This June 3 is the ninth in the history of the country in which women, bisexuals, lesbians, transvestites, trans and non-binary people take to the streets demanding “Not one less.” The slogan is simple, concrete, and it seems also insufficient for a claim that is too mature: it is about asking that people stop killing people simply because of their gender or sexuality. So far this year, two transvestites, three lesbians and 127 women have been murdered in Argentina for the simple fact of being, pardon the redundancy, transvestites, lesbians and women. The figure translates into 14 femicides in the province of Santa Fe, making it one of the ten districts with a rate higher than the national rate.
The Mercedes Pagnutti Observatory disseminated, as every year, statistics on femicides, transvesticides and lesbicides. According to the count, 14 femicides were recorded in Santa Fe between January 1 and May 29, 2024. Nine occurred in Rosario. All of these murders were of women and more than half (57.2 percent) had a link to the femicide: it was her partner, her ex-partner or a family member. The same figure is repeated at the scene of the incident: almost 60 percent of the cases occurred in the home of the victim or both. 30 percent of the victims were in situations of gender-based violence. And nobody did anything. A heartbreaking fact emerges from the femicides: in the province of Santa Fe, nine children were left without a mother due to sexist violence.
In the same period of time, but at the national level, 137 violent deaths were recorded: 132 were women, two transvestites and three lesbians. The national rate of femicides per hundred thousand inhabitants was 0.30. The provincial rates indicate that there are ten jurisdictions with rates higher than 0.30: Chaco, San Luis, Tierra del Fuego, Chubut, Misiones, Salta, Santa Fe, San Juan, Buenos Aires and Entre Ríos.
Most of the murders were intimate (64) and occurred in the home of the victim (50) or both (34). There were 18 femicides in the context of crime, nine occurred in an open field and 18 on public roads. The victim knew the femicide in 102 cases, through her partner, her ex-partner, a family member or an acquaintance. Throughout the country and in just five months, 78 children and adolescents were left without their mother.
hot streets
The context of urban violence that Rosario experiences is not exempt from a gender perspective. The increase in homicide figures in the city saw a variable grow over the years: more and more women fell into shootings, robberies and score settlements. The Mercedes Pagnutti Observatory has been surveying femicides in this context for several years. Last year was characterized by the high percentage of murders of women, adolescents, boys and girls at the hands of hitmen or strangers, with a clear mark of organized and systematized crime. The victims were riddled, shot and assaulted by unknown persons with firearms. The femicides, mostly fugitives.
This year, however, the percentage of femicides in the context of crime decreases significantly: of the femicides registered in Rosario, 33 percent occurred in this context. In the same period last year, the figure reached 87 percent of the total. “In the current context, and based on the events that have occurred in Rosario so far this year, crimes in the context of criminality have not decreased due to strategies, but rather the objective has changed: in 2024, drug crime targets workers,” said Councilor Norma López, head of the Mercedes Pagnutti Observatory. “How long can the reduction in femicides be sustained in the context of crime without a strategy and public policies that advance in addressing the feminization of poverty?”
In that same sense, he highlighted that in the province there is a higher percentage of events that occur on public roads (35.7%) compared to national statistics (13.5%). “The streets of our province are more dangerous, it is not a sensation. It is in this sense that the elimination of the Ministry of Equality, Gender and Diversity is worrying and is reflected in the demands of different organizations. As well as the alarming emptying of the Ministry of Gender and Equality of the province, which reveals a violent adjustment that begins with the workers and takes shape in the withdrawal of the State when it comes to responding to the tide of situations. of gender-based violence and its effects, with which we live, women, diversities and childhood,” said López.
We love each other alive and free
On June 3, 2015, after the femicide of Chiara Páez in Rufino (Santa Fe), a crowd filled the streets of the country. Far from being a trite description, it is a literal one: no one expected that there would be so many, many women who would take to the streets to ask for an end to sexist violence. That day in Rosario it was cold and the Monument was not left out of the national trend. The Rosarinas were thousands and they gathered spontaneously, almost without flags or groups to find them. Most were with their friends or her family. The majority had suffered gender violence at some point. And many of them found a place on the steps of the Monument to mourn those who had been left along the way.
Nine years have passed since that day and the figures still give no respite. Every June 3, we call for an end to sexist violence. “Not one less, we love each other alive,” says the slogan that is renewed year after year. The only thing that changed was the how: do you live how? The women, the transvestites, the lesbians, the bisexuals of Argentina do not mess around: we want ourselves to be alive, free, with work, with a decent roof, with access to health and retirement.
The proclamation that the LesboTransFeminista Rosario Assembly drafted this year goes in that direction. It aims at the cessation of all types of violence—economic, media, obstetric, political, physical, sexual, psychological, work, symbolic, at home, on the street, at work and in our emotional ties—and also against adjustment and the repressive protocol applied by the government of Javier Milei. And above all, she repeats that again, and as many times as necessary, it will be feminisms that will continue to organize against violence.
