GUEST BLOG: International Solidarity for Survival {16 Days of Activism} by Mary E. Hunt
Argentine feminists are experienced in struggles against violence. On October 19, 2016, thousands of women took to the streets to protest femicide, the murder of women because of their sex. “Ni Una Menos,” (literally, “not one less,” meaning no more women killed) is the name of the sponsoring group that has now convened the country’s women three times to demand government help with an epidemic of murders. The proximate cause of their demonstrations this time was the rape and murder of Lucia Perez, in Mar del Plata.
Mary E. Hunt
by Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D.
Argentine feminists are experienced in struggles against violence. On October 19, 2016, thousands of women took to the streets to protest femicide, the murder of women because of their sex. “Ni Una Menos,” (literally, “not one less,” meaning no more women killed) is the name of the sponsoring group that has now convened the country’s women three times to demand government help with an epidemic of murders.
The proximate cause of their demonstrations this time was the rape and murder of Lucia Perez, in Mar del Plata. She was “a 16-year-old high school student [who] was drugged, raped and impaled on October 8 by at least two men.” More than 2,000 women have been killed between 2008 and 2015, according to local women’s rights workers. These numbers shows no signs of abating.
Only four days later, Daniel Zalazar in Mendoza, Argentina, was arrested for the murder of Claudia Arias, his ex-wife, her aunt and grandmother, as well as the wounding of two of her children. It was said to be a domestic dispute over the paternity of one of Claudia’s children. The tragic irony is that, just four days before her death, Claudia had marched for other women killed—235 last year alone in Argentina. Now, still more will march for her in a seemingly endless cycle of deaths and protests that are having some impact on leaders.
Argentine president Mauricio Macri is slowly getting a sense of the importance of this issue. He has proposed that “gender perspectives” be introduced into the national educational curriculum. But his fellow Argentine, Pope Francis, has a serious allergy to gender theory, so it is doubtful that changes will be profound or long-lasting since Catholicism still plays an outsized role in the culture.
Macri’s mistaken claim that women enjoy being catcalled was decried by his own daughter. Just this week, the city council in Buenos Aires passed a law fining those who make “Direct or indirect comments regarding a person’s body.” That is progress; enforcement will be key.
“Ni Una Menos” is the claim of Argentine women who have struggled for basic rights for decades, often over the express opposition of the Roman Catholic Church. They successfully opposed patria potestad, “father right,” that made mothers second-class citizens when it came to their own children. They took to the streets for the right to divorce, which was passed and lost during the rule of Juan Peron in the 1950s, passed finally in 1987, and simplified in 2015. Argentines continue to struggle for the right to abortion. They are well organized, including a Catholics for Choice group, but they work against tremendous odds in a country long mired in Christian-affirmed sexism.
The women want better police protection in a country where many women denounce men to the police but are treated as if “domestic violence is a private matter,” as Sabrina Cartabia of the group Ni Una Menos observed. The government is becoming more proactive in building shelters and putting men suspected of violence under electronic surveillance. But in a macho culture it takes a great deal of work to eradicate even the most basic forms of discrimination.
Theologian Nancy Pineda-Madrid deals with femicide in her book Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Juarez. She lays out a similar story in that Mexican city across the boarder from El Paso, TX. Hundreds of women are dead, injured, or missing for reasons related largely to their gender. She asks hard questions about religion in the mix. But she also gives clues about ways symbols and images can help to heal, perhaps even to fortify people to resist violence.
These are just two of myriad efforts all over the world to stop femicide in its deadly tracks. I doubt that demonstrations and theology will do what education and law enforcement cannot accomplish. But perhaps joining forces will stop even one death (Ni Una Menos) so that yet one woman more may live.
Thanks to my longtime friend and colleague Mabel Filippini in Buenos Aires for her help on this blog.
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Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns. She spent several years teaching and working on women’s issues and human rights in Argentina as a participant in the Frontier Internship in Mission Program. She continues that work through WATER’s project, “Women Crossing Worlds,” an ongoing exchange with Latin American women.
