“This is incredible, it can’t happen,” wrote a group of friends on Monday morning when the complaint of a 30-year-old woman for rape took public status. While the minutes and characters dedicated to the case increased in the media, by the 18th hour of that same day, the capacity of a second group on whatsapp I had reached the limit.
There were already 256 women who felt the need to self-summon. The need to “do something” about what happened on Sunday morning in Jackson and Chaná, a fact that was reported through a call to the 0800 4141the helpline for women who want to report cases of domestic violence.
Four days later, thousands of women and a few dozen men overflowed 18 de Julio avenue in Montevideo, where purple and black colors predominated in the afternoon, in rejection of “rape culture”.
He she left “in support of that girl, and others who are not. That horrible things happened. For all, and what we have not found out. For that right that he thinks men have over women, ”said Soledad Capurro, one of the participants, in the company of her friend Carolina Bortoli and her children. At the foot of the monument to José Gervasio Artigas, she expressed to The Observer that “As much as private property is taken care of, women should be taken care of”. “Today we are for everyone. (Machismo) is very intrinsic in society. Previous generations cover it up. Now it is different but this comes from the ancestors, who put it under the rug. It is time to raise our voice”he added.
One of the spokespersons for the mobilization, Soledad Yerle, told The Observer this Friday afternoon in Montevideo’s Plaza Independencia, that 18 WhatsApp groups had been created for the organization of what would be an important nationwide call. At 6:00 p.m. sharp, to the cry of “Alert”the murmur was silenced, and the crowd headed towards Cagancha square, where the proclamation.
It was in four voices and cappella, minutes after the demonstrators took their seats in the middle of the avenue. “Today we demonstrate again against the culture of rape, rooted and naturalized,” expressed part of the text, whose content pointed against the State, the media and the President of the Republic.
“When the president Luis Lacalle Pou say what ‘Rapes are not typical of the human being or of the male gender’ It does nothing but deny reality and hide a very serious problem that we have as a society. Know, Mr. President, that rapists are human beings and mainly men, healthy children of the patriarchy! Educate yourself, man!”. In that line, the women demanded “a real commitment” and that Lacalle Pou “retract with accurate and forceful words and actions that demonstrate their responsibility as president”.
Access to Justice is unequal, he assured The Observer another of the spokespersons and organizers, Tamara García. And she raised the need for more budget for the law on gender-based violence and the demand for comprehensive sexual education. “The society in which we live is a society in which sexual abuse and rape end up being endorsed, justified and generated all the time,” she lamented. What happened in Cordón “is not an isolated case.” On the contrary, “it happens a lot,” he said..
In that particular case, the victim went to a dance venue with a friend early Sunday morning, where she met a man and went home with him. Once there, other men entered her room and raped her, the woman denounced. For this fact there are four investigated: three adults and a minor.
The nearby women
Already advanced the mobilization of this Friday, four blocks from Plaza Independencia, Ariel Irigoitía said that he was there to “accompany”, like most of the men who participated. “I came accompanied, I came to accompany. I am the son of a woman, I have a mother, I have a sister, I have two daughters. And 80% of my colleagues are women. I have to be here”he emphasized, in a few brief words as he walked with a thermos, mate and face mask, towards Plaza Cagancha.
Along the way, a 23-drum batucada joined the crowd, which by then occupied more than five blocks of the main avenue. For more than an hour, women, men and several children walked with banners, posters, which they accompanied with various feminist chants.
Also in the interior of the country, self-convened women did the same, urging – as in the capital – to pan who could not join the concentration.
Nahuel Marichal
Women march for July 18 against “rape culture”, on January 28, 2022
“We say enough is enough because we are fed up with this level of violence,” Yerle said. And he added: “Hate speeches are replicated much more than the speeches that we feminists have. We don’t want to kill anyone, we don’t want to rape anyone. All we want is to shout that women have the right to a life violence freeto be respected when we say no”.
Selene Palermo will be 79 years old in March, and so she asked to be featured in this article. She traveled from New Paris to the Center to say present once again. She said: “Anything that defends human and gender rights, of the most dispossessed, and can participate, I will do it.” “These are very important marches for society to listen to us, because for centuries they have not listened to us women. We are an object, sometimes for decoration, sometimes for service, and sometimes for both,” he lamented.
He added: “You always have a neighbor, a relative, someone who is experiencing violence. And there is no right, no one owns anyone. The woman walks next to the man, that is what we expect. Do not be on top or take away the space. This is not a power struggle, this is a struggle of equality”.
