Breathe
By Nurit Martínez
The little girl holds a sign that says that a silent woman is not the future. She wrote it herself or her mother or her father who embraces her and urges her to express herself on a cardboard. Whatever it is, it means the hope that one day Mexico may have a new face.
It was said that the 8M march was a record in Mexico City, due to the number of women walking through Reforma straight to the political heart of Mexico to demand attention, services, rights, to put an end to machismo, misogyny, harassment, violence, and the inequality that separates us so much and hurts us.
The increase of women in the march is an advance in the national conscience. If I am there today, it is not for me, it is so that tomorrow they do not have to go through what I experience every day: community violence, which occurs when women's fundamental rights are violated when they are grouped together in common characteristics such as condominiums.
There is a reality of harassment and abuse practices turned into monsters of abuse, violence and toxicity.
Each of the women who dared to march with a lawsuit does so in a revealing way, with an inner strength of discovering, between grief and guilt, what is happening to her in her most intimate space.
It is true, others who claim to be supportive accompany her, but in reality there are few who will actually join her cause, most shout "I do believe you", however, there will be few people in the close circle of those who will really be the support and strength to face what is happening to her.
But in general it is encouraging, it is hopeful that more women dare to denounce in this public space with all that it implies.
There are those who "for conviviality" and generate likes, a selfie or a good time will say they support any complaint, but the audacity of those who use the space to denounce their aggressors in the clotheslines of Reforma there is no way to respond immediately in the hubbub.
The authority is still limited, instead of barricades, fences or police should establish modules of agile denunciation, so that the strength that women take to denounce their aggressors is used in this scenario to find spaces of protection for them.
Bureaucracy keeps women subjected to violence.
If someone dares to denounce community harassment, the institutional response has nothing specific. It is filling out forms, submitting written documents, being listened to by a number of officials, but nothing concrete. On the contrary, it emboldens the aggressors, including many women who reproduce violence, true professionals of provocation.
