Page Seven Digital
Different feminist groups met this Tuesday in the city of La Paz to commemorate International Women’s Day, which is celebrated every March 8. Among the popular outcry stood out the demands for justice, since the demonstration takes place shortly after it was learned that many convicted of rape or femicide received benefits such as parole.
“The oppressive State is a male rapist,” chanted those present before the Departmental Court of Justice, as part of the song “A rapist in your path” that the group Las Tesis turned into a feminist anthem.
The activists, called mainly by Mujeres Creando, continued the vigil that began yesterday before the court and carpeted the street with photographs of femicides and judicial officials considered corrupt. A staging presented as the “gallery of shame”.
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“Bolivian women have to celebrate the collective uprising, our collective rebellion. We have to celebrate a sovereignty that they deny us, but that we are capable of taking without asking permission,” said María Galindo.
“What hurts us is that all that sovereignty, all that search, that fight, that rebellion, is being punished with cruel, macho violence, and with the direct complicity of the State, the Police, the judicial apparatus and the macho prejudices in all levels of society”.
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At the same time, a column of women, who belong to organizations related to the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), descended from the city of El Alto to the center of the Government headquarters. The activists took their demands to Plaza Murillo, where they were received by President Luis Arce and other authorities.
Among the proposals put forward by Flora Aguilar, executive of the Bolivian Federation of Peasant Women Bartolina Sisa, are tougher sentences for femicides, infanticides and rapists, and a “profound” transformation of justice.
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“From this great march we want to congratulate all our sisters from the entire Plurinational State of Bolivia. (…) To continue being united in these permanent mobilizations to cry out for justice, but also proposing. We have always said that women have been part of the transformation of the Plurinational State and today we have to be a proactive part in the transformation of justice”, he stressed.
The demonstrations, however, were not limited to the city of La Paz. From early in the morning, mobilizations were registered in cities such as Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Sucre and Tarija, where it was emphasized that it is not a day of celebration or celebration, as 17 femicides were already recorded in the first two months of the year.
