“He hit me in the stomach,” she said. The thirty-eight year old indian mother began crying softly. As I handed her a napkin to wipe away the tears, she continued in a voice just above a whisper, “I’m … afraid … he … hurt … my … unborn … baby.” This incident took place several nights ago.
I’ve known Nieve for more than ten years. She used to work as a cook at my free daycare center for children in Iquitos (losninosdeleo.com). She lives six blocks from my house in a large room with her alcoholic husband and three children. Five months pregnant, she was bleeding from a busted lip and a cut under her left eye. Immediately, I took her to the emergency room at the local hospital. As I waited while the young doctor tended to her wounds, I thought about her husband. This wasn’t the first time he’d come home drunk and beat up his wife. I paid the doctor (it turned out that the unborn baby was not hurt) then accompanied Nieve to her place.
A dozen neighborhood women were waiting for us in front of the house. And they were clearly upset about what had happened to Nieve. I went inside to give the man a good “talking to.” As I strode down the narrow dimly lit hallway, a half dozen women rushed past me. Nieve’s husband, a tall string bean of a man, was passed out on the floor. I watched as the women grabbed his heels and dragged him outside. The other women — frowns frozen on their brown faces — were gathered in a tight group in front of the house. A few had sticks and broom handles gripped in their hands. I started to advise them that maybe they should call the Iquitos Police. I thought better of it when one of the women, a stocky, broad-shouldered middle-aged housewife, gave me a look that said, “Forget it!” I stood back and watched these women kick, hit, and stomp him. He was dead sober now. And was screaming bloody murder. As I headed back to my house … the man’s painful cries echoing in my ears … I concluded: Nieve’s husband will think long and hard before he abuses his wife again.
When I told what had happened last night to a gringo ex-pat this morning, he had some harsh comments about the women who’d defended Nieve. He insisted that “… if the backward people here in Iquitos are to ever behave like civilized people, they must not take justice into their own hands.” To drive home his point, he declared, “Those women should have called the Iquitos Police!”
During the motorcar drive downtown this morning I thought about how this problem would have been dealt with in the states. The women and Nieve would have had to file a complaint with the police. Then Nieve’s husband would be taken to court, where he would be provided with free counsel. At taxpayer’s expense. He might be found guilty. If the lawyer didn’t discover some loophole in the law that would set his client free.
The question is: which of the two scenarios — the one that would have taken place in the states or what Nieve’s women neighbors did last night — best serves justice?
