Breathe
By Linda Atach Zaga
"If they kill me, I'll pull my arms out of the grave and be stronger."
Minerva Mirabal, shortly before November 25, 1960, when her body and those of her sisters Patria and María Teresa were found mangled inside a vehicle thrown at the bottom of a ravine.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was originally instituted to commemorate the death of the Mirabal sisters on November 25, 1960 at the hands of the secret police of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. Hanged and bludgeoned to make the murder look like a traffic accident, the women were between 26 and 36 years old when their femicide left five young children orphaned.
Over time, the repercussions of the event were so great that one of the conclusions of the first Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Congress in 1981 was the proposal to recognize the anniversary of the Mirabal's death as a date to denounce and raise awareness of violence against women, which was made official worldwide by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999.
While it is impossible to deny the progress since we are allowed to externalize and call for reflection and awareness about violence, discrimination and inequity that close the way, it is important to remember that today in Mexico more than 12 women die every day and only in 2023 in the world were victims of femicide more than 50,000 women, for the sole fact of being women. And the most painful and noteworthy is that most of these young women, elderly women and girls, were outraged, hanged or beaten to death by partners and close relatives, because it is in the closest environments where the hell of abuse becomes an unstoppable evil.
On my way to work, I pass almost every day in front of the traffic circle of the women who struggle and every time I have the opportunity, I read the demands and slogans of the mothers and searchers. Overflowing with the frustration felt by those who are not heard and attended to, the petitions of those who mourn their dead and disappeared women resound in a similar way to the voices that denounced the murder of the Mirabal women: "truth and justice", "no to impunity" and the ever-present "not one more".
Latent with pain, the writings and drawings of the sisters, nieces and daughters of victims, tell us of the lethal gap that separates the laws from a society that refuses to embrace them, of the naturalization of aggressions and, above all, of macho education and the tremendous backwardness it implies:
What is the future of a young woman who wants to study and better herself in an environment that insists on limiting and belittling her potential? What is the future of laws within a society that refuses to embrace them and insists on maintaining its status quo?
What good is it that the crime of femicide has already been typified, if those who impart justice do not do so from a gender perspective? How long will we continue to tolerate that in our country women are so despised that their death becomes just another figure?
The questions are many more and very few offer an answer commensurate with their seriousness. Perhaps in these times of silences and doubts, only art is capable of containing and, at the same time, giving a channel to so much pain and to the hopes we still have about the possibility of a better future.
In the last few days I was fortunate to be close to Elina Chauvet (Chihuahua, 1959). With a repertoire that transforms anger into a sensitive homage that moves anyone who has the opportunity to see it, this architect, originally from Casas Grandes, made her first incursion into art 15 years ago by collecting women's shoes, painting them red and displaying them in public squares to demand justice and not impunity for the femicide of her sister at the hands of her husband, but also to make visible the unsustainable slaughter of women in Ciudad Juarez, which ended up leading to the first sentence of Campo Algodonero issued in November 2009 against Mexico by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In her latest installation, which can be visited until December 15 at the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, Elina calls for reflection in the sixteen days of activism that follow the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and thus, materialized thanks to the deployment of more than one hundred pairs of red shoes that speak of death, but also of the life and joy of those who once wore them, on this occasion Elina's lament goes much further by mentioning the unbearable and terrible practice of child femicide, by the hand of a tiny pair of booties of a girl no older than three years old.
Thus, Elina's piece operates better and is more specific and clear than speeches and promises. There will be no progress that will work, no law that will have an effect as long as the feminicide ends the existence of a woman or girl without consequences. Feminicide does not take only the victim, but expands to the family, killing little by little those who survive it.
That must be today's topic, it is impossible to talk about anything else.
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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