Silence and rebellion: a stubborn walking

The next text has been translating from the original spanish one in Pikara Magazine. Para leer el texto completo en español, pinchar aquí. Me pareció muy interesante tener este artículo en inglés, para que llegue más allá incluso.

Texto y fotografías por Tamara Marbán Gil

Several steps, various steps.Different looks, different silences. Different behaved images, which are anchored in the chest; different names, silent women, silenced women's names. They are, we are, a column firmly travels a city full of noise and forgetfulness, full of immediacy, of as snapshots are deleted when you remove the clouded glass. Hence the repetition, so our stubborn walk: that the crime is not clear, so that there is no impunity, to increase our rebellion. (Declaration of Feminist Collective for Huacha Silent Walk Against Femicide November 2013).

If you see them you know: a group of women, dressed in black, walking in single file, in silence. If you look at them closely you will see: each, dressed in black, walking in single file, buried in silence, worn on the chest a tiny canvas with a name, place and ominous: Monday, July 13, 2015 Susana del Rosario Alfaro Ovalle, Limache, Valparaíso Region, 37, stabbed by her husband; Sunday, June 28, 2015, Juana Carvajal, La Granja, QC, 80, beheaded by his son-in-law; Sunday, June 21, 2015, Karina Alejandra Barria Munoz, Puerto Aysen, Aysen Region, 25, murdered with a knife by their partner; Wednesday, June 10, 2015, Margarita Zambrano Cea, Contulmo, Bío Bío, 64, murdered with an axe in the head by her husband; Wednesday, May 27, 2015, Tania Eagle, Puerto Varas, Region of Los Lagos, 14 years old, beaten by her boyfriend. So many and so many: 38 so far in 2015, 58 in 2014, 59 in 2013, 48 in 2012, 47 in 2011, 65 in 2010 ... (as the Chilean Network Against Violence Against Women).

The figures provided by the Chilean feminist movement, which extends the institutional filter and shells: the key is not in the link with the woman murderer, which seems to always stay focus, but in the act of being owner to take his own life. Therefore, the National Women's Service (SERNAM) do not leave the accounts. Because, under the law enacted in Chile in 2010 (and that includes for the first time in the history of this country legal figure), only counts as femicide crime of a man against a woman when they have maintained a marriage or cohabitation . An intimate bond, after all.

This screen dump expels institutions common to women killed during an engagement or casual relationships, sex workers murdered by customers or crimes carried out by those who have other relationships with women, including any killings. "And unless the suicide is named femicide," said Natacha Gomez Barahona, journalist and member of the Huacha, "product of the violence to which it is subject; hardly talking about femicide punishment or cross femicide, when the sons and daughters of the couple as a form of revenge, or frustrated femicide, whose numbers often are unknown and it is estimated, attacking duplicate of femicides effective. " Therefore the figures blush SERNAM, because even assuming the cheater funnel legality, remain so many and so many: 24 in 2015 so far, 40 in 2014, 40 in 2013, 34 in 2012, 40 in 2011, 49 in 2010 ... (according to the National Women's Service, SERNAM).

If you join them - all in black, walking in a row, column, silently screaming, with young children and devastating canvases - will feel it: there are several steps, various steps that add up, swaying, which punctuate. Walking painful, survivors and firm, rebelling together, which conjure up the cold and maintain the pace of the ancestras memory, from which they got, of which no, their shadows and ours. It is an infinite bubbling beat up his more lucid dimension are twinned hearts and accomplices; its pure presence busting everyday scenes the port of Valparaiso, the jewel of the Pacific distracted, pussy southern hemisphere.

If you contemplate them, it seems evident that silent shout: 'We want to live'. And be aware: written seeds left in the atmosphere to be reread, stay and fly, mutate, from spreading, arrive and multiply, 'This being a woman is not the same as being a mother'; 'No compulsory maternity service'; 'jealousy is not part of love, freedom itself'; 'My body, my territory, I decide'; 'Violence does not stop, we did not'. If you know and if you do not know, the classic 'care !, machismo kills' and '1, 2, 3: for me and all my mates!'

If you are shocked, no shortage of reasons: silence, mourning, memory, column, organization of women, neck posters, canvases and seeds ... fundamental aesthetic elements to clear the word staged, interaction public space and repetition, which seeks cause a gradual and continual introduction of an outraged and deeply shocked by the femicides, last expression (and most visible) violence against women.

It is the Walk of Silence against Femicide, born the political heat of feminist collective The Huacha of Valparaiso (Chile), articulated in the Chilean Network Against Violence Against Women, which vertebra numerous feminist organizations in the country. Under the almost metaphysical idea that "the mere act together between women is subversive" (as stated in the collective statement about the March 8, 2014), is a ritual of self-care, "if an assault , we respond all ":" We want to permeate the streets in our repeated rebellion tracks that should generate femicide and structural violence of this system is planted. And also show that among women a different policy, and sisterhood connection is possible, " they explained. The first walk was devised in 2013, at the start of the annual campaign Care !, machismo kills, organized by the National Network and adds that each group with its own modus operandi, transferring their political, artistic and geographic terrain, the problems of movement.

Thus, Huacha summons, the 25th of each month and two years of uninterrupted ago, to go to the Plaza Victoria if business day and the free fair if Argentina Avenida weekend. Little is left to chance: the routes and times chosen respond to a living knowledge of Buenos Aires, the -simbólicas lines or not that the city is divided according to income and, consequently, define spaces and times of work and leisure in one of the countries with the highest income inequality in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Therefore, the location of the fair is a key Avenida Argentina: there gathers the cream of each hill of the 42 that make up the bay, actors and street hawker selling textiles and footwear, fruit, vegetables, fish and nuts, furniture, cell, issues of cleanliness, records, books and whatever you imagined ... in a vibrant and diverse environment, and the most popular of the city.

They set themselves up, every weekend, numerous target, hence the need to scream silently breaking into everyday often questioning only be: "Our silence is not an accomplice, is complaint, is presence. It is the cry silenced all women who were not heard "(statement of the Walk of Silence January 2014), but also" is a way of celebrating the many women who have dared to stop the violence in their lives, we invite to build pacts and complicity between us "(statement of Silence Walk October 2013).

It is a laboratory, a collective therapy, a soothing network, a stage of experimentation, integrator own feelings and external inputs which no strangers - of those involved; self defense technique to send the message urgent and necessary and should come out and say and flee the ghetto and go up the hills and down to the show: to share crushed we are not women, but the value of networking to plant transgression and to put his own life in everyday revolution.

There is no recipe, just questions, discomfort, and some certainties

They are sometimes 15, sometimes are 100. No matter how many women are because the passage continues. The key is the consistency to keep walking, "as well as incorporating other issues without distorting the aesthetics to harness the power of the already installed and integrate creative expressions that expand the resonance of what we want to express to the people walking and watching" explain its organizers.

Reactions, very different, provide an enriching feedback: "Generate an educational purpose; Many children ask what is going on and find to see how it turns a conversation to explain violence, abuse, aggression "abound. But there are also women applauding are close to a pact of love while caressing the arm of one of the walkers. And then there are the men who chide the procession and generally make fun of not only women but men themselves sometimes close the row and shout greatest hits, historical repertoire 'walks to cook' 'and so what if I'm macho ',' frigid, lack peak '..., "but precisely these demonstrations show that we're installing something powerful: reflection, impact and nuisance who trivialize our complaint," they argue from the Huacha.

Because not only the physical elimination. The brutality with which the murders (live burn, beheading, gouging out eyes, deal them a hack, quarter them, throw them into a river, leaving them in a dumpster ...) they perpetrated points to the willingness to endure suffering added. That naturalization hate crime: the murderers are perfectly camouflaged in society. Do not carry a sign advise. They are not sick, are not monsters, did not come from Mars. They are integrated: help neighboring close the gate, cooked with ease in the family roasted, show their daughters how to ride a bicycle, wave and smile when you get on the bus. They are parents, grandparents, brothers, boyfriends. They mother, grandmother, sister, girlfriend. They were born and raised here. They absorbed, like all the airs of a sick system that takes as collateral damage this trickle of women continues. And those numbers are almost always a fiction. The fiction that the mere count suggests that we wanted to change something. The illusion that we are doing things right. The ingenuity of the world trembles for each crime.

Let's put to July 2015 a figure to leave the table full. Let's use the stubbornness of registration as the empirical approach which tells us just how many injuries before death were dragged through the loophole of our indifference. There is something in that fluffy mattress where anyone seems to find a comfortable position to fall asleep. But perhaps we will never know how many are about to swell the damn list or how close you and me and the women who love today or were not born yet, wander optimistic that inventory margins sulfur, such petty grievances enumeration .