Femicide in Latin America
[9][10][11] The impacts of femicide include violation of basic human rights, displacement of women, and amplification of organized crime and ineffective justice systems.
[7] Activists and feminist groups across Latin America have created movements protesting high rates of femicide and state complicity in failing to address violence against women.
[14] In 2021, 4,445 women were recorded victims of femicide or gender-related killing in the 18 Latin American nations and territories that reported their data to the GEO.
[16] Nicaragua, Chile, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Peru reported the lowest rates of femicide across Latin America in 2021.
In 2021, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Chile all recorded that women were murdered by former or current intimate partners in over 70% of femicide cases.
[16] Migrant women are particularly vulnerable to gender-based killing and violence as a result of contextual issues like deficient support systems, discrimination, social stigma, insecurity of legal status, and language barriers in Latin America.
[16] The North Triangle of Central America (NTCA) consists of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and also experiences high rates of emigration and migratory flow.
[7] Data from the GEO has shown that child marriage increases the likelihood of girls and women to be victims of intimate partner violence and femicide.
[16] In the context of gender-based killings, public and private organizations similarly have struggled to aggregate quality data on rates of femicide and relevant contextual factors in Latin American countries.
Ten Latin American states have recently passed laws requiring the collection and circulation of data and information on femicide and other crimes of violence against women.
[16] Many countries have updated their definitions, indicators, and investigation methods in the context of femicide in recent years - resulting in corrected and more complete data on historical incidences of gender-based killings.
[16] ECLAC has continued to support Latin American nations in expanding and enhancing their records and data collection on femicide rates.
[16] While data is limited, a host of cultural, economic, and political factors may contribute to the high rates of femicide and gender-based killings across Latin America.
[26] Machismo denotes aggrandized masculinity and male superiority, and prioritizes traditional conceptions of men as aggressive, dominant, and even violent towards women.
[26] Due to the emphasis on a strong male protagonist and a submissive female side character, both concepts derived from Roman Catholicism, harmful gender roles have been tied to religion and deeply entrenched in Latin American society.
[29] On the opposite side is La Virgen de Guadalupe, who is hailed as the essence of a "good woman," because she is seen in a purely maternal role, with no independent activity of her own.
[29] It is common for women in Latin America to be categorized into one of these binary categories, which takes away their identity, and is often used to justify femicide and other forms of gender-based violence.
[30] These are practices that were seen in colonial Spain that took root in Latin America, contributing to societal structures that subjugate women, and normalize violence against them.
[26][9] Katharine Pantaleo of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania links Latin American cultural norms of machismo and marianismo to gender-based murders of women.
Pantaleo how entrenched notions of male supremacy and female inferiority contribute to a culture of gender-based violence and femicide, exemplified by the Maquiladora murders of over 370 women and girls in Ciudad Juarez.
[11] The problem of gang-related femicide is exacerbated by the culture of fear and violent retaliation surrounding organized crime and criminal governance in Latin America.
[11] Family members of victims and witnesses of femicides may refuse to cooperate with investigations into gender-related killings to avoid violent retaliation by criminal groups.
[4] In El Salvador, 12 percent of recorded cases of violence against women actually involved perpetrators employed by the justice system - including judges, police officers, and lawyers.
[23] Police officers have been reported to commit acts of violence against women frequently, especially on the migration outflow from the North Triangle of Central America.
[32] These physical and mental consequences of violence with femicide risk have been shown to impede the ability of women to compete activities of daily living, taking a severe toll on their overall well-being.
[32] The external impacts of living in a society where femicide is a prevalent phenomenon include increased aggression and volatile temper, due to a lack of emotional cultivation.
[43] In fact, according to the "Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública" (SESNSP, translates to "Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System"), both femicides and the homicide against women has been increasing since 2015.
[46] Femicide is the leading cause of death of women who live in The North Triangle of Central America (NCTA), consisting of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
[53] In Guatemala, media were found to sensationalize their stories of femicide, and theorize over the circumstances of each case, oftentimes propagating societal expectations and stereotypes based on the victim's identity.
[55] Different social movements have arisen across Latin America that work to combat the incidence of femicide and raise awareness on the issue.
