I told the judges many times: That man never hit me.
He directly wanted to suffocate me.
My name is Fabiola Pozadas, I am 42 years old and I am a female survivor of femicide.
Three and a half years ago my life changed completely.
It could be said that the woman that she was then died forever that night of August 15, 2019, when M. Santander, the man who was my partner, tried to suffocate me in my own home.
From there began a painful struggle to get justice, to be heard and understood.
I also went on a quest to understand who I was after that.
After almost being killed, I was broken inside.
You are never ready to understand that the person who once told you that he loved you is the same person who wants to make you disappear.
The only difference between a femicide and an attempted femicide is a moment of luck.
It's a few seconds in which you can breathe, scream, kick in time to defend yourself, escape.
While thousands of women are murdered every year in Mexico, we, the survivors, are left alive to tell about it, even if it makes us uncomfortable victims, imperfect victims for a system that prefers us to be silenced.
In this system that crushes the feminine and confronts it, the victims of attempted femicide are upset because what happened to us shows the darkest corners of our society and confronts us with something that we do not want to see about relationships and education. within families.
People want to believe that surviving is easy and they minimize what happened to you.
"Well, but she didn't kill you, did she?"
“At least you are alive”, I have been told many times.
They don't understand how traumatic it is.
After that night, what people don't know is that I didn't just survive suffocation.
In three and a half years I have had to survive myself, the society that judged me for having chosen that man as a partner, and a macho State that has revictimized me at every step and that sent my case to the archive even when there was sufficient evidence. to stop my attacker
That August 15, everything happened in a way that I cannot believe myself.
She threw me on the sofa, immobilized me with all the weight of her body, covered my mouth and nose with her hands so that the air wouldn't get into my lungs and squeezed.
She squeezed so hard that my teeth sank into my mouth and left me with wounds inside.
Do you remember what I told you about the only difference between a femicide and an attempt is a moment of luck?
I managed to slip off the chair, he lost his balance and I was able to scream very loud.
Thanks to that I was able to escape.
I jumped from the terrace of my house to the roof of the neighboring houses, in the darkness of the early morning.
That night changed my life forever, but what came after turned into a nightmare that I still haven't been able to get out of.
Experiencing extreme violence caused me post-traumatic stress that manifested itself with insomnia, tachycardia, dissociation, and permanent spinal injury as a result of the struggle.
For a year I took psychiatric medication and suffered from intestinal disorders.
Until that moment I felt like a free and strong woman, but when she put her hands on my mouth and tried to kill me, I lost my self-confidence and self-esteem.
"You think you're very smart, don't you?
By hook I'm very good and by crook I'm a son of a bitch!
Did you want to meet me?
Well, you're already getting to know me,” I remember her telling me the first time she pinned me.
What happened that night was the end of an escalation of violence that I experienced alongside her.
The first time he made an attempt on my life was on July 22, before he had pretended to be sick so I wouldn't throw him out of my house.
Between that day and August 15, he held me hostage for 24 days in my own home.
He wouldn't let me go out or talk on the phone with my family or friends, and if he did, it had to be secretly because I was afraid of his mood swings.
He didn't let me go, like those husbands who don't leave their wives when they take them to the hospital after having brutally beaten them.
They were crazy days, without schedules, sleeping badly and eating badly.
The mask of the attentive and educated man who pretended to be fell completely and in his place appeared a dangerous man of dubious reputation who was in charge of trafficking art and archaeological pieces, later I understood that part.
This man is currently in unofficial preventive detention in the Oriente prison, in Mexico City, and is making use of all the legal and illegal resources at his disposal to delay and hinder the trial against him.
He had already spent six months in justified preventive detention before, but the Fifth Criminal Chamber granted him the conditional suspension through an appeal.
They released him on an orange day where the fight against sexist violence is commemorated and nobody notified me, even though the authority knew that I never stopped receiving threats.
After that, he was a fugitive for a year.
He now depends on the same court that already released him once the process is resumed without being allowed to provide evidence after the established period.
The press has been in charge of portraying the murderers of women as if they were monsters, but those of us who have experienced this violence know that in reality they are worthy children of the patriarchy.
It is the impunity that is repeated case by case that allows them to think that they can murder a woman without consequences, as if we were her property.
Normal and ordinary people that you come across every day, educated people, who understand art, parents, people who like dogs... they are not monsters, they can be anyone.
I do not even exclusively blame M. Santander [my attacker].
What happened to me is the result of a society and a system that feeds on indolence and corruption.
For a long time I did not understand what was happening because I swallowed the story that we are all equal and we can achieve our dreams, but it is not true.
Women's lives are worth less and that is what we have to change.
And I, while I compose my pieces, I tell them something.
I'm tired of the victims being judged more by their appearance than the feminicides who tried to kill them.
As if we did not have the right to paint our lips, to dance or to laugh.
As if we had no right to stay alive after what happened to us.
Our lives matter, our lives are valuable.
Interview with Almudena Barragán.
Our recommendations of the week:
And a suggestion to finish:
📚
A book: 'Fruit', by Daniela Rea
Cover of the book 'Fruit', by Daniela Rea.
By Almudena Barragan.
Care, that topic that we talk about so many times within feminism and so little in other spheres, despite the fact that our society is built on it.
And while this is ignored, the work of millions of people, especially women, remains invisible.
This is reflected by the Mexican writer Daniela Rea in her latest book:
Fruit
(Mexico, Antílope/UAM, 2023) In it, he raises the importance of approaching care not only from love and affection, but also from a political and social perspective.
“Caring nourishes and absorbs us.
I strongly vindicate care, but not in the conditions in which it is being given.
There is a romanticization that allows the State, the company and society not to compromise.
Public space is not made for people who need special care.
We are required to raise good citizens, but the people who care are alone”, stated the author in an interview with EL PAÍS, a few months ago.
subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS México
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country
