2023-09-14 14:13:49
The last few days have been overwhelming for the women of this country. We witnessed femicides and attempted femicides perpetrated in a brutal manner towards many of us.
By Belén Cantero- Araceli González
Katia Brítez, who would have turned 21 on Friday, September 1, was repeatedly run over by her ex-partner in front of her house.
Norma Miñarro was murdered in Ciudad del Este with a firearm.
Karina Pereira suffered a torn cruciate ligament as a result of an attack. Furthermore, she is a victim of financial and psychological violence.
Celsa Magdalena told the press that her attacker sexually abused her, stabbed her 10 times in the abdomen and cut her neck. She related that she was only saved from her because she pretended to be dead so that he wouldn’t shoot her in the head, as she had planned to do.
All of this makes us feel deeply insecure since these are not isolated cases. According to the Women’s Observatory, 26 femicides and 11 attempts have been recorded so far this year. As if the tragedy were not enough in itself, these crimes left 31 orphans as a consequence.
The worst thing is that there is nothing new in them. The majority are typical cases of gender violence that end in murder. From 2019 to 2022, a total of 143 violent murders of women due to gender were recorded, 36 cases per year, 1 woman murdered every 10 days.
The data provided confirms that in 94% of the cases the murderers were known to the murdered women, mainly partners or ex-partners (86%). That is, they have their origin in a bond in which the man wants to control, possess, discipline, correct, impose himself on the woman. That is, they have their origin in machismo.
Understanding this origin is essential to effectively combat these crimes. As long as the State, with the help of the press, continues to promote the idea that murderers are “mentally ill,” that they have individual problems, the response will remain only repression, and while the problem continues to reproduce itself. Femicides – as the feminist phrase goes – “are not sick, they are healthy children of patriarchy.”
We are in a state of emergency, and as things stand, we need urgent measures to protect women. That implies not only greater coercive control over the perpetrators of violence.
Control measures such as ankle bracelets, preventive detention or alternatives to this and others, are insufficient because the majority of cases occur due to inaction and lack of preventive measures, when, for example, women are not believed in police stations. , when the prosecutor’s office minimizes violence, when the courts grant alternative measures to preventive detention without any guarantee of real control over the accused.
From the bourgeois justice system they only look up when it is too late, and this happens because the operators of the institutions in charge of protecting women are sexist. The police are sexist, “justice” is sexist. Katia Brítez filed a complaint in time, as did many other women. It is the State that failed. The State is responsible for these deaths.
The State is so far from being able to address the problem of violence that 15 days before debating electronic ankle bracelets in Congress, they rejected an educational reform project on the grounds that it mentioned the word “gender.”
As for the Executive Branch, in one of the first interviews that the first lady gave, she laughingly said that President Santi Peña “was extremely jealous” “he controlled even my clothes.” This, added to the fact that the Colorado Party in its last mandates has been cutting the budget of the Ministry of Women.
It is obvious at this point that education with a gender perspective is more than necessary; which from our political vision must necessarily be crossed by a class perspective, which must be the crucible from which all oppressions in capitalist society are examined.
Only troglodyte mentalities, liars and opportunists continue to use the fear that exists in a deeply conservative and backward society to hinder educational and re-educational measures that raise awareness.
We demand that a state of emergency be declared. May this imply a sufficient budget for immediate solutions to protect women. That the responsible organizations listen to and believe the women, that they duly follow up on complaints, that they monitor that the imposed measures are complied with, that they quickly respond to requests for help, and that if necessary, they provide shelter to women in danger. and their children.
As long as these measures are not applied, women continue to be in latent danger, we continue to be violated, we continue to be murdered. These measures cannot wait, because this would be, according to statistics, sentencing more women to death for the remainder of the year.
We also demand that the problem be attacked at its roots. Feminicides are just the tip of the iceberg. We are tired of policies that act as band-aids and only serve to make the State try to wash its hands.
This society has to stop being a dangerous place for women and the only way to achieve this is to advance in the organization of workers to overthrow the capitalist state that uses machismo, homophobia, racism as ideologies that perpetuate oppression and They divide our class.
Sources: Women’s Observatory, department of the Ministry of Women.
Written Press, ABC Color.
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