RICHMOND, Va.-- When Guatemalan women’s rights activist Norma Cruz spoke at VCU recently, she had a clear message: Stop femicide now!

Femicide is the killing of a woman for no other reason than her gender. It is a form of terrorism that functions to define gender lines, reinforce misogyny and support male dominance, Cruz said.

Since 2000, there have been at least 5,000 cases of femicide in Guatemala. It is a country about the size of Tennessee, but it has more femicide cases than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Ninety-nine percent of femicide cases in Guatemala go unpunished because the government and authorities are just not interested in stopping the violence, Cruz said.

But she aims to change that by pressuring the Guatemalan government to stop the injustice. “Our message is this: Don’t touch women. The man who lays one finger on a woman is going to jail,” she said.

Cruz has worked tirelessly to bring justice to the women of Guatemala since 1999 when her own daughter, Claudia Maria, was a victim of sexual violence.

Co-founder and director of the nongovernmental organization Survivors Foundation, Cruz provides hundreds of victims with emotional, social and legal support.

Her hard work earned her the U.S. Secretary of State’s 2009 International Woman of Courage Award. Guatemala’s Prensa Libre newspaper named her Person of the Year in 2009.

Before Cruz spoke, Lupe Ramirez performed an opening candle-lighting ritual.

Next, a striking clip of the BBC documentary “Killer’s Paridise” was shown. In the documentary, one man said that killing women “is the fashion” in Guatemala. Another man, when asked why he killed women, replied, “For fun.” The filmmakers interviewed the then President Óscar Berger, who dismisses their criticism of an inefficient system where killers have impunity, as merely "pessimistic.”

Cruz opened her speech by saying that “Femicide is a problem for both men and women.” She spoke in Spanish and Guatemala Human Rights Commission activist Amanda Martin translated her words for the audience.

Cruz explained that femicide is a product of the patriarchal society and culture of machismo that exists not only in Guatemala, but in the rest of the world as well. “It is a situation of superiority and aggression.”

She said the role of women has progressed over the years to more than just homemakers. Yet the attitude toward women’s rights has not progressed at all. Women in Guatemala are not respected. When a woman is married, she is literally handed from the hands of one man (her father) to the hands of another (her husband), said Cruz.

“When a woman is pregnant, everyone hopes for a baby boy. If the child is a boy, there is celebration, but if it is a baby girl, there is nothing. Girls are seen as a “bad investment.” ”

It’s this kind of attitude that continues the cycle of violence against women. When victims of femicide are killed, their bodies are often left in public places. They are often marked with “symbolic wounds” such as cutting the mouth and breaking the jaw, as a symbol that they now cannot use their voice and speak out. It is also common for aggressors to cut off a woman’s face, breasts and genitalia.

Yet, even when presented with such horrible crimes, police often grant immunity to these criminals. Police say, “We’ll let justice be in God’s hands.” Or they dismiss the case, saying that the woman was flirtatious, or that she was a member of a gang if she had tattoos or piercings.

Cruz said violence crosses all boundaries: age, socio-economic status, religion, and race. And the men who are killing keep getting younger.

“There are armed six-year-olds, 15-year-old murderers,” Cruz said.

This aggression is sadly common in Guatemala. Cruz sees so much violence occurring around her that she said she struggles to not become desensitized to it.

But although the situation seems hopeless, Cruz and her fellow activists are not giving up. The GHRC and a network of NGOs in Washington, DC pushed through a resolution on femicide in the US House of Representatives. This pressured the Guatemalan government to act. Under the Femicide Law, 11 cases have been tried since February 2009.

The International Violence Against Women Act has recently been reintroduced in Congress. The act aims to make the safety of women a priority for U.S. foreign policy.

This year, Cruz’s Survivor’s Foundation is taking eight cases of girls who have been murdered to court. “We have made great advancements, 30 sentences this year. We are everyday strengthening our work,” she said.

Cruz faces death threats on a constant basis for getting involved in prosecution cases, but she refuses to be intimidated. She says she will not feed these aggressors by showing fear.

Cruz ended her speech saying, “If we have to sleep outside in the streets to demand justice the next day, we will.”

For more information about femicide in Guatemala, visit www.ghrc-usa.org.