It is not a cistern, a water tank, a pit. It is an abyss that opens before us, us, when we look at the state of the justice system in this torn Mexico. As in the center of Bolaño’s novel 2666, there the names, bodies, lives of women and girls accumulate, destroyed by violence, the incapacity and corruption of the judicial system and the indifference of a society that has become accustomed to over -live in insecurity and fear.
Although social indifference is dissolving as the blood stain and the holes of death and disappearance expand, and the abnormality of living in uncertainty and anguish is more evident – between Amber alerts, search, new clandestine graves there and here, misogynist discourses persist that prey on the victims, blame their families and friends, mock the pain of others, and become accomplices in an overflowing criminality.
Social misogyny is part of the unsustainable violence against women but it is not the only cause nor, perhaps, the main one. The supreme responsibility for the degradation of social life, for women and men, falls on the authorities, past and present, who have allowed violence to grow unpunished, and prefer to “manage” violence. In the face of the hydra, they maintain irresponsible, ignoring, even stupid attitudes, and dare to repeat meaningless “explanations”: “she fell”, “she committed suicide”, “she left with her boyfriend”, “she did not report to her parents” , and other aberrations that we have heard and read since the 1990s, when the prosecutor and the governor of Chihuahua preached that parents should “take care of their daughters” to minimize femicide in Ciudad Juárez.
If then those “explanations” were unacceptable, today they move to scandal. In Nuevo León, Mexico City or any state, the authorities must assume their responsibility: guarantee public safety and justice. If the State plays oblivion, we do not forget. We remember the complaints of mothers and fathers against authorities who do not file the complaint right away, who do not start the search immediately, who make a mistake in removing the body, who manipulate autopsies, who lose evidence or the entire file, who delay the process to tire families or threaten them; that, instead of identifying, arresting and punishing the criminals (sometimes found by the mothers themselves), they fabricate scapegoats – who may later appear “suicided” in jail.
We also remember that, in the face of this chain of omissions and collusion, the academy, society and international organizations have made recommendations to the State so that it fulfills its obligation to guarantee the life and safety of women and girls. The sentences of the CoIDH for the case of Campo Algodonero or Mujeres de Atenco clearly indicate that the negligent State is responsible for femicide and violence against women. You cannot argue ignorance or inability. It has to create the institutional and social conditions to prevent, punish and repair the damage. Our Constitution itself imposes on the State, on any government, the obligation to guarantee our rights to life, liberty, free transit, so violated today.
In order not to continue crying lives devoured by the abyss of endless violence, from society we have to fight against discouragement, abandon indifference, stand in solidarity to demand real change from governments of all colors. It is useless to create special bodies to “deal with” disappearances or femicide, or declare new “gender alerts” if prosecutors, security secretaries, MPs, police, corrupt or inept judges, who tolerate or protect criminals, are not dismissed. (organized or not); if, instead of punishing, those who promote impunity and injustice are rewarded.
Rebuilding the justice system from scratch is perhaps impossible. Maintaining the current machinery of impunity and violence is undoubtedly unsustainable.
culture criticism
transmutations
She is a professor of literature and gender and cultural criticism. She has a doctorate in Latin American literature from the University of Chicago (1996), a master’s degree in history from the same university (1988) and a bachelor’s degree in social sciences (ITAM, 1986).