A tragedy that sparked a movement
On Saturday August 1, 2020, a dedication ceremony for the Vanessa Guillen Mural at Austin's Cash Market in the Barrio Cuatro Milpas began with a traditional Azteca ceremony honoring her life and memory.
The ceremony was led by the Danza Azteca Huehuecoyotzin and
began with a traditional Caminata Izkaloteka from the location of the Sixth Sun
Stone Monument at Barrios Unidos Park in Phoenix.
At the close of the ceremony, small bundles of corn seeds which had been cultivated and preserved by the Calpolli Nahuacalco of TONATIERRA over the years were presented as gifts to all community members present.
The instructions were to give life to the seeds, by planting them and nurturing them in the homes of the many Mexican Barrios of Phoenix that came together in peace and respect on that day.
Vanessa Guillen was a 20-year-old soldier at the Fort Hood Army Base near Killeen, Texas when she disappeared on April 22, 2020, shortly after telling her mother that she had been sexually harassed by a fellow soldier. Her remains were discovered on June 30 near the Leon River. Hours later, Army soldier Aaron Robinson, who is believed to have been Vanessa’s killer, shot himself dead.
The family of Vanessa Guillen continues to this day to fight for accountability and justice in the case, which is still not resolved. Yet the tragedy has ignited a renewed determination to unite across communities in the fight against the pervasive patterns of sexual assault in the US military and violence in society as a whole.
Legislators and the Department of Defense (DOD) have long known that sexual assault and harassment in the military is a prevalent issue. According to DOD, 135,000 active-duty service members have been sexually assaulted in the last 11 years, 509,000 have experienced sexual harassment during the same period. For a decade, legislators have been attempting to reform the way sexual misconduct has been handled in the military but have so far been unsuccessful—until the case of Vanessa Guillen.
Thanks to the persistent efforts of the Guillen family, in December the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, which includes a measure making sexual harassment a crime for the first time in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Today at the Mexica New Year Ceremony of March 12, 2022, at the Sixth Sun Stone Monument at Barrios Unidos Park we remember and honor Vanessa Guillen once again. The struggle continues in a new light. The Sun of Justice is here-now: Nican Tlacah.
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