focus on the good that they do despite overwhelming odds. Across the room, a few other cops ,laugh and bid 23-year-old officer Kenia Osario Bracio farewell. It's her last day here. She was just transferred to the traffic division, which she's not exactly psyched about. (I don't blame her-car accidents in Nicaragua are constant and often gruesome. One night on the highway, I saw a car with no headlights. To illuminate the road, the passenger dangled a big flash-light from the side window.) "I'm really sad about leaving here," Kenia says, smiling shyly. "I like being able to help women and children." She pauses for a minute and lowers her eyes. "Here, I've seen abused women," she continues. "But in the transit division, I'll be seeing dead people." How's that for a little perspective?