• Chile: Journal of the revolt
  • Colombia.The next fuse

In the last week, thousands of women (mostly very young) have been given to meet in squares in Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Paris, New York, Brussels, Monterrey, Berlin or the small and violent Ecatepec (Mexico).

The sequence is always the same: they cover their eyes with a black band and when the music begins to play ( a catchy electronic base ), they sing and dance a simple choreography.

The song, already catapulted to a global feminist anthem, is titled A rapist in your path (also known as The rapist is you ), it has rapidly viralized (videos uploaded to networks add up to millions viewed) and the stanza that is sung with more rage it is this: «And it was not my fault, nor where I was, nor how I dressed», a phrase that thousands of women have used to explain episodes of sexual violence lived in their own flesh , sharing in networks the age, the place and the clothes that They wore when they were attacked. Just do a search for the #UnViolador EnTuCamino hashtag to see the magnitude of the phenomenon.

The spark ignited on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Chile. There, weeks of citizen protest have left a trail of complaints of police brutality, 71 of which are for sexual abuse, according to a Human Rights Watch report. That day, the Chilean collective Lastesis, founded a year ago by Dafne Valdés, Paula Cometa, Sibila Sotomayor and Lea Cáceres (31 years old, from Valparaíso), proposed this simple, brief and, seen what was seen, tremendously effective performance.

The lyrics of the song cannot be more direct: « Patriarchy is a judge who judges us for being born , and our punishment is the violence you don't see. It is feminicide. Immunity for my killer. It is the disappearance. It is rape ».

Another phrase of the song, which directly accuses judges, the State and President Sebastián Piñera himself is: « The oppressive state is an oppressive male ». The song includes a stanza taken from the anthem of the carabineros, the Chilean police, in an ironic way: «Sleep peacefully, innocent girl, without worrying about the bandit, that your carabinero lover watches over your sweet and smiling dream».

The contagious anger of Chileans has to do with impunity for sexual crimes. According to Lastesis, only 8% of the rape trials end with a conviction in Chile , a country that has been on a war footing against the Government and the military for weeks and demands a new Constitution that surpasses the 1980 Pinochetist.

The Latin American echo of #MeToo has already ignited in Mexico (where femicides have grown 111% in the last four years) and Argentina. Now the Chilean expansive wave is added, which has exceeded borders and expectations.

Violence is an epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean, where 14 of the 25 countries in the world where being a woman are at greater risk of death are concentrated. In Guatemala, the index of femicides triples the world average, in El Salvador it is six times higher; in Honduras, 12. In Argentina, where statistics say that a woman is murdered every 30 hours, the Ni Una menos movement emerged in 2015. In Guatemala, only 6% of murders of women end up with conviction.

According to a WHO survey carried out in 2008 in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, between 52% and 73% of women report having suffered sexual violence within the couple. Raping and killing women, statistics say, is a tragic custom that usually goes free . Many have decided to say enough.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Chile
  • culture
  • Feminism
  • music
  • Latin music
  • Argentina
  • America
  • Sexual abuse
  • Mexico

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