Violence against women has grown at an alarming rate from Chiapas to Chihuahua, throughout all of Mexico.  Also, in Guatemala in 2004 more than 300 women were murdered.  CIEPAC shows its solidarity with the women’s struggle for justice and unites with the voices that are demanding a stop to the violence and impunity.  We reproduce below the excellent analysis by women’s organizations in Chiapas.

Feminicides in San Cristóbal de Las Casas
Press Release

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico: October 29, 2004.- So far in 2004, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, there have already been 13 murders of women reported, according to official data.  Faced with this grim situation, against the series of rapes and murders of women that have occurred in recent years and the indifference of authorities to put an end to these crimes and bring justice, organized groups of women in San Cristóbal de las Casas call on society in general to participate in a CAMPAIGN AGAINST FEMINICIDES.

The objectives of this campaign are that the population understands, reaches a new level of awareness, and organizes against violence on women; as well as to denounce the juridical and social impunity surrounding gender violence and feminicides and create appropriate mechanisms within the corresponding institutions to investigate, try, and judge these cases.

The violence against us is tied to the unbalance and inequality in power relations between the sexes that have been historically characterized by the capitalist system we live in.  Violence is an offence against the fundamental rights of the victims that constitutes an obstacle to the development of a just and democratic society.  As a consequence, the denunciation and the struggle against gender-based violence is a public policy on the road to the construction of the just society with equity and equality in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity, using democratic forms of participation.

Violence conceived of in this way has a structural character that has converted into a paradigm of masculinity.  Violence is accepted as a social value tied to being a man, such that the more violent a man is, the more masculine he is considered.  When violence against women is considered as an inherent masculine quality, it actually becomes a source of competition amongst men.  So, masculine violence has taken on a symbolic character of a quality for those men who exert it against weak or inferior people, such as women and children, in the existing social hierarchy.

Study on Violence Against Women in SCLC*

To explore the grade and type of violence in which women in San Cristóbal de las Casas currently live, we carried out a survey in September 2004, where we found that the rise in violence in this city over the past four years is significant:

• 15 of the 380 women surveyed said they have suffered from a violent episode on the street in 2000.
• 54 women were assaulted in 2003.

• Thus far in 2004, 148 of the women interviewed have had a violent experience.

• Only nine months through the year, the number of assaults has almost tripled from the previous years.  2004 has been crowned with four murder cases with rape in the months from May to August; one of those raped and murdered was a minor.

*For complete results, see Annex 1.

Evidently, the problem is strongly focused in the city and at the same time becoming more complex because it involves social sectors that are strongly patriarchal and in an adverse political and religious context.

Faced with this grave problem, what do we, the women struggling against violence, demand from the State?

• That the government implement effective measures to prevent violence against women.

• That it offer a responsive attention of high quality to women and their families who report violent situations.
• Fast and expedited justice; stop the impunity.

• Specialized courses for the police and those who offer citizens assistance so that they learn how to intervene in situations of aggression against women.  The courses should explain the scope of gender inequalities, banish myths surrounding it, and instill sensitivity in personnel such that they detect cases of abused or harassed women.

• Specialized courses for judges, prosecutors, and other court personnel so that they learn to apply justice with a gender-appropriate perspective.

• Due process for all women, without importance if they are from the city or the countryside, white or indigenous, poor or well-off.  Enough already of corruption, condescension and disdain!  We are all citizens!

• Street lighting in the darker zones of the city so that we can walk tranquilly through them.

• A women’s police station with female personnel that specialize in attending to cases of sexual assault and mistreatment of women with sufficient resources for continuing education and supervision.

• Female doctors with knowledge of the law who can help us to collect evidence after an assault, and who treat us with care and respect.

• Training for medical personnel in clinics and hospitals to detect and properly channel all types of gender-based violence.
• Establishment of channels of cooperation between the Public Ministries, the hospitals and the courts.

• Legislation that considers us as full citizens and takes into account the will of women (which is not the case, for example, in the crime of kidnapping in the penal code).

• Legislation that, in the case of violence by a partner, gives us the right to stay in our houses with our children and prohibits the assailant to come near – with the necessary protection measures to put this into practice.

• Courses on gender sensitivity and sexual education with a gender perspective in schools, where the students learn that girls, teenagers, and women have the right to decide about our own bodies and sexuality, and that we have the right to pleasure and freedom equal to that of men.

• Cooperation from institutions that specialize in gender-based violence with civil society, women’s groups and organizations, so that they are citizens who control and guarantee the permanent quality of the attention offered.

• Center for free advice and psychological treatment for the victims of gender-based violence, where they can surmount their traumas and regain their self-confidence.

• A safe house for abused women and their children, where they can stay until they have decided on a new direction for their lives.

Violence against women is a fundamental problem in our society and demands that we construct alternatives to transform and eliminate it.  Many of the actions listed are transitional strategies that, long-term, when we end violence against women, will tend to disappear.

We should aspire to a society where centers for attention to victims and safe houses are no longer necessary, because there should not be any victims or abused women!

We call on all people, men and women, institutions, governmental and non-governmental, to take the problem of violence against women as a priority in their agendas.

We call for the participation of everyone to construct a just, equitable, equal and free society.  We call on all people, men and women, governmental and non-governmental institutions, to treat the issue of violence against women, once and for all as a priority.

STOP THE IMPUNITY!!!!
NOT ONE MORE WOMAN MURDERED!!!!

Colectivo Feminista Mercedes Olivera y Bustamante, A. C., Casa de la Mujer Ixim Antsetic, A. C., Centro de Derechos de las Mujeres de Chiapas, A. C., Centro de Investigación y Acción para la Mujer, A. C., Kinal Antzetik, Jolom Mayaetik, Casa de la Luna Creciente, Colectivo de Encuentro entre Mujeres, A. C., Feminario, Chiltak, A. C., Medel Xolobal, A. C., Indymedia-Chiapas, DESMI, A. C., Colectivo La Puerta Negra, men and women of civil society.

Annex 1 Results of the Study on Violence Against Women in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas: Faced with a rise in aggression against and murders of women in San Cristóbal de las Casas, diverse groups of women conducted a survey on the grade and type of violence that women in the city suffer.  In the month of September, 2004, 380 women of ages ranging from 15 to 45 years old responded to the questionnaire about what kind of violence they had suffered, the date and place of the violence, if they reported the incident, and what was the impact that it had on them.

Sexual violence happens individually or tumultuously (when there are two or more assailants).  The individual is more common, but survey respondents indicated that one-fourth of the acts of aggression were tumultuous, which means that 71 women were assaulted by two or more men in the same episode.  22 of the assailants were known by the victim, which proves that that popular belief that “we are safe” with people we know is just a myth.

The problem is not one of kinship or of effect, but a social apprenticeship of exercising power, aimed at domination, over whoever is considered socially weak and who can be appropriated through their social weakness, their sexuality.  Just as with their assailants, age, race, class and kinship are not specific in assaulted women.  Women of any age, including minors and the elderly, are often the focus for aggression.

In the case of San Cristóbal in recent years, 57.6% of the women surveyed were between 15 and 25 years old and 21.4% were between 25 and 35 years old.  This could be due to the group surveyed, because public violence is more frequent in women of “reproductive age,” while sexual violence against minors and the elderly occurs more often in private.

Of those surveyed, the acts of aggression most frequent against young women aged 15 to 25 are groping, sexual harassment and persecution, but it is also in this group where there are high levels of rape and/or attempted rape.  Five cases of rape were reported, as well as eight attempted rapes.  Two more of the nine women raped in total belong to the age group of 25 to 35, and the other two to the group of 35 to 45 years.  Of the 380 women surveyed, nine were rapes and 11 suffered an attempted rape.  70% of the women suffered “lesser” aggressions such as verbal harassment, groping, persecution, etc., and many of these women (17.4%) did not consider it “bad enough to be reported,” which speaks to us of a naturalization of violence.  Violence on the street in all its forms (from the verbal to the psychological and physical) has caused changes in the lives of 74% of the women surveyed, changes that come from living with permanent insecurity and fear of walking alone to living with depression and nervous breakdowns.

Many women have had to change their routines and walking paths as a preventative measure against assaults.  Once again, we have to invent strategies at an individual level, and hopefully at a collective level, because society does not offer alternatives.  This situation of social defenselessness has had as a result that the majority of women do not report assaults.  94.8% of the women surveyed did not report it, the largest portion (24.8%) because they do not believe in the authorities, 20.7% because they did not consider it grave enough to report it, 16.9% due to fear or to avoid problems, and 15.3% because they did not even know where to go to report it.

Finally, the 5.2% of women that did report assaults, with or without help and who did so seeking justice, said that the report did not do them any good, because the authorities did not act or the accusation was untimely (according to the patriarchal justice system) and the assailants went free.  Only in one case is the attacker in jail.

OBSERVATIONS: Based on this study and our daily work with women, we demand that action be taken on different levels and in different areas such as the courts, education, family and society so that, long-term, we will achieve an end to violence against women.

(For more information, contact COFEMO at 01967-6784304 or cofemo@prodigy.net.mx.)

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