Femicides in Latin America
- We Unite
- Sep 3, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 5, 2020
The World Health Organization defines ‘Femicide’ as “Violence against women comprising a wide range of acts – from verbal harassment and other forms of emotional abuse, to daily physical or sexual abuse. At the far end of the spectrum is femicide: the murder of a woman. Femicide is generally understood to involve the intentional murder of women because they are women, but broader definitions include any killings of women or girls.”
Femicides are no old news, they’re committed in every country with very little concern of the government or the population. Turkey, France, and Mexico have been the most active in protesting femicides in their own countries, but this outcry was way overdue.
What makes Latin American Femicides Different?
The motive of femicide is hatred, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of gender. This explains why most femicides are committed by current partners, past partners, family members, and in some cases, acquaintances.
But femicides in Latin America are often systematic rather than an interpersonal relationship like the ones mentioned previously. Non-intimate femicides are committed by someone without an intimate relationship with the victim.
In Latin America, misogyny, the strong dislike against women, contributes to the increased number of femicides. Latin America still holds patriarchal and discriminatory social standards, even in government. This means it is believed that men should be in power and women should be excluded, even when the concern affects women more than men.
The social standards of being a woman in Latin America are the equivalent of decades ago in the USA. In addition, murder and general mistreatment of women is largely normalized by machista culture in the media.
In places like Latin America, gangs and organized criminal groups add to the dangers of being a woman. Human trafficking, mostly practiced by criminal groups, kidnap, torture, rape, and at the end often kill women they “no longer need”. Gangs will kill women as an act of vengeance on rival gangs and enemies.
Government Involvement
There is no accurate data on femicides, due to them often just being classified as murder or homicide, judges and police being bribed or threatened, and pure misogyny and faults in Latin American justice systems.
While countries like Argentina and Chile are doing a good job of prevention and giving a life sentence to those who commit femicide, in places like Peru the sentence for committing femicide is 15 years, less than the aggravated homicide sentence which is 20-25 years. This shows how in Latin American countries, women's lives are considered worth less than a citizen, and women coming forward are dismissed.
While femicides happen all over the world, Latin America fails to address and protect their women. Being a woman in Latin America poses many risks brought by the culture, the government, and criminal groups. In response, the population does more for bringing justice to women in abusive homes than the government ever has. Femicides in Latin America continue to stay underground because of how systematized and accepted it has become to abuse and harm women just for being women.
Sources:
Written by Cami A. from Woodbridge, Virginia, USA
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