From Mexico to Argentina, women fight a common battle: for parents to pay child support.
The evasion of their children's obligations crosses the entire region.
From clotheslines in Mexico exposing late-paying parents to prison sentences in Brazil, the women leading this fight have won laws and protocols, but the problem persists.
This is the panorama in some of the countries in the region.
Mexico: social pressure and Sabina law
“It was assumed that with me it was going to change,” says Diana Luz Vázquez.
She was the first woman in her family to go to college and she never thought she would end up in the same situation as her mother, her aunts, her grandmother and her great-grandmother,
mothering
alone, without a father to care for. take responsibility for it.
“I am the daughter of a so-called single mother.
In reality, we are autonomous mothers because our marital status has nothing to do with the way we exercise motherhood,” says the 36-year-old Mexican.
In Mexico, three out of four children of separated parents do not receive child support, according to the National Institute of Statistics (Inegi) and 67.5% of mothers face evasion of their ex-partners' obligations.
When Vázquez began to experience this injustice firsthand, he sought to have the father of his daughter, Martín Rosado, pay the pension through legal means, but the judges ruled against him.
It was then that he decided to acquire a powerful weapon: social pressure.
Diana Sabina Vázquez Rosado plays with a cat at her house, in October 2023. Aggi Garduño
Inspired by young university students throughout Latin America, Vázquez organized in 2021 the first “clothesline” for complaints of food debtors in her home state of Oaxaca, where Rosado lives.
In a country where between 10 and 11 women are murdered every day, Vázquez did not know if the mothers would dare to answer the call.
“I printed her photo in a tabloid and I arrived with my friends to the square with a rope to hang cardboard, a horn and a megaphone.
We started to get situated and suddenly a stream of mothers arrived carrying their cards under their arms,” she recalls excitedly.
That was the beginning of a massive movement, which has led thousands of women to replicate the clotheslines and organize themselves into chapters, through WhatsApp chats, in each State of the republic.
In some cities, they created “feminist patrols” in which hooded mothers intervene on the facades of the homes of food debtors to attract the attention of passersby, reciting into the megaphone the debtor's full name, how much he owes and since when. .
In addition, Vázquez promoted the Sabina law, which is named after his daughter, and although the 30 reforms that the law proposes have not been approved, in March there was some progress.
The first National Registry of Debtors was created, from which men can have their driver's license and passport removed, in addition to not being able to run for electoral office.
“It's like a band-aid on the wound,” says Vázquez, who has ambitions to change the system so that justice punishes the man the moment he abandons the pregnancy.
Along the way he has faced corruption and complicity on the part of the authorities.
"For example, in Michoacán, the governor even held a forum for food debtors and told us 'yes, I am going to approve the Sabina law.'
And when we went to his legal advisor, what did you think?
That the counselor protects and conceals food debtors and told us: 'We cannot make these reforms because they violate the rights of these men,' says Vázquez with clear indignation.
“After this entire process of struggle, I have even been changing my own perspective, this sexist and cultural DNA with which we are being educated that tells me that I am to blame for having chosen wrong, which is what my grandmother, my mom,” says Vázquez.
“And you realize that your level of education, not even that of the parent, has nothing to do with it when we talk about this violence… Behind every alimony debtor there are multiple forms of violence, economic violence is only one of them,” he says.
A drawing made by Diana Sabina, daughter of Luz Vázquez. Aggi Garduño
Brazil punishes non-payment of alimony with jail
Every once in a while, non-payment of child support for children of separated parents makes headlines in Brazil because a celebrity risks going to prison for that type of debt.
It is not exceptional, nor new.
It has been in force since the last century.
If the parent who must pay this payment, usually the father, is three months late, his ex-partner can ask the judge to send him to jail.
“It is the last mechanism of coercion,” highlights lawyer Marcela Pimentel, specialized in family law.
Some Brazilian women often joke that it is what works best in their country's justice system.
In 2022, the actor André Gonçalves spent 60 days in house arrest with an electronic anklet until he paid off the debt for years of food for one of his daughters.
The retired footballer and senator, Romario, spent a night behind bars in 2009 for that same reason.
If you have not paid the last three months of alimony, you risk a sentence of 60 days in prison, extendable to another 30 days, explains the lawyer.
It is difficult to know how many Brazilians have ended up in a cell for cases like this.
The Brazilian Institute of Family Law reports that it does not collect this data.
This is the only case in which Brazilian law punishes someone who has not committed a crime with imprisonment.
In any case, Pimentel adds, it is more effective to request the seizure of assets “because putting him in prison does not pay for food.
It is a form of coercion to pay the debt.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
The lawyer also explains that, if the debtor has the money in the bank, an online
request for seizure
can be made and, if the judge accepts it, the amount owed is immediately blocked.
“It's a super effective system, if you have the money.”
The problem is when he does not have any assets in his name.
If after 90 days behind bars, he has not settled the debt with his children, the inmate is released.
But the debt is still valid, it does not expire.
Those who end up in prison are usually poor;
The middle and upper classes usually find the money sooner or later.
Colombia: prison is not effective
In Colombia, the crime of non-support for food still exists and punishes with sentences of 16 and 54 months in prison anyone who unjustifiably withdraws from their obligations and hides or reduces their assets to avoid paying food dues.
According to official figures, in 2022 there were 700 parents deprived of their liberty for this crime.
However, the Government of Gustavo Petro proposes decriminalizing the crime.
“The imprisonment of the father who fails to comply with the maintenance obligation is not equivalent to the purpose intended by the measure, that is, it does not ensure that he meets the obligation to pay maintenance to the son or daughter,” said the Minister of justice of Colombia, Néstor Osuna.
Since 2023, the Registry of Delinquent Food Debtors (Redam) has been operating in the country, in which those people who fail to comply with at least three food installments (consecutive or not) are reported and which functions as a government database to control the problem.
Those who are registered cannot hire or be appointed in the State;
They cannot alienate assets;
access bank loans or leave the country.
Furthermore, the Law provides that the authorization of the defaulting father or mother will not be required when someone is going to leave the country with the minor.
“They are very severe sanctions for the food debtor, which we consider are much more effective than prison to achieve the payment of a sum of money,” the minister also said.
Until the existence of Redam, delinquent parents made self-certifications at notaries, often based on lies.
Laura P.*, a Colombian who has been fighting for 12 years for her daughter's father to pay child support, considers that the registry is tangible progress, but it has a huge gap.
It is judges, family defenders and family welfare authorities who must report defaulters, but they can only do so at the request of mothers who, in some cases, are afraid to report debtors.
“I asked them to report it and they told me that only a representative can request it.
It's been two months and still nothing.
There is a lack of more will from the officials,” said the woman she is still waiting for.
The vice minister of justice Johana Delgado recognizes that the greatest difficulty since the entry into force of the Redam is the violent relationships and the fear of some women that their debtors will be left without contracts or work.
For women like Laura, “Redam is a measure that helps but does not solve the underlying problem.
It would be much more effective for debtors to be charged very high interest because it would guarantee that they do not fall behind and comply with their child support obligations.”
Patricia Rodríguez, gets her granddaughter Yoselyn ready to take her to the garden, in Soacha (Colombia).NATHALIA ANGARITA
Until the end of February 2024, there were records of 313 delinquent debtors, but the data is variable because once they are updated, the authorities can cancel their registration in the registry of food debtors.
In the Prosecutor's Office, however, complaints continue to increase.
In the last 3 years, more than 100,000 complaints have been filed for food shortages.
Argentina: a problem aggravated by inflation
In Argentina, raising a child between 6 and 12 years old requires at least 243,000 pesos (about $225), according to official data.
The measurement of the basic parenting basket that began to be carried out in 2022, unique in Latin America, is a guide for judges to set child support quotas for the children of couples who separate.
However, only 44% of the households (mostly single-parent) that are left in charge receive them and in one in four cases, the payment is made irregularly.
That is, practically four out of every ten separated mothers raise their children alone, an even more difficult situation in the midst of the current serious economic crisis, in which Argentina is the country with the highest inflation in the world - 254.2% year-on-year - and in which the price of food has skyrocketed 300% in the last year.
“A girl or boy who must collect the quota and does not receive it is twice as likely to be poor as one who does collect it,” warns Unicef, the United Nations organization that evaluates compliance with the food quota every six months in Argentina through the survey on the Situation of Children and Adolescents.
“When women cannot resolve the alimony fee easily, talking face to face with the parent, the State tells them to go to court.
But the judicial process is similar to an obstacle course,” says lawyer Sabrina Cartabia.
“To start you need a lawyer.
In other words, you are an impoverished home, you don't even have money to eat and they tell you: 'judicialize'.
There are free legal sponsorships, yes, but not everywhere.
In the province of Buenos Aires there are cases where free legal sponsorship is 300 kilometers away and there are women who do not have anyone to take care of their child, they do not have food today, it is impossible for them to travel there," adds Cartabia, head of Cabinet of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Women.
Cartabia highlights that the worst thing is that once a sentence is obtained “nothing guarantees payment” and it is necessary to reopen the judicial process to demand the execution of the sentence.
For this reason, he believes that a legal reform is necessary to accelerate the inclusion of parents who do not pay in the registry of child support debtors and, at the same time, a cultural change that increases social pressure on those who ignore child care. .
Carla Bianca Souza, 21, breastfeeds her daughter Ísis, at her home in Maranhão (Brazil). Ingrid Barros
“The current registry asks you to have a final sentence, which can take years.
But you already have a child and it is an immediate need that cannot wait,” he emphasizes.
This lawyer highlights two more problems.
The first is the high degree of informality in Argentina, which allows many parents to under-declare their income before the Court.
The second is that for a person to be included in the debtor registry he or she must have failed to pay the installment for five months in a year or three consecutive months, which is why many parents avoid it by taking it to the limit.
For example, they pay for two months, but not the third.
In one year, this means four, not five, defaults.
Chile: 84% of the men sued do not pay the pension
Only 16% of alimony payments were paid in Chile when President Gabriel Boric arrived at La Moneda, as he denounced in his first speech to the Nation in Congress in 2022. Of every 10 debtors, nine are men.
At the end of that year, the National Registry of Alimony Debtors came into force, a platform that identifies those who owe at least three consecutive or five discontinuous monthly payments, with amounts set by a Family Court.
Appearing on the list entails several sanctions, such as withholding tax refunds, not being able to renew your driver's license or passport, withholding credit, preventing the registration of the transfer of sale of a property or a vehicle, among others. .
Citizens who do not comply with the legal obligation to pay alimony also risk being punished with night arrest for 15 days, national roots and the seizure of assets.
To complement the registry, about nine months ago, the Boric Administration signed the Parental Responsibility Law, which establishes a series of mechanisms for defaulters to pay their fees on time.
84% of the men sued for maintenance reasons do not pay the established pension, which affects some 72,000 minors.
Among the methods to obtain the money from the debtor include bank withholding, tax monitoring and even the withdrawal of funds from the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) of the defaulter.
Since the regulations came into force, payments have tripled, as reported this week by the Superintendency of Pensions to the Diario Financiero.
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