In the last decade, the violence against women and femicides in Argentina have increasingly been the focus of literature, investigations and journalistic reports. There are, for example, the essays
Maltratadas (2014) by Mariana Carbajal and
Lo femenino (2016) by Sandra Russo.
1 Mariana Carbajal, Maltratadas: violencia de género en las relaciones de pareja (Buenos Aires: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina, 2014); Sandra Russo, Lo femenino: aproximaciones a las mujeres como enigma (Buenos Aires: Penguin Random House). The journalist Liliana Peker, as a result of the Ni Una Menos movement, compiled her own writings on violence against women in
La revolución de las mujeres (2016).
2 Liliana Peker, La revolución de las mujeres (Córdoba: Eduvim Edición, 2017). In
Violencias de género: las mentiras del patriarcado (2016), the journalist and psychologist Liliana Hendel denounces the dynamics of violence against women and the impunity over it.
3 Liliana Hendel, Violencias de género: las mentiras del patriarcado (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2017). Other works, such as
La inauguración (2011) by María Inés Krimer,
4 María Inés Krimer, La inauguración (Buenos Aires: Editorial El Ateneo, 2011). Mato y olvido (2015) by Daniel Ares,
5 Daniel Ares, Mato y olvido (Barcelona: Del Nuevo Extremo, 2015). Pozo ciego (2016) by Alicia Barberis
6 Alicia Barberis, Pozo ciego (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 2016). and
La sombra del otro (2016) by Alicia Plante, have focused on the social construction of hegemonic masculinity, violence and female victimisation in patriarchal Argentina.
7 Alicia Plante, La sombra del otro (Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2016). Chicas muertas adheres to this corpus in an effort to give relevance to a phenomenon that has been silenced for many years.
Chicas muertas is set in Entre Ríos province and Chaco, where the rates of femicide victims per 100,000 women are slightly higher than the national average. In 2019, the rate of femicide victims per 100,000 women was 1.14 in Entre Ríos, which is equivalent to one femicide for every 87,357 women. There were eight registered victims of femicide in Entre Ríos province, five of whom were over 25 years old and three were under 17.
8 Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, ‘Registro Nacional de Femicidios 2019’, p. 139. In Chaco, the rate of femicide victims per 100,000 women was 1.82 in 2019, which is equivalent to one femicide victim for every 54,908 women. There were 11 registered victims of femicide, three of whom were under 18 years old and the rest were between 18 and 44 years old.
9 Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, ‘Registro Nacional de Femicidios 2019’, p. 118. In March 2015, the feminist organisation Ni Una Menos held the first protests against femicide in Buenos Aires and other cities of the country. The protests were the culmination of a process to give visibility to an issue that has traditionally been excluded from the official story in Argentina and Latin America: the killings of girls and women for reasons associated with their gender and the impunity and social complicity over these killings. Initially, the group was formed of feminist activists, journalists and intellectuals who aimed to denounce the culture of violence against women and the State’s inaction over it. In 2017, the collective organised its third march, which, together with the demonstrations on International Women’s Day, has become a firmer political action in the calendar of feminist activism in the country.
In its manifesto against the impunity over femicide, the anti-femicide group Ni Una Más (a variation of Ni Una Menos) presents the need to enhance the discoverability of femicides, kidnappings, disappearances and sexual abuse of women and girls as forms of political violence.
10 Ni Una Más, ‘Manifiestos. 25N contra la impunidad: la violencia sexual es violencia política’, 22 November 2019; http://niunamenos.org.ar/manifiestos/25n-la-impunidad-la-violencia-sexual-violencia-politica/ [accessed 29 December 2019]. The group says that neoliberalism legitimises the derogatory treatment of women through low salaries and poor labour conditions, as well as legitimises violence against those who try to change the system: ‘against those of us who face the system of indebtedness, obedience and exploitation associated with neoliberalism’.
11 Spanish original: ‘quienes hacemos frente al sistema de endeudamiento, obediencia y explotación asociado al neoliberalismo’; Ni Una Más, ‘Manifiestos’. The manifesto argues that the obedience and exploitation facilitate and legitimise violent dynamics against girls and women in the streets and at home prior to further criminal acts.
Mexican author and academic Marcela Lagarde also addresses femicide as a phenomenon that results from repressive and misogynistic policies in the region. In this way,
feminicidio, Lagarde’s translation of the term ‘femicide’ conceived by Russell and Radford,
12 Diana Russell and Jill Radford, Feminicidio: la política del homicidio de mujeres (Mexico City: UNAM, 2006). does not only refer to the criminal act against girls and women but also to the misogynistic policies and cultures prevalent in the area. Femicide entails the objectification of women’s bodies.
13 Barbara Lee Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, ‘Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21.2 (1997), 173–206. This happens because when a person becomes an object of appetite for another, all motives for a moral relationship cease to function: the person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by everyone.
For Lagarde, femicide must be approached as ‘un crimen de estado’ (‘a crime of the State’) in that the State is not capable of protecting the lives and safety of women: ‘Femicide, as an expression of institutional violence, is also characterised by the failure to clarify the cases investigated’.
14 Spanish original: ‘El feminicidio, en tanto violencia institucional, se caracteriza también por el no esclarecimiento de los casos investigados’; Marcela Lagarde, ‘Prólogo’, in Feminicidio: la política del homicidio de mujeres, ed. by Diana Russell and Jill Radford (Mexico City: UNAM, 2006), pp. 15–27. Lagarde’s statement raises several points. She blames the relevant State forces for being unable and/or not knowing how to protect girls and women at risk of violence. She also accuses the State of being unable to address the cases with responsibility and transparency and, in this way, of being an accomplice of misogyny in the region. Thus, the femicidal act is understood as the culmination of a political-legal system that perpetuates a misogynistic mentality, social complicity with cases of gender-based violence and impunity over the killings, which leads to the abandonment of the cases and the victims’ families. Let us explore the novel’s representation of femicide as a form of violence sustained by the relevant authorities.