Mexico elected its first female president this year, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, with a landslide, riding a wave of support from her party, Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), a populist movement led by her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The climate scientist inherits a country where gender violence was downplayed by the previous administration (Barragán, 2024), but where “volcano women,” to borrow the words of Mexican artist, Teresa Serrano (Maldonado, 2024), fight for justice. Sheinbaum’s historic victory took place while I was reading Liliana’s Invincible Summer, a tour de force written by Pulitzer-prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza. The book tells the story of Liliana, the author’s sister, a bright university student who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Rivera Garza’s examination of patriarchy, gender violence, and femicide shook me to the bone. Her analysis of how in previous decades, Mexican society ‘lacked a vocabulary to explain gender violence’ spoke to me in so many ways. It reminded me of playful arguments with male friends who did not understand why piropos, “polite” or “romantic” catcalling, were unacceptable. It reminded me of all the female relatives who were not allowed to study “far from home” because of the danger their families perceived in the “big city.” It reminded me of the women who did leave home (my sister and me included) to navigate patriarchy as individuals with the support of our families. Taking into consideration how the structures of patriarchy in Mexico work against women without a male “guardian” in public spaces, did we know in how much danger we were constantly in? As Rivera Garza writes, the only reason why we survived and Liliana did not was that we did not encounter “a rapist in our path” (in reference to the powerful Chilean feminist protest song, Un violador en tu camino.) In this historic moment for Mexico, my aspiration is that President Sheinbaum listens to the rage of the country’s volcano women and our hopes for invincible summers.
References
- Barragán A (2024) Feminicidios, aborto y recortes: el sexenio de López Obrador y las mujeres. Available at: https://elpais.com/mexico/elecciones-mexicanas/2024-06-01/feminicidios-aborto-y-recortes-el-sexenio-de-lopez-obrador-y-las-mujeres.html (accessed 31 October 2024).
- Maldonado CS (2024) Teresa Serrano, artista: “Todas las mujeres en México estamos hartas de esta violencia tremenda, porque a nadie le importa”. Available at: https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-10-31/teresa-serrano-artista-todas-las-mujeres-en-mexico-estamos-hartas-de-esta-violencia-tremenda-porque-a-nadie-le-importa.html (accessed 31 October 2024).
Featured image: Image created using DALL-E by OpenAI.
Claudia Fonseca Alfaro 