From Aurora Roja, Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico:
Mexico City: The Patriarchal State Does NOT Represent Me, the Struggle of Women Does! Stop the Criminalization of the Different Expressions of Struggle on March 8!
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The following is a contribution from a compañera reader of Aurora Roja; translation is by revcom.us:
I watched with joy and hope the demonstrations of March 8, 2021 [M8]. To see thousands of mainly young women repudiating a patriarchal state that not only exists in ideas but has materialized in such grotesque and unimaginable ways in these times of pandemic, where men became stalkers, executioners and murderers of women via those retrograde ideas of object of sexual pleasure, service and dominance.
I observed how the Mexican government in turn tries to deceive us, which boasts and preaches a so-called freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate, but the evidence shows another reality. On the eve of March 8, the state headed by AMLO [Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador] erected a large fence around the national palace [center of executive power] to contain (and repudiate) the thousands of M8 protesters, similar to Trump’s wall, a symbol of repudiation of migrants. With great creativity and hope for justice, dozens of women, relatives and friends wrote the names of hundreds of murdered women on the fence which did not have enough space to write the names of all the thousands of women who are no longer among us.
The state pretends, with its so-called “open and progressive” position, to say that these are not the right ways to protest and they thus criminalize the struggle of women. They call out as vandals those women who expressed their outrage by knocking down the fence, painting some monuments and causing some damage to buildings and they thus justify the repression that they have been applying and that thus show that they will continue their repression.
Let us not forget Cancún, where on November 9 the police fired firearms against the protest of some 3,000 people against the femicide of Bianca Alejandrina Lorenzana Alvarado, known as Alexis. They shot and wounded two protesters and two journalists. One of the injured journalists refuted the lies of the authorities: “The police never fired into the air... [it was] as if they were hunting us down.”
And on March 8 in Mexico City, reporters were subject to repression at the Hidalgo subway station prior to the march, as well as the police behind the fence fired tear gas and “gotcha” bombs, while in the city of Aguascalientes, police officers arbitrarily detained 29 women at the end of the demonstration with their respective dose of aggression and harassment for being women.
Listen to the media and people who criminalize these forms of expression, the walls and material damage are repaired and the value of the damages is nothing compared to the real violence that is exerted on a daily basis, causing truly irreparable material and human damage. Why not call out that the true violence is the patriarchal system:
Ten 10 women are murdered every day in Mexico, every 18 seconds a woman is raped. Why doesn’t the state imprison the murderers and rapists? Why do the authorities cover up the murderers? It is an insult and mockery that: A rapist will be a governor! (Félix Salgado Macedonio from [AMLO’s] political party Morena, currently indicted for rape, is running for governor in the State of Guerrero).
Why not say more about the number of women incarcerated in Mexico for abortions, either induced abortions or miscarriages? Why don’t they want to legalize the right to abortion?
Murdered women do not return, their relatives suffer hell because of their loss and the hell of seeking justice where in 90% of the cases recorded they do not get it. But yes, the forces of “order” are devoted to suppressing protests against this horrendous wave of violence against women.
The documentary The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo sends a strong message: In Mexico there is no justice for women. And we suffer from it as in the case of Mariana Sánchez, the 24-year-old medical intern assigned to a rural clinic in Nueva Palestina, Chiapas. Shortly after arriving, she was harassed by a fellow doctor who even forced open the door to her room and tried to grope her when she slept. She filed a complaint for harassment and sexual abuse with the police and also reported it to the director of the clinic, requesting her transfer and even trying to resign, but no one paid any attention to her... and she was murdered.
The situation of thousands of women abused, kidnapped and murdered is completely unacceptable and criminal. That is why Vivir Quintana’s “Song Without Fear” reverberates and jolts hearts: “I shall burn everything, I shall break everything / If one day some guy darkens your eyes / Nothing shall silence me anymore, I got nothing to lose / If they touch one woman, all we women shall respond!”
There is a moral duty for the male gender to understand, respect and participate in these struggles. There is a lot of mistrust because pornography has spread worse than the pandemic at all levels of society. So it is better to educate and demand that men join the fight and to not segregate and treat men as enemies. The struggle of women is a duty of the whole society, and the real criminals are the representatives of this system!
Specifically, it helps me a lot to read Bob Avakian, writer and communist, since many of us women dream of going beyond equality, and for that reason (as Avakian says) we must fight for a new society not only of complete legal equality for women, but also a profound struggle “to overcome: “all ‘tradition’s chains’ embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions, and all the oppressive relations bound up with this, in every sphere of society, and to enable women, as fully as men, to take part in and contribute to every aspect of the struggle to transform society, and the world, in order to uproot and abolish all relations of oppression and exploitation and emancipate humanity as a whole.’”
Long Live March 8! Stop the Repression of Women and Their Relatives Who Are Seeking Justice!
Download this posting in Spanish in pdf format: Letter-8M2021.pdf
Aurora Roja
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico
Knocking down the government fence, already painted with the names of victims of femicide, on March 8, 2021, Mexico City.
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