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In a TikTok video that lasts less than three minutes, the Ecuadorian Nicole Ramos appears brutally beaten but with enough integrity to denounce that they almost killed her.
In the clip, the 30-year-old woman is shown wearing a top that exposes her shoulders.
Her white skin is marked by bruises on her collarbone, cheekbone, eye, and lip.
What happened?
She had the 'boldness' to claim a man for touching her butt without consent.
The scene is as follow.
Guayaquil, ten in the morning on Sunday, September 11.
Nicole went out to buy, a guy walked by her and "grabbed her buttock".
She, in reaction, insulted him.
He didn't take long to jump on top of her.
“He grabbed me by the hair and shook me, hit me in the face.
I have a lot of bumps on my head, she slammed me into the floor.”
She claims that he stepped on her legs, lifted her dress and put his hands inside her underwear.
He kept kicking her and insulting her.
“The nicest thing she said to me was: 'You filthy bitch!'” Nicole recalls wryly.
When he got tired, he spat on her and left.
Walking.
Nicole and her attacker did not know each other.
Nicole was assaulted under sunlight in a busy public place.
As she straightened her clothes, people looked at her and continued on her way.
There was no one to stop.
“No one helped me stand up, no one came close.
Nothing,” she insists.
“I make the video to raise awareness that if you see a woman in the street who is in danger, please help her.
Don't leave her alone."
Unlike the more than two hundred women who have been murdered in Ecuador so far in 2022, Nicole is alive to denounce it in the first person.
***
In this Andean country, almost all women have been victims of some form of violence at some point in their lives.
The official figures say so.
And this year is going down in history as one of the bloodiest.
According to civil society organizations, which are the ones that keep a detailed record of the victims, at least one woman has been murdered every 28 hours for reasons of gender.
I mean, as I write this, the odds are high that one is dying a violent death.
The underlying question, why is nothing done?
incessant rumble.
The question can be read vague if it is known that Ecuador has had a Comprehensive Organic Law to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (LOIV) since 2017.
The norm arises, as the text says, because the measures have been insufficient.
Its mission is to articulate a National System for the Prevention and Eradication of Gender Violence.
A few days ago, Sara Spain wrote in this article in EL PAÍS from Guayaquil that despite the increase in sexist violence, the Ecuadorian government "has only executed 5% of the funds budgeted for this year for the eradication and prevention of this deep-rooted problem in culture and education.
The lives of girls and women are not high on the political agenda.
Which allows us to question, does the life of girls and women depend on political will?
Impunity and silence are a constant when it comes to guaranteeing (us) the right to a life free of violence.
A clear example is the most recent story that generated social commotion because it involves the 'forces of order', that of María Belén Bernal.
***
On the same Sunday, September 11, but this time in the capital, Quito (just over 300 kilometers from Guayaquil), lawyer María Belén Bernal entered the Superior School of Police, where her husband, Lieutenant Germán Cáceres, worked.
Early that Sunday there was a party inside the police school and the couple argued.
The local press reports that, according to witnesses — other policemen who were at the scene — screams, blows and then a resounding silence were heard.
There are those who even heard María Belén yell: "Germán, you're hurting me, let go of me now, you're hurting me!"
or "Help, they're killing me!"
Later, someone saw the lieutenant put a bundle wrapped in a blanket into his car.
For ten days the woman was missing until on September 21 she found her body on a hill.
The Police —described in the Constitution as an institution for the protection of the rights, freedoms and guarantees of citizens— remained inert in the face of what would be a flagrant crime.
The suspect is already on the run.
Dozens of women took to the streets to accompany the request for justice from the family of María Belén.
While this was happening, headlines were already announcing that another woman was shot at a karaoke bar, and that the body of a young woman tied to a rock was found in a river.
Sadly, stories like Bernal's fuel that social energy that is lit and seems to lead us towards a different reality.
But the roots are so rotten that it is not so easy.
The authorities exemplify it.
When referring to the case of the lawyer from Quito, the representative of the Executive, the Minister of the Interior, came across a series of statements that expose the Government in its profound misunderstanding of the problem.
Amid a string of inconsistencies, the official said that it would be a "crime of passion."
For an authority to speak of a “crime of passion” when the legislation itself defines the different forms of violence to which a person may be subjected due to gender, is a useless attempt to reduce the responsibility of the State in prevention actions and strategies.
And, in this story, even omission.
The Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza has been very clear in explaining that "femicides continue to kill because, in addition to having the exculpation of the patriarchal narrative, they are aware of the impunity that the State gives them, and the complicit support generated by the indifference and social indolence.
Having the ability to call things by their name means taking charge.
The UN has described violence against girls and women as “the most shameful violation of human rights”.
This shameful violation of human rights contains a pattern that repeats itself: violated bodies.
A violent silence that prevails.
To say that in Ecuador —in the world— a girl, a woman, an elderly woman can be —or is— murdered every day for the mere fact of being one is no longer moving.
The data is outraged and not enough to return the voices that were silenced.
We must insist that state inaction is decisive in the life or death of women.
Not acknowledging it is being an accomplice.
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Desirée Yépez
(Ecuador, 1989) is a journalist and fact checker.
She is currently a JSK Stanford fellow in California, United States.