Femicides in Latin America

Temps de lecture : 6 minutes

Femicides in Latin America

02.06.2020

Written by Laura Delcamp

Translated by Maroua Mansour

The Latin American region has the highest rate of femicide in the world. This crime, defined as the « murder of a woman or a girl because of their gender, simply because they are women »^[1]Delcamp Laura. « Les féminicides », Institut du Genre en Géopolitique, May 2020. [Online]. [Retrieved on 30/05/2020] from https://igg-geo.org/?p=1104, is generally committed by men, very often a partner or an ex-partner^[2]OMS. « Le fémicide », 2012. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. Thus, 14 of the 25 countries with the highest number of femicides in the world are in Latin America^[3]UN Women. « Take five : Fighting femicide in Latin America », 15 February 2017. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. For several years, many feminists and activists have been speaking out against this practice and calling for the establishment of appropriate legal tools to ensure that perpetrators of femicides are prosecuted.

A femicide every 31 hours in Argentina^[4]Le Monde. « Féminicides : pourquoi les Argentins manifestent », 6 June 2015. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading

In Latin America, although it’s difficult to make an exact estimation, the number of femicides committed every year is alarming. In Mexico, almost ten women are murdered every day^[5]Houeix Romain. « Féminicides en Amérique Latine : le président Lopez Obrador sur le grill », France 24, 19 February 2020. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading, and nearly 1000 femicides would be committed in 2019^[6]Macia Léo. « Mexique, les femmes en grève pour dénoncer les féminicides », La Croix, 9 March 2020. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading, whereas in Bolivia, 627 cases of femicides have been identified between 2013 and 2019^[7]Moloney Anastasia. « Bolivia declares femicide a national priority », Global Citizen, 17 July 2019. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. Central America is also concerned since Honduras, Salvador and Guatemala are the countries with the highest rates of femicides in the region^[8]Filippi Laurent. « Le « féminicide », triste record de l’Amérique Centrale », Franceinfo, 4 March 2015. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. This crime, representing the most extreme violence committed against a woman, is generally perpetuated by an intimate partner (husband, lover or ex-companion). Tolerance concerning gender-based violence and a culture focused on machismo are reasons why women are victims of femicides^[9]UN Women. « Take five : Fighting femicide in Latin America », 15 February 2017. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. As explained by Marcela Lagarde, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, « it has been shown that it is the great inequalities between men and women, on the one hand, and on the other hand the violence that is part of the male condition that explains why so many men commit homicides against women »^[10]Devineau, Julie. « Autour du concept de fémicide/féminicide : entretiens avec Marcela Lagarde et Montserrat Sagot », Problèmes d’Amérique latine, vol. 84, no. 2, 2012, pp. 77-91..

Laws that are still insufficient today

Many countries have introduced the crime of femicide in their penal Codes, such as Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile^[11]Durand Anne-Aël. « Qu’est-ce que le « féminicide » ? », Le Monde, 2 February 2018. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at:  … Continue reading. The Belem do Para Convention, dating from 1994, is a binding inter-American convention aiming to prevent and punish violence against women in Latin America.

However, this legislation still seems insufficient, seeing as impunity still prevails in some countries. Few women file complaints when they are subjected to domestic violence, which is often one of the steps that can lead to feminicide.

When they do, the police do not take them seriously or the investigations are not discussed in depth^[12]UN Women. « Take five : Fighting femicide in Latin America », 15 february 2017. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading.  In Argentina, for example, 235 femicides had been committed in 2015, but only 7 convictions were obtained, or in Bolivia, of the 147 cases of femicide recorded between January 2015 and June 2016, there were convictions for only 4 of them^[13]Bellami, Victoria. « Intégrer, définir, réprimer et prévenir le « fémicide/féminicide » en Amérique latine », Autrepart, vol. 85, no. 1, 2018, pp. 133-148.. Other factors explain impunity in the face of violence committed in general: extortion, corruption or threats by criminal organizations, deeply ingrained in society, corruption or threats by criminal organizations, deeply rooted in societies, obstruct the work of police officers and judges^[14]Ibid.

To contribute to solving this problem, UN Women launched a protocol in 2014, specific to Latin America, to investigate femicides^[15]ONU Mujeres. « Modelo de protocolo latinoamericano de investigación de las muertes violentas de mujeres por razones de género (femicidio/feminicidio », 2014. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. … Continue reading. This tool, created for police and legal authorities, helps to highlight good practices to efficiently investigate these crimes.

“Ni Una Menos” (“Not one less”)

Feminists in Latin America have been fighting femicides for several years, although the term feminicide is recent. This struggle began in the 1990s in the city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where nearly 1,441 bodies of women and girls were found in the desert between 1993 and 2013^[16]Steels Emmanuelle. « Ciudad Juárez, capitale des filles disparues », Libération, 25 April 2016. [Online]. [Accessed 31/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. In addition to these femicides, there have been disappearances of women, whose perpetrators have been for the most part neither been found nor convicted. A strong mobilization has been then initiated so that femicide would be recognized as a crime in its own right in Mexico. Since then, in the face of the impunity of the perpetrators of femicide, thousands of women and activists took to the streets to make their voices heard and to speak out against gender-based violence.

It’s first in Argentina, in early 2015, that the feminist movement has grown and become known, thanks to the collective “Ni Una Menos” (“Not one [woman] less” in English)^[17]Legrand Christine. « Les Argentines, fer de lance du féminisme sud-américain », Le Monde, 9 March 2017. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. June 3rd 2015,
more than 300,000 Argentinian women protested in the streets against femicide by calling for appropriate public policies to end these crimes. Since then, other countries in the region have followed the movement and the word “femicide” has come to the fore more and more in the public debate. More recently, at the end of 2019 in Chile, a choreography by the feminist collective Las Tesis, “El violador eres tu” (“The rapist is you” in English), has become a real anthem for the elimination of violence against women^[18]Regny Diane. « « Le violeur, c’est toi », une chanson chilienne contre les violences sexistes fait le tour du monde », Le Monde, 4 december2019. [Online]. [Accessed 30/05/2020]. Available at: … Continue reading. Thousands of women took part in this performance in Chile, who was then reproduced throughout the world.

Breaking the cycle of violence to end femicides

Through the demonstrations and demands of the feminist movements, a solution is needed: to break the cycle of violence, often systemic, in order to end femicides. In fact, femicides generally occur after several years of repeated violence, be it physical, psychological or psychological or sexual. Improving the study and recording of feminicide is a first step in understanding the magnitude of the phenomenon and preventing this type of crime, although some states, such as Honduras, still do not have systems in place to record cases of femicide^[19]Bellami, Victoria. « Intégrer, définir, réprimer et prévenir le « fémicide/féminicide » en Amérique latine », Autrepart, vol. 85, no. 1, 2018, pp. 133-148..
Preventing and punishing other forms of violence within a couple is also necessary to better protect victims and to help victims break out of the spiral of violence they face and ultimately avoid the “ultimate” crime^[20]Ibid.

On the other hand, it has been proven that precarious women are more affected by this crime in Latin America, as in Mexico with indigenous women. It is therefore necessary to take into account different social factors in order to better fight against femicides, the most important of which is poverty^[21]Devineau, Julie. « Autour du concept de fémicide/féminicide : entretiens avec Marcela Lagarde et Montserrat Sagot », Problèmes d’Amérique latine, vol. 84, no. 2, 2012, pp. 77-91.. Many local associations now encourage the most excluded women and victims of violence to file complaints and make their voices heard.

Whether it be in Latin America or elsewhere in the world, thousands of women die each year at the hands of a partner or ex-partner. Profound reforms in society, institutions and justice are needed to eliminate inequalities between men and women in order to address the causes of feminicide. Awareness raising and education among the general public and professionals involved in the care of feminicides (health, justice) represent today the best instruments to stop feminicides, by putting an end to the male domination that still legitimizes violence against women.

To cite this article: Laura Delcamps, “Feminicides in Latin America”, 02.06.2020, Gender in Geopolitics Institute.