Let's talk about femicides in Latin America, especially Mexico. Tw: explicit descriptions of violence. This post is really long and i'm not adding a read more.
Femicides in Mexico started being recognized as a problem approximately since 1992/1993, The first well known cases were in 1994 with a group of 76 women that are now called "las muertas de JuĂĄrez" (the dead women of JuĂĄrez, a city in Mexico), most of these were young girls that were r*ped and str*ngled, and they were mostly from the working class, chosen by the killers most likely because these girls' families didn't have any money to move the justice system. This was a very tragic case to which the gobernor back then said the reported cases of murdered women were a "normal and expected number". Femicides in Mexico weren't even recognized as a crime in the "CĂłdigo Penal Federal" until 2012. ever since then more than 32 criminal codes and laws have been created to protect women in different Mexico's states. However it's known that most of the murderers still go unpunished and sometimes the man in question is not even discovered.
In 2015, the movement called "Ni una menos" (which i can roughly translate as "Not one woman less") was created in Argentina due to the femicide of Chiara Paez, a 14 year old girl. The movement has spread across Latin America and in Mexico, women who align with this movement create marches and protest against femicide and other forms of violence against women.
This is a video about the women who protested against the rise of femicides in Mexico in 2018. Since then, the cases have been growing and getting worse no matter how much feminists protest. In the video, an expert also explains why femicides are a bigger issue in Latin America than in other countries.
During 2020, there was an increase of reported femicides with more than 2.000 murdered women from January to July. Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America for women. One of the most well known cases was the one of FĂĄtima Aldrighett who was only 7 years old, this case enraged people greately and created a new wave of protests against femicides.
(The signs say "I march because i'm alive and i don't know for how long" - "i'm the scream of the women who are no longer here" - and "are you tired of hearing it? we're tired of living it")
Most of the cases of femicides are not even recognized as such, only about 6% of the murders of women are. The rest are usually qualified as regular homicides. To truly battle this issue, recognizing it as a problem and recognizing that women are murdered by men just for being women, would be the first step. But we're very far from getting there. When people (especially men) accept this is a real sex-based problem where men are the opressors, they see it as something normal in Mexican Culture because Machismo is so ingrained everywhere, and most of the time women are the ones getting blamed for walking alone at night or walking through dangerous places, or getting into relationships with the "few bad men", etc. It's like constantly going in circles with this flawed victim blaming logic.
(Here's the polemic wall (why is it even polemic?) that women filled with names of the victims of femicide in Mexico. It was named by the government as "the wall of peace" to prevent the harms made by feminist protests, which they changed to "the wall of memories" to prove their discontent and give light to the issues they're fighting for)
Femicide is the highest level that violence against women can reach, everything with the end goal of mantaining women scared and submissive, so that men can stay in power. The ideals of Machismo are so strong in Mexico and so ingrained in the culture, that this is one of the societies where is harder to dismantle the patriarchy and take the power away from men.
"Machismo is a form of masculinity, which typically has a negative connotation and used to describe how male dominance and superiority are encouraged by parents and societal forces (Bilmes, 1992; Mayo & Resnick, 1996). The term Machismo is a Spanish word usually used pejoratively in describing an attitude of male dominance and superiority which is legitimized through patriarchal social systems and reinforced through cultural values and norms (Bilmes, 1992; Mayo & Resnick, 1996). Latin societies have been influenced by Roman law, which firmly incorporated males as patriarchs. Some associate machismo with the repeated rise and fall to political power of men who are able to dominate other men and women (Wolf & Hansen, 1972). [...] In trying to understand the Latin concept of masculinity, generalizations are often made and obviously, these generalized stereotypes do not apply to all Latin males. Although many people seem to consider machismo as a purely Latino concept, machismo in the form of ostentatious manliness and often sexist attitudes seems to exist in many societies" - Sharon Larisa Segrest, Darla J. Domke-Damonte
Margarita Bejarano Celaya in her article called "Femicide is only the tip of the iceberg" explains that femicide is not only the ending act in which the woman is murdered, but a long process of violence against said woman that tragically ends this way.
" Due to its characteristics, physical violence is the most visible, but not necessarily the most brutal and impactful. According to Segato (2003), moral violence is the most efficient of the mechanisms of social control and reproduction of inequalities, as he argues that "because of its subtlety, diffuse character and omnipresence, its effectiveness is maximal in the control of subordinate social categories" (Ibid., 114). It is this distinctive invisibility that allows it to be socially accepted and validated, and for this reason it is more insidious than physical violence, as it leaves no visible marks, but undermines the self-esteem, confidence and capacity for action and the search for autonomy of the woman on whom it is imposed. [...] Feminicidal violence uses moral violence to generate around women a whole context of persistent, progressive and multiple types of violence to threaten their existence, just because they are women, in a society in which the feminine is subordinate and this lethal moral principle is not up for discussion. Thus, the legitimacy of moral violence allows it to be a strategy for the reproduction of the androcentric system of male domination. [...] It is important to point out that on occasions - and for various reasons - the femicide does not succeed in ending the woman's life. Despite his attempts to demonstrate his superiority over the victim, the woman manages to survive; however, the intention of the perpetrator is clear: to attempt against the integrity and life of the woman. According to this premise, attempted femicide should therefore be considered as part of the phenomenon [...] What follows is the tortuous, long and costly process of seeking justice for women and their families and real punishment for the aggressors, in which the institutions are also incarnated as aggressors, lacking functional mechanisms for access to justice, lacking trained and sensitized personnel, and not considering the replacement of the damage. "
Nelson Arteaga Botello and Jimena ValdĂŠs Figueroa in their article called "Socio-Cultural Contexts of Feminicides in the State of Mexico: New Female Subjectivities" think the increasing rates of violence against women can be explained due to the rise of sociocultural/economic/emotional independence for women in the recent years, they think men have had the "need" to heighten their violence against women to keep them subjugated as it gets more difficult to keep them away from their freedom.
" However, this change does not mean that things are easy, that the process is free of tensions and conflicts. Resistance can be observed in women themselves and, of course, in men; in both there is a reluctance to accept women's entry into areas previously considered masculine, which is why more violent mechanisms of resistance have also been used - particularly by men (although not exclusively) - to reinforce control, discipline and authority over women. The increase in violence against women in different spaces (the workplace, the family, the street) can be understood in this context in which men, accustomed to a perspective based on androcentric roles, seek to reestablish the old order (Touraine, 2006). [...] In general, the cases shown here suggest that women with greater independence over the meaning and use of their lives, bodies and sexuality are more likely to be victims of murderous violence by men, insofar as they represent a greater threat to traditional forms of masculinity affirmation. Any form of independence or resistance to control "incites" or "provokes" male violence. As Radford and Russell (2006) point out, on the streets, it is the "unmanly" women who receive the most abuse and aggression. At work, those who resist men's attention-seeking strategies are the ones who suffer the most harassment. In this sense, the outraged masculinity signified by violence tends to be affirmed in the negation and objectification of female subjectivity. As Russell (2006) notes, when people perceived as inferior (e.g., women) frustrate the hopes or expectations of those who see themselves as superior (e.g., men), a very different reaction is provoked than when the same frustration is caused (actually or imagined) by someone conceived as superior or equal (e.g., other men). The greater the inclination of frustrated men to violence, the greater the likelihood that this form of sexism will be expressed violently, even to the point of death. "
Rosa Cobo (2011) also considers that femicide is the response to the incrase of success in women's liberation and related issues.
" She proposes the thesis that the worsening of "traditional" forms of violence against women, in addition to the emergence of new forms of violence, is a misogynist response to the advances achieved by women in various areas, but especially in the field of violence against women. The emergence of new forms of violence against women, is a misogynist response to the progress achieved by women in various areas, but above all in their relations with men, particularly in the family and in the family and social spheres. in their relations with men, particularly in the spheres of the family and marriage, the central units of the sexual contract the family and marriage, central units of the sexual contract that vertebrates patriarchy. In this sense, she affirms that we are witnessing a "patriarchal reaction" that uses as an argument the minimization of aggressions against women. b) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men, a fundamental assessment to refute the claims that attribute aggressions against women to personality problems or to the inability to contain the impulses of men; and c) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men, a fundamental assessment to refute the claims that attribute aggressions against women to personality problems or to the inability to contain the impulses of men, and d) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men. or inability to contain aggressive impulses. On the other hand, male violence male violence, on the other hand, is one of the faces of the configuration of inequality between women and men, which is the result of the relations between men and women. the result of power relations and domination that have tipped the patriarchal balance in favor of men, which explains why men have the power to violate women's rights. the power to violate women, any woman, from the position of power and privilege that they hold and privilege that they hold in terms of gender, which is strengthened when other attributes of power such as gender and gender identity are added. other attributes of power such as social class, race, ethnicity or membership in criminal groups. or membership in criminal groups. In Cobo's words, "violence is inherent to relations of domination and subordination" (2011: 146). "
This issue is of course not only limited to Mexico but it's prevalent all over Latin America. The following video talks about femicide in Honduras. Trigger warning because it's very descriptive about the violence against women. And it's longer than the first one, but watch it if you want to see the awful reality women face everyday.
My heart aches for all my latina sisters. How long will we have to keep begging for justice?
To sum up everything above, men are so afraid of losing their power over women that their only solution is to murder us so they can silence us and mantain control. But we can't stay silent about this and we have to keep fighting for our complete freedom, no matter how hard they try to stop us.
"Thanks to the feminist movements that work so that gender violence ceases to be a private matter and becomes a public issue, every news of femicide moves us and forces us to think about what kind of society we are building for our children and grandchildren. In each femicide there is a story of violence that began before; a woman who suffered in silence; who felt unsafe even in her own home and to whom as a State we did not know how to reach her with confidence or with sufficient efficiency to make her feel that she had an ally there. Violence against women does not discriminate according to age, socioeconomic status, educational level or geographic location. There is no distinction of political colors, nor should there be in the fight for its eradication. Violence against women is an issue that summons us all. Together we must move towards a society where equality ceases to be a utopia and becomes the basis of relations between men and women." - Graciela Villar
Sources / articles you can read to know more about the topic (some if not most of them are in spanish tho):
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve | thirteen | fourteen
I'm sorry / not sorry for the long post. This topic is really important.
