Students at Mexico’s Largest University Use a Virtual Campaign to Fight Real-World Sexism Andalusia Knoll Soloff - Americas Quarterly
go to original May 22, 2017

Shortly after Lesvy Berlin Osorio was found strangled to death on the campus of Mexico’s largest university – the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) – the office of the public prosecutor began to denigrate the 22-year-old woman on Twitter. She consumed drugs and alcohol, had dropped out of high school, and lived with her boyfriend, they tweeted.

The violence Berlin suffered is not new: An average of seven women are killed in Mexico a day. Neither was the implication that the victim was to blame. National newspapers soon reproduced the public prosecutor’s tweets in headlines. The outrage that followed, however, followed the mold of other recent and high-profile social media campaigns that have targeted the sexism behind the high femicide rates in the region.

Angered by the victim-blaming, women in Mexico City began to tweet under the hashtag #SiMeMatan (if they kill me), describing how they might be blamed in their own murder. Soon, the hashtag was a trending topic in Mexico and beyond as tens of thousands of women across Latin America joined the protest.

... The Twitter users in Mexico were following a model other women have successfully used throughout the region. In February 2016, two Argentine backpackers, Marina Menegazzo and María José Coni, were murdered in Ecuador. Their skulls were crushed and their bodies left in bags. When their deaths were blamed on their decision to travel alone – with each other, but without a man – women fought back with the hashtag #YoViajoSola (I travel alone).

While Mexico has the second-longest sentence for femicides in Latin America, very few crimes are prosecuted as such. Social media can help change this by bringing broader public pressure to bear on local officials to enforce existing laws.

Read the rest at Americas Quarterly

Related: Mass Protests in Latin America Condemn Violence Against Women (http://www.trtworld.com/life/mass-protests-in-latin-america-condemn-violence-against-women-238218)

Related: How Three Sisters Empowered Millions of Women in Latin America (teleSUR)

Photo: Andalusia Knoll Soloff

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