A NEW CLASS OF CRIME

When men fight defeat and despair in their daily lives,
too often the losers are women. Abuse of women and children is a
part of domestic life in Nicaragua. This woman is describing seven
years of abuse by her husband to an official at the
5th District Office of the Division for Women and
Children in Managua.
Photo: Cathy Becker

A NEW CLASS OF CRIME

by Alex Marshall

Managua, Nicaragua — Someone reports a crime every 90 minutes in Managua’s 5^th district. The real rate of crime may be three or four times as high, but in this poor, overcrowded section of Nicaragua’s capital, residents often don’t bother to report them. Reporting a crime means a trip to the local station and waiting until an overworked officer can listen to your complaint. Anyway, what are the chances of solving a minor crime when there are nearly 300,000 inhabitants in this district alone, and only 7,000 police in the whole country? Neighbouring El Salvador, with a population only a fifth larger, has 13 times as much to spend on policing.

All kinds of crimes are rising in Nicaragua, and violent crime is rapidly increasing, according to Commissioner Francisco Diaz, commanding the 5th. The present democracy was born out of an armed struggle, and guns are never far away. There is a long tradition of machismo or male pride: poverty and unemployment make it a hair-trigger issue. Men turn quickly to violence as a response to life’s problems: "Nicaraguans like to have things settled, one way or the other," says Manuel Ortega, an academic who studies the roots of social attitudes. "There is a winner and a loser."

When men bring home the defeat and despair of their daily lives, the losers are often women. Violence and abuse of women and children is very much a part of domestic life in Nicaragua. Until 1990, the police had no mechanism for dealing with it. Even now most men, and some women, have difficulty seeing it as a crime. It is just something that happens—to four or five women a day in the 5^th district. "Women may be safer in the street than in their houses," says Commr, Francisco.

But the armed struggle, first against the dictator Somoza, then against the "contras", may have weakened the macho culture even when it seemed most dominant. Women played their full part in the fight for democracy and human rights: in the new Nicaragua, "human" means women too. Under Law 130, women can ask for a restraining order against their partner, and domestic violence can bring a prison sentence of up to a year.

Underfunded and shorthanded though they are, the national police have moved with determination to enforce the law. With help from the United Nations Population Fund, the police force has built up its capacity to help women, from basic training for street cops to advanced courses for senior officers. There are 16 special districts for women and children nationwide, with specially trained staff, and doctors, psychologists and lawyers on call.

Inspector-general Eva Sacasa Gurdian is the second highest- ranking police officer in the country, and one of only two women at her level in Latin America. Though she is modest about it, others recognise her influence, both in making the police more effective in protecting women’s rights, and in the drive for gender equality in the force itself. She has made the police force more attractive to women as a career: women police officers are needed for the special districts for women and children, but she has encouraged them to go into all kinds of police work. She has fought the practice of shunting women into routine or administrative jobs; she has made sure that they are not passed over for the specialised training which brings the best opportunities for promotion; she has put women in key positions, and she has ensured that gender equality is taken seriously at the highest levels in the police. With UNFPA’s assistance, she has introduced gender into police training at all levels, including the national police academy. As a result, the police force is improving its capacity to deal with gender issues within as well as outside its ranks, including violence and discrimination against women.

These moves are also improving the overall credibility of the police. It will take time to eradicate machismo from Nicaragua’s cop culture: but, she says, the changes have won wider acceptance for the police as a crime-fighting force, compared with the old days when it was a political bludgeon in the hands of the dictatorship. In Nicaragua today, support for gender equality in the police is support for the rule of law in the country as a whole. Her work has helped Nicaragua’s police force to become the first in the world to have a national gender council. It has been successful enough that women in other Central American forces are looking to Nicaragua as a model.

Eva Sacasa told a group of visiting journalists that the drive for equality really started before she arrived, among women in the police force: she was brought in from her job at the Interior Ministry to help it along. "When I joined the struggle against Somoza, as a political organiser in the barrio, I never expected to end up in the police, " she says.

The short woman in the neat red check dress probably knows nothing of all this. She only knows that she needs help. Sad but determined, she sits on a folding chair in a 5^th District office of the division for women and children. Now 31, she says she has endured her man’s violent rages for all the seven years they have been together. She has tried to keep the relationship together for the sake of their two children. She works as a maid, he’s unemployed. She left home when she was 12, and she has few ties to her family. He has threatened to kill her if she tries to leave, but it has gone too far; she just wants to end it. A visitor senses the deep anger under her composure.

A policewoman tells her she can probably get an order allowing her to stay in the house, even if it is his, and a restraining order under Law 130 to keep him away. If she wants, she can ask a judge to order the man’s arrest; but this will take 10 days, and when he knows there is an order against him he will probably calm down. Claudia Sanchez, commanding the division, says that men like him accept that they have done something wrong only when the police arrive.

Visitors from the FBI and Spain’s national police, among others, have acknowledged the effectiveness of Nicaragua’s policing methods. Nevertheless, crime nationwide has increased by 300 per cent in the last decade, while the population has increased by 32 per cent. Meanwhile, police numbers have actually fallen slightly.

Four out of ten people in the 5^th District are under 15. The next generation of young men, the 15-24 year-old age group most likely to commit crimes, will be the biggest ever. Without resources to match the increase—and plug present gaps—this simple fact threatens the future of crime-fighting in Managua’s barrios. In the work of Eva Sacasa, Francisco Diaz and Claudia Sanchez, the women of the 5^th District have seen a glimmer of hope. But what can they expect from the future?