“Higui” De Jesús, the lesbian cartonera and soccer player who for many is already symbol of the criminalization of dissidence, will begin to be judged this Tuesday for having defended himself against a attempted corrective gang rape in a solitary corridor of the Buenos Aires suburbs, with the result of having caused (a death) the death of one of his aggressors
Eva Analía de Jesús (47), better known by the nickname she earned for her goalkeeping skillsarrives at the bench of the Oral Criminal Court No. 7 of San Martín accused of “simple homicide” perpetrated against Cristian Espósito, one of the three protagonists of an attempted sexual assault that was never investigated as such despite the fact that she was found unconscious at the scene, with injuries to different parts of her body, torn pants and underwear.
It all happened on October 16, 2016 in Lomas de Mariló, a vulnerable neighborhood in Bella Vista where Higui had gone to visit his sister for Mother’s Day. Arrested immediately, she would not find out until the next day that the blow she had inflicted on the abdomen of the man who threw himself on top of her screaming “I’m going to make you feel like a woman, you’re a lesbian”had caused his death.
After eight months in prison, the Chamber of Appeals of San Martín granted him extraordinary release thanks to a strong mobilization to demand his freedom.
“Higui is charged with homicide for having tried to defend herself from a ‘corrective’ group rape, which is the typical rape to which we lesbians are subjected to remove our ‘lesbianity,'” she told Télam the journalist and lesbian activist Adriana Carrascowho is actively participating in the campaign for Higui’s acquittal.
“If the case had been in Palermo Hollywood and the victim of an attempted gang rape had been a tall, thin, heterocisgender white woman with a Cheta university degree, who would have pulled a pen or a barrette out of her hair to defend herself and stick it in the aggressor It would have been immediately considered ‘legitimate defense,'” added Carrasco to exemplify the different standard that justice usually applies according to the social class, sexual orientation and skin color of those who confront the system.
In dialogue with AM750 radio, Higui assured that “he never wanted to hurt anyone” and only “defended my body” during a situation that he did not provoke.
At the head of the team of lawyers who will try to prove his innocence, Gabriela Conder explained to Télam that “there are a lot of people who are active in this case because they identify with the situation” and understand what has been done so far “as an injustice”, while the defendant’s version has been flatly dismissed and no has taken into account their situation of vulnerability.
“Higui is a very poor girl from the suburbs of Buenos Aires, who has neither a water tank nor a sewer in the house.who lives in a place where when it rains it floods to such an extent that it’s impossible to get in or out,” he said.
And it is Higui herself who says that he’s just finishing elementary school now because -he said- “I left school when I was eight years old to take care of a six-month-old baby, indoors” and since then he always lived on odd jobs, either as a bricklayer’s assistant, trimming trees or removing debris; all strenuous activities for her five foot height that left her “half screwed up in the spine”. Currently, he looks for them by cutting the grass and cardboarding, but he wants to do high school because “in all this time I couldn’t find a permanent job and I’m tired of being on the street, of being cold, hungry, hot”.
Conder recounted that during his childhood Higui “was raped by different partners of the mother”and her condition as a lesbian with a transvestite sister in a situation of prostitution meant that as adults they were “mistreated in the Mariló neighborhood where the events took place”, where once they came to “punch her three times in the back while they ran her away”
As the harassment escalated to the point that his house was completely burned and his dog was killed, some time before Higui had decided to leave the place but returned from time to time to visit another of his sisters. “If one analyzes the facts as the penal system usually does, isolated from the context, unfair solutions are reached, as we think may happen in this case,” he said. another of Higui’s lawyers, Claudia Spatoccoin relation to the institute of legitimate defense.
The same lack of gender perspective that costs the lives of many women victims of femicide who are ignored in their complaints, can lead to jail those who successfully confront their aggressors, “because it is intended that the woman be a ‘ good victim’, you don’t have to defend yourself but sit back and wait for justice to give you a ball and that never happens, much less in vulnerable neighborhoods where there really is no state presence”.
“Higui was terrified to denounce because if she did, she knew that (at the judicial level) nothing was going to happen but also those denounced could retaliate not only against her but against her little nephews, “he said.
“In addition, you have to keep in mind that the police knew her from when she was going to get her sister arrested as a transvestite. She was going to go there to report what?” added Conder.
For its part, Carrasco emphasized the strength of the prejudices that make a “male, black and poor lesbian” like Higui automatically be considered “violent” and that the police have responded ”who is going to want to rape you?’ her when she told them what happened and despite the fact that “they saw her all bruised, beaten, with her pants down and her boxers torn”.
“They found that person next to a dead man and said ‘this is a violent murderous lesbian’ despite her 1.50 meter height facing the attack of at least three men who surrounded her in a corridor, They threw her to the ground and began to kick her all over her body, especially her head.”counted.
Regarding this “selectivity of the penal system”, Spatocco paraphrased Eugenio Zaffaroni when reflecting that “The neighborhoods are going to look for culprits, not victims, because the victims are elsewhere”in the more affluent classes.
In addition to the inaugural, the trial will have another three days on March 16, 17 and 22, during which 30 witnesses are expected to testify.
With the slogans “I would also defend myself like Higui” and Self-defense is not a crime”, sectors of the LGBT+ movement and feminism will mobilize outside the courts demanding their acquittal. There will be workshops, open radio, a soccer tournament and the performance of artists various.
