Que arda la pradera
Editorial
Apenas transcurrieron los dos primeros meses del año y ya fue necesario disparar las alertas que nos recuerdan que seguimos en estado de emergencia. Sí, hablamos de femicidio, porque se acumulan, incesantes y despiadadas, las cifras en las que mueren mujeres y niñxs víctimas de la violencia patriarcal y nadie, en la órbita del Estado, parece reaccionar.
Mientras los números del horror aumentan a un ritmo escalofriante, el sistema político, en esta oportunidad, representado por la Intendencia de Maldonado, lanza la iniciativa de implementar un proyecto «dirigido a mujeres victimarias que ejercen violencia contra varones, hijxs y familiares»¹, enmarcando la propuesta en ciertos datos que ellxs mismos señalan como «no oficiales»²; aun así, con liviandad e irresponsabilidad, arrojan números y resuelven destinar recursos humanos y materiales a un trabajo que ignora el principio de violencia de género. Este tipo de resoluciones políticas corre el foco del problema real: el femicidio y la violencia vicaria. En cualquier caso, el objeto de estas acciones redunda en la sistematización del ataque a cuerpos de mujeres —todas— en sus diferentes formas de agresión: persecución, desarticulación de sus redes, desamparo, abuso (verbal, económico, psicológico, físico) y asesinato.
A la fecha de hoy, y según datos reales aportados por organismos nacionales e internacionales —como la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) Mujeres, por ejemplo—, el 70 % de las mujeres del mundo ha sufrido algún nivel de violencia de género. En el 90 % de los casos, los victimarios son varones.³
La resolución de una Intendencia que desconoce esta realidad acaba por impactar con mayor furia en las organizaciones sociales y feministas cuando, unos días después, en Paysandú aparecen los cuerpos sin vida de una mujer y su hijo, asesinados en manos de un varón (su hermano)⁴. No es el primer caso del año, y lamentablemente no será el único, pero se trató de un hecho que, por su horrorosa virulencia, provocó la indignación de la población en general. El enojo nos atravesó a todxs, claro. Sin embargo, el tiempo pasa, se distancia la historia y la memoria parece borronearse, haciendo que la urgencia que sentimos hoy por los mecanismos necesarios para la prevención vayan quedando en el tintero siempre.
Mientras tanto, y en la contemporaneidad de la perversión de un sistema político con claro sesgo ideológico, surgen nuevas y complejas situaciones que corren el foco de lo que importa. El pánico por un posible «adoctrinamiento» a niñxs y adolescentes por parte de los feminismos vuelve a problematizar al movimiento, haciendo de él un peligro incluso mayor que el aberrante asesinato de una mujer y su hijo. ¿Cuántas muertes serán necesarias para que comprendamos que este es un problema social y político que nos atañe a todxs?
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¹ González, Nathalie. «Dirección de Género de Maldonado dará talleres para victimarias basados en datos “no oficiales”, que indicarían que 60% de las mujeres son violentas, especialmente las lesbianas». La Diaria, 31 de enero de 2023. Recuperado de: <ladiaria.com.uy/maldonado/articulo/2023/1/direccion-de-genero-de-maldonado-dara-talleres-para-victimarias-basados-en-datos-no-oficiales-que-indicarian-que-60-de-las-mujeres-son-violentas-especialmente-las-lesbianas/>.
² Ibid.
³ ONU Mujeres. «Hechos y cifras: Poner fin a la violencia contra las mujeres». Unwomen.org, 2022. Recuperado de: <www.unwomen.org/es/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures#notes>.
⁴ «Fue imputado el hermano de Giuliana Lara por matarla a ella y a su hijo en Paysandú». La Diaria, 4 de febrero de 2023. Recuperado de: < https://ladiaria.com.uy/justicia/articulo/2023/2/fue-imputado-el-hermano-de-giuliana-lara-por-matarla-a-ella-y-a-su-hijo-en-paysandu/>.
History will mess them up
Next June 27 will be the 49th anniversary of the civic-military dictatorship in our country. The theme of this issue is «old age», we have gone through this concept through different lines, some linked to the people who live it. However, time passes and also the facts become old, past. The idea of what was left behind has been a constant in the pretended path to oblivion. It is interesting, since the stories in our sections point to memory, to the need to establish a link between what we are as a result of what we have been, to define our life.
Keeping the past in mind does not result in that repeated simplism that supposes a vision of revenge that, supposedly, prevents a social construction towards the future. Memory reaffirms us in what we are as humans. We have been through all of history, we have made all the mistakes, we have created and destroyed, but who do we want to be as humanity from now on? Building is only possible if we are aware of our process, because it is the only way to avoid committing the same atrocities again under any pretext.
The Latin American dictatorships represented a dark period in our process, defined by persecution, torture, disappearances —Fito Páez would say “very bitter”— and by so many silences that it is time to break. The demand for justice and truth can never be understood as an act of revenge, because in this way we dirty two words that we should honor if we want to be a better species.
We live in post-truth times which, it seems, enables the justification of an immoral act by subjective and personal pain, that distances us from the humanist goal. It prevents us from seeing the whole picture. May passes and in it we join a silence that wants to stop being so, because it refers to a greater silence, that of not knowing. May passes, the relatives of disappeared detainees are also leaving without knowing. They leave us their photos, their hope and the illusion that we are capable of building a better world where the word truth is not reduced to conveniences that justify the personal perspective. We have two options: either we overcome our primitive and brutal stage to be better, or we destroy ourselves. Define the path and do it together, that is our job today.
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they rape us
[…] that sexual crimes are not the work of individual deviants, mental patients or social anomalies, but expressions of a deep symbolic structure that organizes our acts and our fantasies and gives them intelligibility. In other words: the aggressor and the community share the gender imaginary, they speak the same language, they can understand each other.
Rita SEGATO
The writing on the body
They rape us over and over again, the terrifying silence resounds around us, as if it were a daily act, as if they didn't realize it. As if they didn't understand.
They rape us and kill us, over and over again, but that act is not the beginning or the end point. It is the consequence of a long succession of behaviors and habits that accumulate at the hidden base of the iceberg of violence. Simple daily events that do not trigger alerts and hide us, even from us, that dark background that they drag.
They rape us and kill us over and over again, physically, carnally. As if our body were a territory of daily conquest. We have learned to live with these permanent behaviors of intervention on our bodies, silent, silenced, because they have taught us that silence is elegant, that scandal and insult and anger are not typical of good and correct women.
They also rape us because we are not sure of the freedom to go out, to desire, to have sex when we want and with whom we want. We have been condemned to the oppressive sexuality of belonging. On the contrary, that other sexuality, the freely chosen one, has been, only for us, a sign of promiscuity, of a licentious, dissolute life (attend to these terms from the perspective of the dictionary, since they would not be so negative).
We have been kicked out of the fullest act of decision of our lives, the decision about our body and desire. They have colonized our ability to choose. Even so, we claim the right to voice.
We are also violated in emotional abuse. In the systematization of instinctive, thoughtless, uncontained behaviors. In those primitive acts that unload, like animals, without feed. Disconnected from the real existence of the other, from the emotion, so as not to take responsibility for the harmful behavior. Then we shut up again, so as not to pass for "hysterical" or "dramatic." Thus we continue to endorse each of the underhanded aggressions, without understanding the dimension of our silence.
Because in each violation, in each political act of violence, they annul our body, but they also annul our voice, they empty us of words, of questions and instead fill our backs with weight. Once again, alone with the responsibility and the eternal burden of assuming our actions. Like girls reprimanded for having misbehaved.
Until, as a society, we are not capable of looking in depth at the impulsive and violent acts that are born of the male, until we are capable of claiming action, reaction and transformation, they will continue to rape us with impunity.
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The IVE defends itself!
Alternate Skin Magazine joins the voices in defense of our laws. In Uruguay, abortion has been legal after twelve weeks for a decade now. It was approved after a long battle carried out by the feminist movement. After facing a last attempt to repeal the law, in 2013, an initiative that did not reach even 9% of the wills. Finally, the law was sanctioned and regulated. Today it is in force, although not free of obstacles.
On this occasion, the Director of ASSE, Leonardo Cipriani, made worrying statements about the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVE) in relation to the control over the procedures. He stated that he will review the abortion processes, to ensure that the professional teams are not acting "in an automated manner", thus ignoring the woman's right to decide on her body. Faced with these declarations, the organized women took to the streets in a single cry: "The IVE defends itself!"
The feminists also affirm that they are alert to the statements of the nationalist leader Carlos Lafigliola, who presented a project to ASSE to "discourage abortions." This concern is intensified by the decision to make the gynecologist Gabriela Fisher, who has publicly stated that she has a position against abortion, as a reference for sexual and reproductive health of the Primary Care Network of the ASSE metropolitan area.
These events motivated the action of Feminists in Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights, who called for a mobilization in Plaza Independencia, which on November 10 was dressed in orange. On that occasion, they delivered a statement to the Presidency of the Republic.
From our space, we once again remind ourselves of the danger of putting in check laws that are a guarantee for everyone and we again maintain that the IVE defends itself.
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September month of Diversity
The March for Diversity is a public demonstration that takes place in our country on the last Friday of September each year, since 2005. It takes place within the framework of the activities for the Month of Diversity and was declared of ministerial interest by MIDES in 2012.
This year, crossed by a dark reality that has kept us all away from the streets, the march will be held, in accordance with protocol, as a focus of hope in which the diversity of colors will be a sign of resistance and joy.
Alternate Skin greets the month of the multiplicity of colors that represent the wealth of humanity in its different manifestations.
So that diversity is the norm and not the exception, for a world in which everyone has a place and can fully inhabit it.
We meet on the march.