Feminism is a wick in Mexico.
"It's just a matter of the flame dancing a little and everything explodes."
-And what do you expect from that explosion?
-A national fire, an institutional revolution.
It may seem utopian, but there are only two paths: management and laws or a more prepared combat roll, feminist Nayeli says by phone.
And the fight is winning, both in the street and in the institutions.
In recent days, a fight has broken out between women's movements and political representatives that does not leave a single point to untangle the ball.
Some clash with the police, the others sow a poisonous speech of persecution and pointing out.
And 10 women are killed every day;
300 per month;
3,000 every year.
The police found Ingrid Escamilla's mangled body on February 11.
The criminal was arrested and six agents investigated to determine who of them leaked such bloody photos to the media.
Asked by the Prosecutor's Office six months later, nothing was yet known about those agents, who are still in their jobs.
Years and crimes pass, and the answers are always the same: silence and inaction.
More than 90% impunity.
Erika Martínez repeats again how her daughter was abused at the age of seven and how the aggressor is still calm at home, but this time she speaks from the national office for the defense of Human Rights in Mexico, which has been
squatted
by feminist movements .
Dozens of women are still locked up there, all victims, some housed and others in "direct action".
They reject the word violence, of which they are accused time and again for their bonfires in the streets, the smashing of glass, the throwing of homemade explosives and the hand-to-hand fight against the police in the demonstrations.
Dressed in black and with hooded heads, five pairs of eyes dialogue with this newspaper at the headquarters of the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH), converted into a shelter for victims of abuse where some girls dressed as princess and with colored feathers in her hair.
There is not a wall through which the spray has not passed: "I did not come out of your rib, you came out of my pussy";
"We are going to burn everything until we destroy their indifference."
In the inner courtyard clothes accumulate on the ground, bags of potatoes, piles of shoes.
They are donations for the locked up to endure.
The apparent chaos has an order, however.
Posters on the wall identify everything: baby clothes, adult clothes.
The same in the kitchen of the house, where the refrigerator distinguishes the foods for vegans and the intolerance to glucose or wheat.
Erika takes care of the logistics, she can go in and out without problem, open face, she is a victim and is treated with consideration.
Maria's arms are black with bruises.
Not two days ago there was a fight with the police in the demonstration to demand abortion in the country.
The five have hooded and chosen a name for this report.
María talks sweet and serene, babysits and goes out to kick against femicides when she plays.
Rebeca, 22 years old, studies economics and laughs shyly when asked about her future job, perhaps in politics.
Anonymous does not mean her age, she is somewhat older than the others and when the police crush her neck with their boot she prays that they do not release her: "As I let go ... capable and I become murderous, I think."
Flor works in the restoration of furniture and Sofía was expelled from the university for setting fire to the facilities.
Her goal is cinema, with Agnès Varda as inspiration.
"When you are raped at the age of six ...", he will say at some point in the conversation.
"We are broken women seeking to heal," says one of them, no matter who.
"When we put on the hood, we are all the same, no pain is more than another."
The Black Bloc brings together women who belong to different feminist organizations.
They are the barrier, they explain, that protects the others in the demonstrations and those that appear in the "tabloid" media by setting fire to street furniture, smashing the windows of shops and cars with their blows.
They have made fighting "a way of life."
“Violence is that which is exercised against a person, not against a wall, who does not feel, it is a form of protest, if we did not do it in a demonstration it would be vandalism, but we have to make noise, it is the only way to be heard .
The noise in a protest has meaning, ”argues Anónima.
"Violence is femicides, being in danger at home, in the subway, in the classroom," adds María.
The hood also protects them from fear, “which is the method of controlling power.
We want to blow up this concept, ”continues Anónima.
Standing in front of the police squad and clinging to arms conjures fear, that of the girl they keep deep inside and that of the adult who walks at night, that of oneself and everyone's.
"Being afraid in a country like this is not an option," says Sofía.
Is violence fought with violence? Claudia Sheinbaum, the head of government of Mexico City, was crying out these days.
"Let's open that debate," he said.
"I don't think that's feminism," she rejected, referring to the fight between the hooded women and the police.
Open debate, there is no one among those consulted who does not understand the anger and pain of these women, who does not understand or justify that it breaks, that it is painted and that it burns.
“All this has to do with the null responses to the demands, the null compliance with the law and justice, with disappeared public policies, with non-existent resources.
For the first time there is a movement that is not controlled or directed by anyone ”, affirms the expert human rights lawyer Patricia Olamendi, 64, founder of Nosotras We Have Other Data, who directly accuses political representatives of a“ persecution of feminism in Mexico, of continuous indications ”.
“Didn't the president [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] say that you have to get to the origin of things?
Well, the origin is the violence in which women live.
That is the debate that must be opened.
Why don't femicides decrease? ”.
Las Brujas del Mar is the feminist movement of Veracruz that called for the successful national women's strike on March 9, a day after the most populous demonstration that the country has ever experienced on Women's Day.
Their spokesperson, Arusi Unda, agrees that the radicalization of the movement responds to “the political persecution” to which they are being subjected, accused of serving political interests.
They wanted to connect Unda with the PAN president Felipe Calderón, as Claudia Sheinbaum “pointed out this week to Beatriz Gasca”, a woman who donated food to those locked up in the Human Rights headquarters and who was fired from her job immediately when the chief of Government made his name public before the media.
“The feminist struggle is adapting to the circumstances and taking off.
Politicians speak of violence, but they do not say how it is affecting the psyche of Mexican women that there are 10 murdered every day, and on top of that there is witch hunts.
The government is creating warriors, ”he says.
Is violence fought with violence?
Maybe not, but violence only breeds violence, and “the president's speech against some of these women is being discriminatory and hateful, very dangerous.
There is talk of infiltrators, they are lies ”, responds Olamendi.
"The words of a president are public policy," continues the lawyer.
In that sense, it is logical that the rejection of these young women has permeated the population, which sees vandalism where they speak of struggle and rights, security and employment, physical integrity and respect.
"Feminism was never peaceful, no revolution has been," argue the hooded women.
Marta Lamas is a feminist of international renown.
She and many others started the women's struggle 50 years ago.
At 73, she remembers: “We went out into the streets and it did not occur to us that we could be kidnapped, there were no femicides like now, there were areas where machismo could give you a hard time.
But the context has changed brutally and the forms of intervention have also changed ”, he says when asked if the movement is radicalizing.
"Then we were leaving the university and there were jobs and apartments to rent, now we are in a capitalism that annuls job aspirations."
In Vicente Fox's government, a few feminists went to meet with the president's wife, Marta Sahagún, who inquired about their demands.
"We are concerned about femicides, we told him, and he replied: what?" Recalls Lamas.
"Miss lost", then said the posters in the streets, with the photo of the disappeared.
“Now the kidnappings and femicides have a systemic nature, with the drug trafficker involved.
A government cannot solve that, but it can attend to the victims, with the police and the justice system ”.
“I see my students arrive at the university, after two hours of traveling on public transport, coming from families in precarious conditions, with an uncle who gropes them, perhaps they have been raped and here they begin to think about all this.
They have the need to be heard and to legitimize their pain ”, continues Lamas.
Yanderi Sánchez learned about machismo through a photographic exhibition where she called by that name what she and so many women were experiencing.
“I thought it normal for my grandmother to tell her granddaughters to serve their siblings with food.
But being a feminist in Mexico is dangerous, we are very attacked.
When my partner hit me, with blood on the wall, I asked him why he did it.
Because I want to hit you, he replied.
Violence?
We have looked for all possible ways to have justice and the Government does not turn to see us ”.
Sánchez has been raped six times by different people.
In a feminist demonstration in Mexico, it is enough to bring the microphone close to one of those summoned to find a story of horror, of blows, perhaps of deaths and disappearances.
Yanderi Sánchez, 35, joined the Ni Una Menos movement, which was also joined by Daniela Sánchez, 42, fed up with her husband hitting her and abusing her economically and psychologically.
"I thought that when the girl was born ... but no, she didn't even like that she was a girl."
He is a lawyer and is now in prison, but Daniela lives in fear of a speedy release.
"He has denounced me seven times."
“Of course I'm scared.
And satiety and repudiation and weariness;
I'm going to fill your back with lead, to cut up with my hands, he told me ”.
And the men?
That the feminist movement in Mexico is getting tough is observed by Arusi Unda not only in the altercations in the street, “also in separatism, in the creation of free spaces for men, safe spaces for sharing among women promoted in recent times due to to the pandemic that has promoted virtual relationships ”, where such segregation is easy.
"I am no longer interested in knowing if there are good men or not abusers," says one of the hooded women.
“If they give you a box of chocolates and they tell you that one of them is poisoned, would you risk eating?
The benefit of the doubt is the origin of the mistreatment, that's where the femicides, the trafficking, the kidnappings begin, when you think they are not going to do it ”.
"Chemical castration is not enough, it would cut off each one's penis," Yanderi suggests, when she recalls her rapes.
"Mexico is a femicide country," says Rebeca under the black scarf that covers her mouth.
"We are not demanding concentration camps for men, just common sense," Nayeli claims by phone.
Marta Lamas, however, believes that politics must find its way.
“There are groups that sit down to negotiate and others that don't want to.
In the takeover of the Human Rights headquarters I see gray areas.
I do believe that there are some leaks, political influences to wear down the government, and it is clear that I do not share the president's position, but I believe that there are other interests that also drive these actions.
[In these feminist movements] an organizational and political part is missing, with a list of demands and a negotiation.
What happens is that in this country the word negotiation is not seen as dialogue or pact, but rather is connoted as a spurious action.
I understand those women who go out to fight and I am excited about their energy, but you have to do politics.
That worries me".
The book that Marta Lamas has just delivered to the press is entitled
Pain and politics
.
The latest feminist demonstrations have seen their way closed by a battalion of policewomen, which has led to criticism from the Government, which says it does not understand what is feminism in fighting against other women.
"They put them to argue after we confront each other, it is a use of those agents," argue feminists.
“The right-wing lady inside me tells me it's not okay to kick a police officer, but my
pedera
, angry, suggests that it's the only way they're going to listen to us,” continues Nayeli by phone.
"Because we have knocked on the president's door and he has not received us."
When these women put on the hood they conjure fear.
“We are not going to shut up, we are not afraid, my friends are with me, we will go as far as we can, always forward.
We are making politicians react.
Some even tell us to keep making noise, which is good for their bosses to listen.
Things have also changed between us, now I see the women more confident, united and empowered, ”says Flor in the squatted house.
“Those who are afraid now are they [the political representatives].
They avoid naming us and when they do it is to disqualify us and turn society against us.
They want to make believe that feminists are crazy that they are going to hit other women ”, adds Arusi Unda.
The National Network where thousands of women and organizations in Mexico are grouped through social networks has set up a group of technology experts, the cyberfeminists, who take care that what is said in these forums does not reach the hands of political intelligence and defend them of organized attacks on the Internet.
"They intimidate us on social networks, they invent links with companies or parties," says Unda.
But they are organizing.
In the
squatter
headquarters
, now a shelter for the battered, the five hooded women hug each other for the photo.
They are dedicated to care and pampering, they feel safe and at home.
"Fear has changed sides."