X-ray of a femicide: the case of Juana Raymundo Rivera

By: Paolina Albani Country:

Guatemala December 1, 2021

Juana Raymundo Rivera was an Ixil Mayan nurse, a member of the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA) in Nebaj, Quiché. Those who knew her describe her as a serious, responsible, respectful and very reserved woman. Juana’s life was brutally taken away by her partner: Jacinto Brito Raymundo. A man much older than her, who was a respected figure in the community for having been the pastor of an evangelical church and a member of CODECA. The relationship between them was kept secret for years, the few who knew about it could not foresee what would happen on July 28, 2018.

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The story of the murder of Juana Raymundo Rivera is marked by the unequal power relations between men and women, by the submission, misogyny, possession, and objectification of women’s bodies as objects of consumption; elements that, at the same time, perpetuate patriarchy. This reaches such extremes that the possibility of getting away with this type of violent act is high.

According to the research, in the Ixil region, where Juana was originally from, Mayan women are exposed to a triple violation of their rights for being women and for the situation of inequality in which they live due to the political, social and cultural, which in this case, provided the basis for carrying out a crime against a woman.

More than a year after the conviction of the case and within the framework of the “Day of No Violence against Women”, we recount the events that preceded the death of the activist from the “Youth” branch of CODECA and that led to investigators to place his femicide, a former evangelical pastor, at the centre of attention.

The femicide

Women carry the remains of Juana Raymundo at her funeral. Photo: Santiago Boton.
In the early morning of July 28, 2018, a fifty-year-old couple went to see a piece of land in the Cambalam village, in Nebaj, Quiché, 320 kilometres from Guatemala City. Nearby, a group of people from an evangelical church that was performing baptisms in the local stream warned them not to move forward because on the other side of the river “there is a dead person.”

But curiosity got the better of him. They quietly approached the place where they saw the body of a woman. They did not recognize her because her face was facing the mountain.

The scene shocked them and they immediately began calling Juana Raymundo Rivera, but none of her calls were answered.

At around noon, a minibus passed by from the village of Cotzol to the village of Vijolom I, in Nebaj. The same vehicle in which Juana travelled every Saturday after finishing her work shift at the Cotzal Convergence Center, to spend the weekend with her family. But Juana was not on board. The couple, Juana’s relatives, began to get alarmed.

So they returned to the stream with the intention of seeing the body up close, but the Public Ministry (MP) surrounded the crime scene and did not let them pass. It wasn't until they moved the body that they recognized the suit that the person lying on the mountain was wearing. It was Juana.

At the crime scene and its surroundings, a blue shoe was found three meters from the body and a black leather belt, without a buckle, at a distance of 10 meters.

The body is semi-naked from the chest down, there were wounds on the left side of the nose, on the lower lip, near the neck, and the jaw. She also had some injuries on her right hand that the autopsy would reveal as an indication that she fought for her life. The peaceful Juana had been murdered.

The former pastor of the community

Brito enters the court where his first statement will be known. Photo: Francisco Vivar
In the middle of the procedures that Juana’s parents had to carry out to identify the body at the Quiché Regional Hospital, a dark-skinned man, 1.55 meters tall, appeared with whom the Raymundo Rivera family had had friction in the past. He took them in his gray four-wheel drive pickup truck. The man was Jacinto Brito Raymundo, a former pastor of the Emmanuel Evangelical Church, located in Vijolom I, Nebaj, the village where Juana’s relatives lived. Pedro.

The day after the murder, at around 10:00 in the morning, Jacinto Brito Raymundo appears again inside the hospital while the MP investigators are taking the statement from Juana’s father. He claimed to be one of the CODECA leaders in the municipality of Santa María Nebaj and provided his information for any information.

Later, on September 18, he was interviewed by the MP. With his statement, he wanted to mislead the investigators, so that no one could involve him in the femicide.

The results of the autopsy showed that Juana Raymundo Rivera died due to cerebral oedema with a secondary subdural hematoma and craniocerebral trauma. Furthermore, she had signs of having been sexually abused minutes or hours before.

Juana was veiled and buried between July 29 and 30 in Vijolom I. The investigators looked for clues in the canton of Salquilito, where the victim spent the night during the week. There they found two pregnancy tests with a possible positive result, a blister of ferrous fumarate pills and a tube of clotrimazole 2%, used to treat vaginal fungal infections, and cash.

In the room they found no evidence that Juana had spent the night of July 27, 2018.

Incriminating testimonies against a femicide

As the days passed, investigators learned more about Juana Raymundo Rivera’s personality and behaviour. No one had a bad impression of her and she had no enemies of her, even though at first it was believed that her murder could be linked to revenge for her participation in the ranks of CODECA.

“Her death surprised us because she was a quiet, respectful, accomplished person and very reserved about work matters because we never met any friends, suitors or boyfriends. To the best of my knowledge, she never engaged in a conversation with a colleague from this district,” said Daniel Velasco López, head of nursing at the Cotzol Convergence Center.

Other neighbours did not provide further information, they only indicated that she arrived at Vijomol I every week, since she worked in the Cotzol health service. They all agreed on something: they did not know if Juana had a boyfriend or partner.

Gallego Cobo had been working with her for a year and assured them that they got along well, but that he did not know the details of her personal life because Juana was very reserved. The nurse said that two weeks before her death, he saw her arrive in a grey pickup truck with semi-tinted windows. In Cotzal, such a car is common on public transportation, otherwise, no one in the community has such a vehicle. But he didn’t ask her anything because she thought she might get upset.

Miguel Gallegos Cobo and Juana Raymundo Rivera had the task of preparing a vaccination report each month and delivering it to the Nebaj District Hospital. On Wednesday, July 25, 2018, they began to make it in Juana’s house in the Salquilito canton. As it was already late, Gallegos proposed to Raymundo that they finish the report the next day, but she refused because she said she had to be in Nebaj at 6:00 in the morning. They continued until 8:00 at night but did not finish the document until noon on the 26th.

On July 26, Juana went to the Nebaj District Hospital to deliver the reports, but she had to return on the 27th due to an error in the text.

The last contact that Miguel Gallegos Cobo had with the victim was on Friday the 27th, at 6:00 in the afternoon, through a work chat, where Juana shared the results of a pregnancy test carried out on a patient. At almost the same time, she contacted her mother to let her

know that she would spend the night in Nebaj and that she would arrive in Vijolom I the next day.

The nurse learned of the death of his partner at 7:00 p.m. on July 28.

Some people provided testimonies about the relationship between Juana Raymundo Rivera and Jacinto Brito Raymundo. Their identities were omitted by MP investigators to ensure their protection.

Juana met Jacinto when she was working at a cell phone charging station. He asked for her number with an excuse and months later, her “friendship” with the town pastor, who was 14 years older than her, became a romantic and sexual relationship that lasted until the last day of his life. she.

Throughout the investigation, witnesses provided different dates of the years in which the relationship could have begun. Juana herself told her only close friend — witness A — that it all started in 2011 when she was 18 years old. The victim’s parents said that they were already a couple when she was 15 or 16 years old. Some media outlets have even indicated that the relationship began when she was just 12 years old.

The MP assured that the relationship began in 2012.

Juana is silenced and under control

Juana’s age and the secrecy of her relationship with Jacinto Brito were not the only problems in the relationship, but the violence and control he exerted over her.

Another witness reported that Jacinto Brito Raymundo raped Juana Raymundo when she was a minor, a situation that she denied when her parents found out about the relationship they had.

The annoyance of Juana’s father and her mother was such that they made a notarial act of conciliation that included compensation for damages. After this, Juana and Jacinto separated, but only in appearance. Eleven months before her death, her parents realized that the relationship was continuing and demanded that she take a pregnancy test. The result was negative. Juana expressed her consent to continue with Jacinto, but they were very offended.

The relationship, which was a secret, did not go unnoticed and soon Juana found herself besieged by Jacinto Brito Raymundo’s daughter, who did not miss the opportunity to insult her and reproach her for her relationship. Not even the disapproval of her family could get her former pastor to distance herself from her and they continued seeing each other “in secret.”

Jacinto was the one who controlled the relationship and, at times, it seemed that Juana no longer wanted to be with him. This is shown in the following testimony.

The witness mentioned that a strong link to continue in communication was CODECA since Jacinto was the one who incorporated her into the group.

It was not the only time that Jacinto Brito Raymundo’s jealousy came to light. At another CODECA meeting, this time in Escuintla, work groups were formed and he became jealous because there were other men in Juana’s work group.

During the relationship, Jacinto Brito promised Juana that he would build her a house on land that was three hours away from Vijolom I, but Juana knew that the land belonged to his wife, who has almost the same name: Juana Raymundo Guzmán.

The witnesses describe Juana Raymundo as a naturally quiet person, but it is not known for sure if she was because of the control that Jacinto Brito exercised over her, to prevent the community from knowing that the religious leader had a relationship outside of marriage and that He was much younger than him.

Reconstruction of a femicide

The moment her body appeared, the news immediately spread nationally, through social networks. In this context, a series of crimes and murders had occurred against CODECA activists and other peasant organizations. Juana’s aroused more indignation.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1753324631452035

Several international bodies spoke out, since at that point in the year, five other people from the same organization and two from the Altiplano Peasant Committee had been murdered. Juana had just been elected as part of the Municipal Executive Committee of the Movement for the Liberation of the People (MLP), a political instrument of CODECA. Two days later, the MP opened a technical table, so that the investigative work could be coordinated and facilitated.

On March 21, 2019, eight months after the femicide, the MP presented the reconstruction of the events of July 28, 2018, and the accusation against Jacinto Brito Raymundo before the Femicide Court of Santa Cruz del Quiché.

For MP investigators, the death of Juana Raymundo Rivera is divided into two moments.

The Public Ministry accused Brito of misogyny and/or contempt for women for having murdered the activist, having left her half naked from the chest down, and having left her “on one side” after throwing her into a river, simulating with the family of the victim that nothing had happened.

Juana Raymundo is buried from 25 a.m., in the Vijolom I community, #Nebaj, #Quiché. She was a member of a CODECA youth group, a nurse and part of the Mpal Committee of the Movement for the Liberation of the People. She was kidnapped, tortured and murdered on 07/27. Juvenal Quispe. pic.twitter.com/3qYaCjI7VQ

— Santiago Botón 🇬🇹 (@SantiagoteleSUR) July 30, 2018

The plaintiffs in the case, the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), prepared a report to explain the dynamics of control and power between men and women, and how this has contributed to perpetuating violence against women.

Néstor Solano, CODECA’s defence attorney for Jacinto Brito, used defence strategies based on time and argued that “he could not have had sex with Juana and then killed her in the time that the plaintiffs claim” and that there could not have been done this in the middle of the darkness. Another strategy that he sought, not only to perpetuate the violence exercised against women, was to place Jacinto as one of the main victims of the femicide since he “lost” with the death of Juana. “It is not an easy thing to find a woman like her, with those characteristics,” according to a Prensa Comunitaria report.

CODECA, through Leyria Vai, assured in an interview with Prensa Comunitaria that the organization did not pay for Brito’s defence and that they decided to leave him alone “so that he could face the process as established by law.” He also said that in the other cases of crimes against his organization, justice has not advanced.

From the beginning, Jacinto Brito chose the alibi that the accusation against him was a “political attack”, so the lines of the investigation also investigated that possibility, as confirmed by the lawyers of Juana’s family, but this possibility remained discarded.

Juana’s femicide declared himself innocent the entire time. He controlled Juana’s life and body in such a way that he took her remains to her cemetery in the same vehicle in which he took her to her death.

On September 24, 2021, the Femicide Court of Santa Cruz del Quiché sentenced Jacinto Brito Raymundo, in one of the fastest criminal processes in the history of Guatemalan justice.

On March 3, 2021, the Mixed Regional Chamber of the Court of Appeals of Quiché confirmed the sentence and rejected an appeal from the union. For the commission of the crime of femicide, a sentence of 50 years of incommutable prison is imposed, and for the crime of rape, a sentence of 12 years of incommutable prison is imposed, which adds up to a total sentence of 62 years.

Juana in collective memory as dignified reparation

The organization Mujeres Transformando el Mundo (MTM) proposed dignified reparation measures in favour of Juana Raymundo Rivera’s family and the community from which she was originally, and the court accepted. Perhaps one of the most important is the dissemination of the ruling through the radio, in addition to:

1. The payment of 24,805.70 quetzals to the family of Juana Raymundo Rivera to compensate for material damage.
2. Conferences by the Violence Prevention Unit of the Municipality or the 3. Ministry of the Interior to address issues of prevention of violence against women in the Vijolom I village of the municipality of Santa María Nebaj.

4. The flag must be placed at half-mast in the Municipality every March 8 and November 25 of every year, to remember Juana’s death and to ensure that no woman is femicide ever again.
5. The Ministry of Health of Vijolom I village shall place a memorial plaque with the name of the victim.

6. The Ministry of Education must grant 24 scholarships to the ladies or girls of the village and the municipalities of Santa María Nebaj, San Gaspar Chajul and San Juan Cotzal to study nursing and issue the corresponding agreement.
7. Disseminate the content of the ruling through radio spots.

The Ministry of Education and Health give village schools talks on the prevention of violence against women, and sexual and reproductive rights, in addition to the innate rights contained in the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents and the Law against femicide and other forms of violence against women.

8. That the health centres in the area extend psychological assistance during the duration of the sentence to the family of the accused.
9. That the Ministry of the Interior guarantee that the family of the accused does not intimidate, threaten or undermine any rights of the family of the victim.

#Nebaj #8M As part of the dignified reparation measures that were issued when Jacinto Brito was sentenced to 50 years in prison for femicide and 12 years for sexual rape against Juana Raymundo Rivera, during the activities to commemorate the International Day of Woman pic.twitter.com/GGcDAPf8EE

— PrensaComunitaria (@PrensaComunitar) March 12, 2021

More than three years after femicide, the sentence in the case of Juana Raymundo Rivera has opened the doors to the possibility of disseminating information on the prevention of violence against women and sexual reproduction to girls and adolescents in Nebaj, something that Juana would have liked to share with the “Youth” of CODECA.