Breathe
By Frida Mendoza
Young women, trans women, indigenous women, women survivors, women victims. Palestinian women, mothers, grandmothers. Indigenous women, women with disabilities, racialized women, girls.
This March 8th sounded a bit bittersweet and difficult to me, in social networks I read the discouragement of some to attend the march. I was sure I would attend, because at the same time that I heard complaints from those who distort the feminist movement, I was thinking about the many movements that would gather today in the heart of Mexico City, but also in other capitals and cities and that we should not turn back the spaces we have won.
The march of this 2024 saw large groups of violets ready to make a journey that seemed short but under the sun, despite the heat, thirst and irritation in the throat of so much screaming became a long journey, yes, accompanied and surrounded by the jacarandas so representative.
The direct action, as intense as it has been for the past 5 years, has not gone away, it is now part of the landscape to see women trying to tear down the walls that protect more - as always - government buildings and businesses.
But beyond the sound of firecrackers or sledgehammers, the voices of women resound through loudspeakers demanding justice for personal cases, for collective stories, for women and children in Mexico and other latitudes who are murdered, as in Palestine and Syria, or those who face far-right governments that seek to reverse the rights they have won.
I will not forget this March 8 the woman who with her body painted purple held a "free screams" banner and some came up and screamed to tears; I will not forget the testimonies of the families of Janet, Ariadna, Lilith, Esmeralda.
I would like to think that soon we will stop marching, that there will be no new generations of girls holding signs or saying that the police do not take care of them, but I still see a distant future where we will be safe and completely free.
In the meantime, we will continue marching, accompanying and, as in this march, trying to be a loudspeaker for the stories that must not stop being told.
Today we arrived to a crowded Zócalo square, a walled National Palace as it has been since 2021 and a flagpole without a flag. From the podium they said: "it is a flag that no longer represents us, of a government that left us alone".
But we are not alone, they are not alone, I am not alone, I listen as I put an end to the chronicle of a story that soon - I hope - we will throw away.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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