Six years later, there is no Justice for the girls burned in the Hogar Seguro center in Guatemala

Inflated with helium, about forty white balloons rise into the sky. From the pavement, the relatives and friends of those for whom they are intended, watch them walk away in silence.

This Wednesday, March 8, in Guatemala City, the death of 41 girls in the so-called ‘Safe Home’ case is commemorated. Six years have passed since a fire at that state institution claimed the lives of 41 young people between the ages of 13 and 17, and left 15 others with life injuries.

Six years in which there was no legal progress simply because the trial didn’t even start. Instead, it was postponed 12 times, lengthening”maliciously a criminal proceeding that could very well have ended six months after submitting the request to the Public Prosecutor’s Office”, sentence Brenda Lisbeth Maldonado Andrade, lawyer for the association Women Transforming the Worldwhich represents victims and survivors.

“There were all kinds of strategies on the part of the defense, for example: not attending the hearings, calling in sick, blaming the traffic,” the lawyer sighs. “They make many excuses, many pretexts,” confirms Elida Salguero, mother of one of the fatalities, in an interview with France 24.

Like her, most The families of the deceased live on the outskirts of the capital, or even in other towns, and for each hearing they invest time and money, something that many do not have. In addition to getting up early, “one spends on tickets to go to court, or for a drink, when one goes all day to be there.” So far, in vain.

Six years without progress

At least eight people, including police officers and state authorities, have been accused of the death of the 41 minors. To date, none have been convicted. On the contrary, during this time six defendants have managed to get out of jail and only the two members of the Police are in jail.

The survivors’ lawyers consider that former president Jimmy Morales should also be prosecuted, for being a “state crime” that occurred under the protection of his government, within a government institution.

The then president has never received the survivors, nor has he publicly apologized for the tragedy. What he did was inaugurate a memorial in 2019 in the old facilities of the home, where the names of the victims were misspelled and the relatives were not invited.

“Why hasn’t our Guatemala responded?”

At the altar that did take families into account, in the Plaza de la Constitución, Jazmín arranges the flowers that were installed for the commemoration. A sunflower – the flower that, due to its tendency to always look towards the sun, is associated with hope and resistance – adorns each of the 41 crosses.

“I think that in other countries, with a girl who would have been burned like that, they would have reacted. Why hasn’t our government, our Guatemala, given an answer?” questions Jazmín at the microphone of this medium.

It was in that square, in front of the National Palace, that in 2017 they placed the crosses for the first time. These were later removed by the government of former President Jimmy Morales, before the altar was destroyed a second time during a demonstration. Shortly after, a new altar was set up in what has been dubbed the ‘Plaza de las Niñas’.

There, under the inclement sun of the Guatemalan capital, Jazmín regrets not having received psychological support: “It was a very hard trauma. Six years have passed, but being able to control those memories is still difficult. My own mind sometimes makes me hysterical,” says the young woman now 20 years old.

A protection center turned into a place of abuse

Jazmín had been inside the Safe Home for three years when the tragedy happened and it was her friends who she saw die during the fire.

“I was scared, I started to cry, I thought that I was also burned to see the others like this,” she recalls.

The four walls of that institution, located in San José Pinula, 22 kilometers from the capital of Guatemala, were already marked by horrors. Beatings, human trafficking, rape, and even murder. Since 2013, dozens of complaints had been filed with the country’s Prosecutor’s Office.

For her part, the lawyer Brenda Maldonado speaks of “subhuman living conditions” with “decomposing food” and “physical and psychological violence” towards the youth of the center. Some complaints that had already reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), to whom on November 11, 2016 the Human Rights Ombudsman requested precautionary measures in favor of the young people.

And it was precisely to flee from this mistreatment that on March 7, 2017, a group of minors ran away from home. His freedom lasted a few hours. Police agents seized 56 girls and, according to the Public Ministry, locked them up illegally in a 7 x 6.8 square meter classroom, where they would spend their last hours of life.

Locked up, no running water or toilets

The lock on the door was not opened so that the girls could relieve themselves or to give them water. Nor when they began to call for help after the flames took over the room. In fact, the deputy police inspector, Lucinda Marroquín, took nine minutes to open the door, despite the shouting and banging on the door.

“The Police prevented us from entering, they were waiting for an order to let us in, I don’t know from whom,” a fire officer described during a hearing.

The versions about the origin of the fire diverge, but according to preliminary investigations, after a day and a night of desperation, a colleague set fire to a sponge mat.

That tragic story of March 8, 2017 shows a lot about the realities of Guatemala, starting with the very nature of the Safe Home, even before the fire happened.

The minors who entered that institution were “victims of society, of their environment, who were refugees; that is why it was called Hogar Seguro. And surely they had nothing,” deplores Brenda Maldonado.

“They were not criminals”

Indeed, without clear protocols for differentiated care, children with absent or abusive parents, coming from gang recruitment areas or situations of extreme poverty, were admitted to that state shelter called Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción.

In total, the home housed 600 minors, although it had a capacity for 400. There, the parents expected their children to receive what they were unable to give: education, psychological care, access to health. They had all known the harsh realities of violence in their childhood, but “they were not criminals,” emphasizes the lawyer.

And if Brenda Maldonado insists on that point, it is because the first reaction of a large part of Guatemalan society when the fire was publicized was not one of compassion. In social networks, newspapers and conversations, the deceased girls received no mercy for being considered rebels or gang members.

This criminalization reached its peak when, in 2019, the survivors were denounced as responsible for the death of their companions.