“The lesson from Guatemala is that we
can have the most perfect peace accord on paper, but nothing happens if
the provisions of the accords are not implemented. Women are mentioned
everywhere but there were no enforcement mechanisms.”
Gloria
Salguero Gross, the right-wing president of the Salvadoran parliament,
and Luz Mendez, a communist URNG (Guatemalan National Revolutionary
Unity) militant who participated in the negotiation of the peace accords,
met at a conference organized by Ilja Luciak.
Also
at the conference were Comandante Lola, the highest-ranking female
commander in Guatemala and now a member of parliament, and Deysi Cheyne,
an FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation) combatant.
Ilja
Luciak, right, leads his Violent Political Change class, with María
Teresa Blandón, left, a high-ranking Sandinista combatant from
Nicaragua.
“Women
are assuming positions of leadership in Central America and one of
the reasons is because of their contributions to the war.”
United Nations experts have determined that women’s human rights are integral to peace and security.
One of those experts is Ilja Luciak, whose research examines the guerrilla
movements, peace accords, and post-war reconstruction in Central America
with a focus on gender equality and democratization.
In fall 2003, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked Luciak, the head
of the political science department at Virginia Tech, to participate in
a meeting titled, "Peace agreements as a means for promoting gender
equality and ensuring participation of women - A framework of model provisions."
One of 10 international experts, Luciak shared the responsibilities of
recording the day's proceedings and writing a final report. He noted in
the report that gender equality and meaningful democratization are inextricably
linked. Equality involves everyone.
"Gender equality takes into consideration both men and women,"
says Luciak. "Unfortunately, women suffer disproportionately both
during conflict and in postwar situations. And yet for every woman who
was forced by the Taliban to wear a burqa, there was a boy who was forced
into military duty and was killed. Women, however, are in a disadvantaged
position to bring about change." What he feels is needed is a coalition
composed of both sexes. He strongly believes that men must understand
what they can gain in a society based on gender equality.
Luciak, who is fluent in five languages (English, German, Swedish, French,
and Spanish), speaks quietly yet passionately. He speaks of his great
grandfather, a member of Sweden's parliament and an advocate for women's
right to vote in the early 20th century. It is with a touch of pride that
he points out that Scandinavian countries have a strong tradition in gender
equality issues, even incorporating a quota system that requires a balance
of men and women on their political party lists.
He shares his ancestors' commitment to social justice on a global level
(his grandfather, Einar af Wirsén, was the head of the Mosul Commission,
appointed in 1924 by the League of Nations to determine the border between
Iraq and Turkey). Luciak had already earned a law degree in Vienna, Austria,
before traveling to Nicaragua in 1984 as a visiting professor at Central
American University. Asked how he became interested in gender equality,
he replied, "I was intrigued with how the poor majorities lived within
those countries, particularly the women because they were the poorest."
This led to further study of women in developing countries experiencing
political turmoil.
For the past 20 years, Luciak has conducted field research in Central
America. When the peace accords were signed, "all of a sudden we
had hard evidence of how many women played a role in combat," he
says. In that time, Luciak has conducted more than 300 personal interviews
with former female guerillas. He has worked as a consultant for the Swedish
International Development Authority (SIDA) and UNIFEM, served as an invited
election observer in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and has been an official
delegate to several United Nations conferences. In addition to heading
political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at
Virginia Tech, Luciak holds an appointment in the Government and International
Affairs Program, School of Public and International Affairs, a joint program
of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and the College of Liberal
Arts and Human Sciences.
The guerrilla movements of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala waged
war under the banners of social and economic justice. Women joined the
revolutionary left in sizable numbers, seeking to participate in the construction
of a new society.
In Nicaragua, it is believed that women constituted 25 to 30 percent
of the Sandinistas, particularly in the last years of the revolution (1977-79).
When the peace accords were signed in El Salvador in 1992, a UN mission
team oversaw demobilization, where it was determined that 30 percent of
the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) membership was female.
When the fighters were demobilized in Guatemala in 1996, a European Union
study found that close to 15 percent of the armed combatants were women.
Today, a majority of female leaders in these countries trace their political
roots to the war experience. Since women were forced to take on counter-traditional
roles during the war, it was a logical next step to challenge the prevailing
dominant gender relations once reintegrated in civil society. "Women
are assuming positions of leadership in Central America and one of the
reasons is because of their contributions to the war," explains Luciak.
"When these guerrilla movements demobilized, many women went back
to the household, but many did not. They also entered public life."
Discrimination between men and women was rampant on many levels after
the war. Local officials misinterpreted rules and allotted land to family
groups and not per individual. Men were seen as war heroes while female
combatants were treated as outcasts for choosing to fight rather than
stay at home with family. Women were also more likely to be illiterate
(for example, only 20 percent of indigenous women from Guatemala can read)
and lacked proper identification documents needed to vote.
It has been a long and difficult transition. In El Salvador, for example,
women's issues received almost no attention in the peace negotiations
in 1992, even though three high-ranking female commanders participated
in the process. Between then and the signing of the Guatemalan peace accords
on Dec. 29, 1996, a significant world event took place in Beijing - the
Fourth World Conference on Women. This brought women's rights to the center
of the international spotlight. Optimistically, following the Beijing
example, civil society contributed greatly to the negotiations in Guatemala.
Ten diverse organizations, including a very visible women's sector, ensured
that women's rights were specifically addressed in four of the seven agreements.
The emphasis on gender issues demonstrated that an organized women's movement
could make a difference. The world conference made it easier to incorporate
provisions favoring women's rights. Thus, a favorable international climate
and effective female coalition-building strengthened the gender content
of the Guatemalan accords.
Still, considering the potential seeded with the Guatemalan accords,
the achievements have been limited. Three consecutive administrations
later, there has been great reluctance to implement the agreements and
the former guerrillas have failed to create a powerful political movement
that could have served as an impetus for societal change.
"The lesson from Guatemala," says Luciak, "is that we
can have the most perfect peace accord on paper, but nothing happens if
the provisions of the accords are not implemented. Women are mentioned
everywhere but there were no enforcement mechanisms."
Similarly, Salvadoran women have made small gains politically on a national
level but there is growing awareness that gender equality is needed in
the party and society at large. In Nicaragua, female militants had limited
early success, notes Luciak, because "revolutionary regimes tend
to impede the development of an autonomous women's movement." During
the decade following the end of the revolutionary government, women's
alliances began to form across party lines, led primarily by female Sandinista
militants. Encouragingly, women made up 23 percent of the 2003 legislature
in Nicaragua. Today, Guatemala's legislature is 9 percent female, and
El Salvador's is 11 percent.
In analyzing the efforts of women leaders in Central America to build
alliances, Luciak concludes that, "their organizing abilities, acquired
during the days of armed struggle and civil opposition to authoritarian
rule, served them well. Their active participation in the civil wars has
translated into significant representation in political parties and social
movements."
Sponsored by a Virginia Tech ASPIRES grant in 1999, Luciak brought female
leaders from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Cuba to Roanoke for
a two-day conference to exchange ideas. There were several representatives
there from both the left and right political parties, as well as from
women's political organizations and donor organizations. The head of UNIFEM's
Latin America section was there, as well as the director of the Latin
America Department of SIDA, the Swedish development agency.
"This was the first time they were at the same table together. The
former president of the Salvadoran parliament, Gloria Salguero Gross,
sat next to a woman from the communist party of Guatemala," recalled
Luciak with a smile. "They had these images of being enemies. After
48 hours, however, they understood that they shared a lot of experiences.
They faced a common set of challenges that they had to overcome from a
male- dominated society and if they would work together they could advance
a women's rights agenda."
The meeting proved to be a springboard for El Salvador, as their mix
of parliament members created an organization that continues to offer
support to each other and encourages other women to get involved. Virginia
Tech, which entered into an agreement with the National University of
El Salvador, has also helped to build a women's studies program.
That ASPIRES grant triggered a three-year grant from the European Commission
for $180,000 to study gender equality and democracy in Central America
and Cuba.
Luciak has already produced one book with that grant, After the Revolution:
Gender and Democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala (Baltimore
and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). A second is under
contract, The Right to be Different: Gender and Democracy in Cuba (University
Press of Florida). His latest work highlights many of his dialogues with
women revolutionists.
In the discussion of Central America revolutions and politics, one of
the most disturbing issues to Luciak has been the role of the United States.
In all three wars, the United States government was a major player, either
backing repressive governments or sponsoring counter- revolutionary forces.
Luciak reminds us that the United States started a coup in 1954 that
ousted a government that had been democratically elected in Guatemala.
Conflict between a succession of military governments and guerrilla forces
raged on for 36 years and resulted in tremendous human suffering. More
than 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared, hundreds of villages
were destroyed, and 1.5 million people were displaced or sought refuge
in Mexico. President Bill Clinton acknowledged the destructive role played
by the United States and formally apologized to the Guatemalan people
in March of 1999.
In El Salvador, the United States spent $1.5 million dollars a day in
the mid-1980s (a total of $3.5 billion) to keep the FMLN from power. Today,
it is the strongest political party and controls parliament. In 1989,
the military of the U.S.-supported government killed six Spanish Jesuit
professors at Central American University (including the president, a
dean, a housekeeper, and her daughter) in El Salvador. The government
blamed the guerrillas.
Luciak knew three of the slain and commented on the Jesuits' "crime,"
which ultimately led to their death. "They taught liberation theology,
which argued that it was God's plan for every human being to lead a decent
and good life while on Earth and that everyone had a right to education
and health care and safe drinking water. If the government does not provide
that, it commits an institutional sin. If you have a sinful government,
then you can oppose it."
World outrage prompted a congressional investigation that brought only
one participating party to justice, a colonel in the military. According
to Luciak, "The murders galvanized world opinion. At the time, the
guerrillas had taken over parts of the capital and that's when George
Bush decided that this was a war that we couldn't win. The United States
withdrew its support and shifted its focus to the tumbling Berlin wall."
The United States occupied Nicaragua from 1909 until 1933, but it was
costly in terms of money and human lives. "When the U.S. Marines
withdrew, we left behind a national guard we had trained. Its commander
overthrew the president a year later and declared himself the president,"
says Luciak. "That led to a dynasty from the early 1930s until 1979,
when his son was overthrown by the Sandinista revolution. We backed the
dictatorship continuously. Once the Sandinista were in power, we sponsored
a counter-revolution. As a result of these wars, more than 80,000 people
died and the economy was in shambles. In 1988, Nicaragua experienced an
inflation rate of 33,000 percent.
"The people fighting these governments were not fighting the United
States," says Luciak, "but they came to fight us because we
were backing the other side. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we again unnecessarily
antagonized large segments of the population against us because of our
policies."
Luciak is concerned about women's rights, not only in other countries
but here in the United States as well. "We have a very powerful women's
movement in the US, but if you look at women's representation in the House
and Senate - it is abysmal." Many other countries have much more
balance with regard to gender representation because of a quota system.
"You have to force people," says Luciak. "To get women
in power, you have to initially guarantee that with a quota system."
There are quotas in half of the countries in Latin America, but not in
the countries of Central America, where only the parties of the political
left have voluntary quotas.
The United States has also failed to ratify the Convention for the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a human rights instrument that
has been ratified by 177 countries. "CEDAW can be used by women to
measure whether their governments have delivered or not," says Luciak,
who notes that it has been used in Central America and in Cuba.
At a recent conference in Austria, titled "Strengthening Democracy
and Governance: Women and Political Power," a woman from Baghdad
University observed that the United States, represented by Paul Bremmer,
did nothing to ensure that women were given a role in the newly emerging
political system. Luciak confirms that the coalition authority was not
interested in considering women's rights issues. So the women in Iraq
appealed to U.N. Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi, envoy of Kofi Annan,
to ensure women's voices would be represented in the new constitution.
"Women were also excluded from the first constitutional convention
in Afghanistan, even though we claimed we were over there to liberate
women from the Taliban," says Luciak. "Only after a lot of pressure
from women's organizations around the world was a section on women's rights
included in the constitution.
"The United Nations is the driving force behind gender equality,"
says Luciak. "The United States talks about women's rights, but the
UN is the one making sure all are at the table."
Luciak considers the UN meeting on peace and gender equality "the
most significant thing I have done in my life. Now it will become an obligation
for any future United Nations' mediator negotiating a peace agreement
to take women's rights and gender equality into account." Invited
in 2003 to present at a meeting sponsored by Virginia's Department of
Defense and Homeland Security, Luciak recommended learning from others,
and maintains that the work that has been done in Central America can
be applied to Iraq and Afghanistan.
"In postwar situations, for example in Iraq, there is a chance to
rebuild society based on different rules and norms," says Luciak.
"The UN experts committee maintains that women's human rights are
integral to peace and security, and women's involvement in reconstruction
and reconciliation efforts are essential to their success."
But Luciak's efforts are not all geared to his international research.
He is quick to emphasize the role of academics in bringing about change
in the area of gender equality. Luciak's research is funneled back into
the classroom where he teaches a course on violent political change, focusing
on gender equality issues, peace agreements, and post-conflict resolutions.
"We need to educate the next generation of leaders," says Luciak.
"We fail to understand the importance of non-military solutions.
It is an agenda that has implications for the whole world."
