What Is Left Out Matters

I was watching a powerfully depressing CBC/BBC documentary about Guatemala's soaring problem of murders of women. Women and girls being kidnapped, raped, murdered, mutilated, and beheaded--and with no prosecutions. According to the documentary, fear of retaliation keeps everyone silent, and the police seem to be going out of their way not to find the killers. The film also implies that traditional macho is part of the problem, and by mentioning the war against the Indians under various U.S.-backed governments of the past, they give you the impression that there might be some racial or class motives--although this leftist news source indicates:

The poorest parts of Guatemala, rural areas mainly inhabited by indigenous people, have lower violent crime rates than the rest of the country, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which warns in a new report that the murder rate -- one of the highest in the region -- has climbed steadily since 1999.

The violence tends to be seen in the less-poor municipalities where the majority of the population is not indigenous, which indicates the need to carry out a more in-depth analysis of the relation between violence and inequity, Arturo Matute, an expert from the Violence Prevention Programme, said in a press conference.

Hmmm. I think that this is how the left handles the problem that the facts don't fit into the leftist model of explaining bad things. It therefore requires more "in-depth analysis" to make it fit the "no justice, no peace" model.

Even more disturbingly, the documentary suggests that this lack of action isn't politically motivated--it's just gangs doing this. I found myself wondering if the lack of successful prosecution--or even serious attempt at it--might be because the police are also intimidated.

Part way through, I found myself wondering, "What is the murder rate for men in Guatemala?" The documentary mentioned 665 women murdered in Guatemala in 2005, in a nation of fifteen million people. That would imply that female victims are a bit under 5/100,000 total population. Yet the murder rate for both sexes combined is 47/100,000 total population. If anything, women are almost being ignored by the murderers.

There might still be a good case for being upset if the murders of women are being ignored by the authorities, while the murderers of men were being pursued. But I confess that watching a documentary that gives you the impression that women are subject to extraordinary victimization when this is not the case makes me wonder how accurately they are portraying the rest of the problem.

I sure wouldn't want to be a Guatemalan man or woman.