Forgetting Forbidden: Chapter Three, Women as Targets

What started this post was a phrase I read from an article the police forces were screaming at some women on the march for the Ayotzinapa students on November 20th, 2014. While they were attacking them, they "yelled ‘pinches putas’. ¿But you wanted to come to the march, huh?".

Somehow it was a phrase that got stuck in the back of my mind. Was this the perception of women from the men in the police forces, men in general or just a growling prehistoric orangutan with a uniform and a stick?

I wish it had just been an isolated case but since Juárez, the idea of impunity towards women has been constantly rising in Mexico (in the last 28 years more than 44 thousand cases have been reported). To make it easier to understand these figures, that means 6 femicides every day. As a sad example, these numbers were incredibly high when Enrique Peña Nieto was governor of Estado de México. 

The (Female) Deaths of the State is a book by Humberto Padgett and Eduardo Loza. These two journalists start their investigation period from 1990 till 2011, tracking femicides from a national and a state by state perspective. But through the investigation, they also share their insights regarding the State of Mexico during Peña Nieto's six year mandate.

Lydia Cacho, who wrote the prologue of this book pretty much sums it up:

"Is it possible to think that the way a man presents in front of every woman reveals how he treats those in his environment? This is a question that took my sleep away after reading this book.

Is it possible that when a man leaves some crumbles behind, these become footprints, footprints that are glimpses that reveal the philosophy behind public power? Is it possible to imagine that he governs the same way he lives: by despising the life of other women that are not his own, his faithful servants. His women, as a political, cultural and physical property. Is it possible to consider that the treatment he gave to his own women in the past revealed already the importance he would give towards brutal violence against girls, young and old women?

I dare say, yes. That Enrique Peña Nieto, the Good-looking Kid of the Mexican politics, hasn't been put in the spotlight before this book appeared. Because it's not only the corruption -his and his political party, that share many other politicians under any badge -, it's the informed election he took during 2,190 days of his mandate as a governor in the State of Mexico: he chose to not look at women, either alive, at risk nor dead. Then, he tried to disappear them once again."

[source]

Rosario Castellanos was a Mexican poet and author. She has these beautiful poems but in one regarding the Tlatelolco massacre of students on October 2nd, 1968 she seems to help me confirm, once again, the reasons [1 | 2 | 4] why we shouldn't forget #Ayotzinapa. Not in the sense of staying in the past and crying our losses but to remember, remember until justice is felt again, amongst us.

I remember, we remember.

This is our way to help the dawn break

about so many disgraced consciences,

about a wrathful text on an open gate,

about the sheltered face behind the mask.

I remember, we remember

until justice is felt amongst us.