COMMISSIONS: #NosFaltan41: Recalling the Guatemala Orphanage Fire - coming soon

#NOSFALTAN41: Recalling the Guatemala Orphanage Fire  

For US News & World Report. Supported by the International Women's Media Fund.  

On March 8, 2017, killed 41 girls, ages of 14 and 17 , were killed in a fire at the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción or Virgin of the Assumption orphanage near Guatemala's capital city. They were locked in a room as punishment for a recent escape attempt into the surrounding woods-– they had ran away because of the cramped conditions and abuse by staff, including physical and sexual abuse. After being caught and beat up by police, they were locked in a room with no access to toilet facilities. Three days later, a few girls lit a mattress on fire in protest. Survivors say they pleaded with the police to open the door of the burning room but they refused and prevented the staff to intervene. 

A Human Rights organization said girls were subjected to abuse and neglect indicative of wider state failings on the protection of women in Guatemala. Lawyers of the girls' families are pushing charges of femicide.  

The orphanage has a capacity of 400 children, however, at the time of the fire, it was home to about 750 children. The home is one of several state institutions in Guatemala for youths that were orphaned, abandoned, or turned over by parents who aren't able to support them. Many of the girls who died in the fire came from poverty-stricken families who placed their children in the orphanage in the hope they would have a better life.  

““It doesn’t matter what the children endure, because they’re indigenous or extremely poor, said María Eugenia Villareal, of ECPAT, an international N.G.O. that tracks and fights the sexual abuse and trafficking of minors. This is why so many try to migrate to the United States. It’s because they’re fleeing the violence of the state, of their communities, of their families. Every type of violence is present here.”