In Mexico there is an immense elephant, dressed in purple, which nobody has long wanted to look at. It is neither more nor less than half of the population, who since counting the figures began more than three decades ago, warned: "Hey, they are killing us." And they killed them, and they continue to kill them, in a much more cruel and bloodthirsty way than they, who mostly die from a bullet. And the dead were counted by thousands a year. Even in times when the bleeding of organized crime decreased, there was no truce for them. In 2019, a new record: 10 women killed a day. The rage has grown more vigorously than the speeches of the political class and the measures to combat machismo. And these days, the movement is stronger than ever.
MORE INFORMATION
López Obrador avoids giving a concrete plan to tackle the crisis of femicides- The torture and murder of a seven-year-old girl triggers anger in Mexico for gender-based violence
- The torture and murder of a seven-year-old girl triggers anger in Mexico for gender-based violence
Mexican feminism has broken into the national debate and, although it has tried to avoid it, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has had to respond to a growing anger in the last week. The president's aftershocks have only fueled the fire. His efforts to reduce the demands of an opposition campaign against him have provoked stronger reactions. And on March 9 the movement, with more allies yet, has called a national strike.
The recent murders of Abril Pérez, Ingrid Escamilla and little Fatima Antón, whose body was found naked and tortured this week, and the video that went viral from Yesenia Zamudio - a mother snores in pain encouraging other women to march Burn everything and, if not, "do not hinder" - have become the banner of a protest that, unlike the movement in other countries of the region, not only claims the right to a safe abortion or to break the glass ceiling at work, but to the most basic: not to be killed.
Seven women from the worlds of culture, law, activism and politics are evidence that the movement has not only resisted the envy of previous governments, but is advancing strongly and has become the elephant that Mexican politics can no longer ignore.
Maria Salguero
Ten years ago, when he was preparing his thesis on oil wells to receive a geophysical engineer, María Salguero woke up every morning with more terrible news than the previous one. It was the war against the narco and the mothers of those disappeared by violence began to take to the streets. She decided to do something that the government was not doing, at least realistically: counting the figures. And in 2013 he developed a map with 8,000 cases of missing persons in the country.
During this work he realized something serious: there were also many cases of missing girls and women who ended up in a pit or dumped in a ditch, and there was no official information on gender crimes because each State decides how to collect or disseminate that information already That is a local crime. He then leaked his figures and created the first map of femicides in Mexico. In his spare time, while attending a store in the center of the capital, he achieved what the Government, with millions of pesos of budget, had never efficiently prepared.
That database that he published for free is used by members of the National Guard these days. The López Obrador government tried to include it in its team to draw up maps of macho violence by states, but they never hired it. "They wanted me to work for free, and so how. I quit. I don't want to see them again," he says. These days he hopes to take his project to Sonora, in the north of the country: "I would like my work to finally have an impact on public policies to combat violence against women. That it not only remain in numbers," he says.
Lorena Gutierrez
Lorena Gutierrez answers the questions of this newspaper hidden in some corner of northern Mexico. In 2015, they brutally murdered their 12-year-old daughter, Fatima Varinia Quintana, in a small municipality in Lerma (Toluca, State of Mexico). "She was raped beastly, she was stabbed more than 90 times, her chest was opened more than 30 centimeters, her crotch was cut, her ankles were broken, her hands were broken. And my daughter was a warrior, I fight to the end; even with everything that did not die until they threw three stones of more than 30 kilos each, which was what ended his life, "he says from the other side of the phone.
The struggle of Lorena and her family, to whom the alleged murderers of her daughter threatened to kill and shot the house, has not stopped since that February 5, 2015. She and her neighbors gave everything to the authorities, held the alleged aggressors, they indicated the home where the crime took place (they were their neighbors), the weapon, bloody clothes and even she located the body of her daughter buried by stones in a forest. The state Victims Commission moved them to a house in the north of the country, where they have since lived with their other four children without being able to show a credential in case anyone finds them and kills them. These days he lives with the anguish that they release one of the three defendants and that another, who was a minor, does not harm them when he leaves the correctional facility in October.
Gutierrez joined the group of mothers of feminicides of the State of Mexico and is one of the representatives of the movement in the federative entity with more femicides. "When are they going to do something to stop having more Fatima killed? When are the girls going to be able to walk free in this country?"
Gabriela Jauregui
"We walk on the footprints of the struggle of our mothers, grandmothers, but whoever wears the baton are 18-year-old girls. We are not those of 40 or the incredibly brave of 60. They are them. And that means that this will last." , says writer and editor Gabriela Jauregui.
For Jauregui, the feminist movement is experiencing a hopeful moment. Despite the figures of gender violence and regardless of the Government's response, the situation for her has changed in recent years. He observes it at literary festivals, where there is already a concern that the program includes many more women. "They were always lucky if they were moderating tables or there were a couple of presentations. It was a very masculine atmosphere, even jokes or macho comments were allowed on the tables themselves. Now they are not gone, but I do feel they have been limited. This could Look like something small, but it's having consequences, "he says.
Although he does observe with frustration that, while there is progress on the one hand, there is still a long way to go: "Feminism in this country meets the wall of a government that looks away, who does not know how to listen or who thought that what it should listening was something else. But we are a half of the population that is in a war situation. "
Citalli Hernández
Citalli Hernández, 29, is the youngest senator in Morena - López Obrador's party - and has observed how these days the president faced feminism with the so-called Fourth Transformation of his Government. Those who demanded urgent measures and criticized their management considered them as part of the opposition. "I think the president is a sensitive man with these issues, but he does not communicate his sensitivity well. He has not given the most satisfactory answers, but I think the movement has to have answers from the women who form the Fourth Transformation," replies Hernández in An interview with this newspaper.
"Never in the last decades has feminism been so strong. And the fact that the last horrific feminicides have been visible in the capital has already unleashed a majority rage that had not been achieved even with the dead of Juarez," adds the senator . From his office in the upper house, he assures that the "historical" moment in Mexico is also a historic opportunity to advance the feminist agenda in the legislative field. "Until recently, even members of the party considered that it was something secondary. We have to continue to train, disseminate and also raise awareness of some women of our bench," he says. "I am convinced that we will be able to decriminalize abortion at the federal level and the feminist movement is pushing for that to happen."
Sayuri Herrera
Sayuri Herrera has been a lawyer for some of the most emblematic cases for the movement in recent years. He defended the crime against Lesvy Rivera, murdered on the campus of the capital of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in May 2017. From the first moment, the prosecution concluded something difficult to believe: the young woman had committed suicide by hanging herself with the cable of a phone booth. The pressure on the streets, led by the powerful women's student movement of the UNAM (the largest university in the country) caused Lesvy's murder to attract enough media attention for the prosecution to recourse. "Lesvy was a catalyst for a malaise that had been growing for a long time," says Herrera.
The legal battles that his mother, Araceli Osorio, accompanied by Herrera, held for two years, made a judge last October 10 issue a favorable sentence: Jorge Luis González, guilty of feminicide.
Since then he has worked more cases related to sexist violence. And in all observes the same pattern. "The institutional violence that families have to face, the criminalization of the victims, no evidence is collected, the scenes are contaminated, the videos are asked too late, they are manipulated ... They do not do their job," Herrera denounces about the performance of prosecutors. And he warns, despite the rise of feminism: "Institutions are not going to change so quickly, the movement must persist. It is important that it be consolidated, that it continues articulated, because the situation does not reverse in a week."
Tatiana Bilbao
The most international architect in Mexico is tired of being asked in interviews if she has children, if she has suffered an obstacle because she is a woman. "That would never be asked of a man. And I refused to answer," he recalls. "Fortunately I never thought of myself differently, because I grew up in a family where they instilled it in me, I had that luck. When I arrived at the workplace I realized that on the platform the only woman was me. And I decided that we had to talk about it ", Add.
He says that Mexican feminism coexists with a very peculiar characteristic, something that does not happen in other countries. "The woman in many areas of society is the provider, the support of the family and the axis of everything ... But at the end of the day, she does not receive the representation granted to her in private life. I think of that inconsistency the rage of many of us is born today, "he says.
She is convinced that the challenge of our time is to accept diversity, see it as something positive. "We don't have to reject our femininity, dress or talk like them," he says. And proudly, Mexico has more female architects leading projects, schools and companies than other countries in the world where she has worked, such as the United States, for example.
Tamara de Anda
The writer Tamara de Anda (Mexico City, 1983), author of a book designed for teenagers, Amiga, realize (Planeta, 2018), but that has become a guide that talks about the experience of women around Feminism, excitedly tells how the struggle of these days lives: "It fills me with hope to see the [girls] in the spaces where I studied at UNAM how they are organized. It is very impressive what they are achieving little by little: change of regulations , of protocols ... Or that have at least social consequences for stalkers and rapists. It's very cool, "he says.
With the situation of extreme violence in the country, it is inevitable that the main claim of the movement is to combat femicides and, he says, "it is easy to think that the other struggles are privileged." "But we also focus on the murders of women throughout the macho structure that sustains them," he adds. The fight against the decriminalization of abortion, for sexual and reproductive rights, for indigenous defenders attacked for conserving their land, for a gender perspective in the new criminal measures ... "Those claims are still there," he says.
"But with all this we see from the Government, both federal and capital, a foolishness of not wanting to see beyond their noses and learn nothing new, the criminalization of the protest continues. There is no real awareness of the seriousness of the problem, but who advises these people to give such statements, damn it? "