Panel discusses femicide, gender violence in Latin America

Sharing their stories of gender-related killing, arson and rape, four women explained the dynamics of femicide in Latin America on Friday during the “Gender Violence and Phenomenon of Femicides in the Americas” panel at the FedEx Global Education Center.

Panelist Hilda Morales Trujillo, an attorney for Guatemala’s Network for Non-Violence Against Women, said violence against females is a growing problem in Latin America, especially Guatemala.

“This phenomenon should be known as femicidio,” Trujillo said.

“It should be considered like a crime against humanity, just like homicide.”

Deborah Weissman, another panelist who teaches law at UNC, said violence against women is epidemic in the United States but has absolutely exploded in Latin America.

Cynthia Bejarano, an associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University who also sat on the panel, said she has close relatives and neighbors who have been killed because of gender inequality.

“I recently found out a neighbor’s house was burned down,” she said.

She said 15 women were killed just last Thursday as a result of femicide in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Bejarano co-edited the book “Terrorizing Women” with fellow panelist Rosa-Linda Fregoso, a Latin American and Latino studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Bejarano said the collection of testimonials recounts close friends’ accounts of missing friends and family members. It focuses on Mexican cities, including Ciudad Juarez, where 600 to 800 women and girls have been murdered since 1993.

Bejarano said femicide is important to her because she is from southern New Mexico, near the Ciudad Juarez border.

One member of the mostly-female audience, freshman international studies major Karla Ontiveros, said she went to the panel discussion because she has always been interested in Ciudad Juarez.

Alexis Silver, a graduate student studying sociology, said she went because she researches immigration.

“I think they engaged in a really important discussion about how international relations and neoliberal policy can lead to disaffected people and violence,” Silver said.

Lucila Vargas, a journalism professor at UNC from Chihuahua, said the discussion was insightful because it went beyond simply discussing the horrors of femicide.

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