"We strongly denounce the violence perpetrated by Mexican officials that took Victoria's life and the United States' role in funding and expanding state-sanctioned violence against migrants in the region. Many have pointed out that the brutal manner in which Mexican police killed Victoria echoes the way in which Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. This is not a coincidence. State violence perpetrated against Black people in the United States is intrinsically connected to the state violence Central Americans, particularly indigenous and Afro-Central Americans, are subjected to in their countries of origin and while migrating. The transnational nature of this violence requires a transnational response."
The calls to connect the murders of Salazar and Floyd were common amongst Central and South American news reporting on Salazar's death. However, little coverage on this violence reached the attention of U.S. audiences, as U.S. news sources only provided cursory attention to the injustice, at best. However, a few months later, the death of Gabby Petito captivated U.S. audiences as a real-life True Crime.
The racialized violence and attention to femicide globally reinforces the need for a transnational response, as called for by CISPES likening to the challenges set forth by Laura Rodríquez Castro in Decolonial Feminisms, Power, and Place. Decolonial and feminists of color have called upon white liberal feminists to examine their efforts and position in patriarchal societies, as their whiteness allows women to maintain privilege in a patriarchal system. A decolonial feminist praxis focuses on constructing worlds where autonomy becomes possible for women and patriarchies are dismantled and resistances are collective.
The injustice against Salazar ties to Rodríquez Castro's argument surrounding body-lands, borders and movement, as state sanctions on movement and land-ownership allows for bodies to be out-of-place and positioned as foreign threats. A decolonial feminist praxis may be a step towards a transnational response framework for violence that may resist neoliberal, patriarchal responses rooted in whiteness.
Hi Jenny, this is very interesting. I had never heard of femicide. However, I did immediately think of George Floyd. Which you referenced in your post. It was interesting to me to hear about this type of violence because usually when a cop murders someone it's all over the news because the cop harmed an unarmed person of color, but I suppose they are usually black. So, I wonder why I didn't hear about this on the news? It says a lot about the media and how we portray immigrants wouldn't you agree? It seems like this was just brushed under the rug, but it shouldn't have been. It somewhat makes sense why this news didn't make it all over America, but it also doesn't because George Floyd news I assume was global.
ReplyDeleteWauren
Thank Jenny for bringing up this important topic. It is very informative for me. a I also would like to share relative cases where many women in Cambodia have been subject to intimate partner violences; yet policy or local authorities who are supposed to enforce the law and bring justice are the ones who put women in blam. Many Cambodian face injustice as the law enforcement do not understand the law and procedure when it comes to marital rape as a result husband or perpetrator are free from what they are doing. Also in Cabombodia, hile vulnerabe group of women working on streets like sex workers face harassment and unlegal arraste by official and exploitation. Although NGO has been monitoring and assisting womens the situations do not improve for those vulnerable groups of women.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting to read. This is the first time coming across the word femicide so thanks for the insight. It is interesting that we here about stories of white cops harming unarmed black people and the media goes crazy about it. It is sad to see these numbers of femicides that no one talks about. Can we say that the media is selective in what it reports and sometimes report what will give them high viewer number?
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ReplyDeleteHi Jenny,
Thank you for bringing up this topic. Sadly, the case of Victoria Salazar, and Gabby Petito are not isolated cases in Mexico and Latin American regions. Femicide rates reflect how rooted misogyny attitudes are deeply immersed and articulated in societal/cultural values.
I totally agree that addressing this problem is needed for transnational efforts, but it is not enough to reduce or mitigate the dozens of femicides that occur every day in Latin American countries. For instance, one of the cases of feminicide that recently captured the attention of feminist movements in Latin America was the case of Maria Belen Bernal. Her body with strangulation signs was found by authorities ten days after she went missing after visiting a police training school in Quito, Ecuador. What most brought the attention of media, civil society, and feminist collectives in Latin America was that Maria Belen was killed by her husband, a policeman, inside the police training school while other police officers were at the time. This man is now a fugitive, and his location is unknown. This case is being taken to the CIHD so it can be recognized as a state crime. The saddest reality is that Maria Belen is just one of many women killed but never ended in a judicial repair. Cases of women that did not even reach media coverage. This example denotes that the state and judicial structures normalize misogyny, which enables violent behaviors against women. Misogyny is impregned, sadly, at all societal levels.
This is a sensitive topic for me because regardless of your social, economic, ethnic, or race, being a woman in Latin America is translated to the risk of being killed in private or public spaces because you are a woman. The other day I was listening to a podcast that mentioned that "there is no aggressor by chance." In this podcats, different women's voices explained that as a society, we must understand and reconstrued our responsibility in the rise of these violent crimes that destroy humanity in us. I wanted to bring this reflection from the podcast not to exclude the government's responsibility, and transnational influence but to consider that to reduce the rates of femicide also needed responses from individuals and collectives; one must be accountable in their cultural and behavioral transformation.