Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Stop femicides! Stop Infanticides!

There are not enough words. The ones horrified with the violence against women and girls shown daily by the news all around the world cannot find exact words to express our deep outrage. The word “femicide” had to start being used to address the murder of women just for being women. But when it is not just a female but also a child, how in hell do we name it?

By Rosa Cecilia Lemus

 

How do we name this barbarianism that not only kills us but forces teenagers to be mothers when they are not even aware of what being a mother means? How do call the sexual abuse of girls and teenagers, silent, hidden and systematic, by close relatives (males)? Well, we call it MALE-CHAUVINISM. Like this, in capital letters, although those 14 letters are not enough either to express the harmful real effects of it.

Yuliana Samboní, a Colombian indigenous girl –Yanacona- from the South of the country, part of a family displace by the armed conflict, had to locate where the poor always do, in the marginal neighborhoods of Bogotá hills, where humble but good people, working people, lives; her father is a humble construction worker, pejoratively called “mason” [albañil][1]. She was kidnapped in front of her house on December 4, while she was playing, as every 7 year-old girl should. She was raped and murdered in a luxurious condo of the North of the Capital by a depraved 38 year-old bourgeois, graduated from a rich-people university and from Gimnasio Moderno, from where almost all former presidents studied. Member of a bourgeois family, of those who are educated to take to themselves everything they want, buying what they crave, humiliating the ones they exploit, making everyone feel like they are the ones in charge, bragging about their sexual “conquests”, looking for adventures to satisfy their vanity, and abusing of drugs to achieve the ecstasy their poor spiritual life does not allow them to have.

This arrogant bourgeois premeditated this aberrant crime, because according the investigations he had already tried to kidnap her before, twice. This crime is extremely condemnable, because his family, and particularly his brother, lawyer at a “prestigious” firm, tried to cover-up the fact by manipulating the crime scene, cleaning Yuliana’s body to eliminate the evidence, hospitalizing his brother in a clinic –for rich people, of course- aiming to argument “mental disorder” for cocaine overdose. Fortunately, the reaction of Yuliana’s family and the solidarity of the neighbors – the population of Bogotá, with riots and demonstrations, plus comments in social networks and a generalize outrage, avoided for Rafael Uribe Noguera and his brothers, today under investigation, to get away with murder. He is in jail already, despite declaring himself innocent. What an insolence!

His brother, Francisco Noguera, went out public when he was marked as the “brain” of the foundation of 27 false firms to buy wastelands to poor peasants of the Department of Vichada, to then transfer those lands to the Riopalla firm, one of the richest sugar refineries of the country. A true scam to the poor peasants, orchestrated by the Lawyer Firm Brigard & Urrutia, of which he was partner.

In both cases, the victims were part of the sectors of the population more affected by the armed conflict: the poor peasants and indigenous people. This is why this femicide-infanticide causes even more rage: because his family can serve as an example of the morals and traditions of the powerful ones, not only from Colombia but from around the world; an example of this declining social class, the bourgeoisie, with characters like the multi-millionaire and now president of the U.S, Donald Trump, that pride about their racism, male-chauvinism and xenophobia, their power to exploit, oppress and humiliate the poorest ones, the ones that with their workforce are the ones to actually enlarge their big fortunes. Or others like the famous and admired cinema director, Bertolucci, who after many years and after the dead of both main characters of the famous movie Last Tango In Paris, recognized without a shadow of regret that in one of the sex scenes him and Marlon Brando planed the rape of María Schneider, the 17 year-old actress, in front of the cameras, for her humiliation reaction to be real.

This declining bourgeois class that dominates the world imposes, extends, roots and cultivates, through the institutions, its power, culture and traditions; its preconceptions based on double standards, the “everything is valid” morals, and it legitimates it as it is the only possible way of living.

But the reaction of the ones that cannot bear this system anymore, its world of exploitation, oppression, xenophobia, male-chauvinism, racism and corruption that is destroying the planet, is now raising its voice, and demanding the maximum punishment for the responsible ones. We do not accept any more impunity. We will continue to mobilize in front of any violation to combat their filthy morals at every step, by organizing in factories, neighborhoods, schools, universities, and to fight this horror system with courage, as it is the only way to transform the anger and outrage into action. An action to change this system from the roots and build another society, based on the criteria of solidarity and equality, without exploitation and without oppression. There is another way of living, and it is socialism.

***

Notes:

[1] In Spanish, the word used is “albañil”, considered pejorative as it does not address the worker as a construction worker properly speaking. To be an “albañil” is sign of being poor, not intelligent enough, etc.

**

Translation: Sofia Ballack.

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