“The streets are ours,” was heard from the stage located on Entre Ríos Avenue, in front of Congress. It was the closing of the reading of the document Ni Una Menos, the ninth mobilization, the first of the Javier Milei government. The feminist movement took to the streets for the second time since the libertarian government was in power (the first was 8M) in a context of loss of rights.
He went out into the street despite his fear. “I would have liked it to be more massive, but we are facing a government that scares people”said Elizabeth, 45, who traveled from the south of the Buenos Aires suburbs. Next to her, a girl carries a green sign: “I will not grow up afraid.” She is the daughter of Elizabeth, who was also at the march today. Next to her is her brother, who is nine years old and who participated in the first Ni Una Menos while he was in her mother’s belly. “It is difficult to get around because of the price of transportation, I feel that many people could not come not because they did not want to but because they do not have the financial resources. I have several colleagues who always came, but not today because of transportation, coming from the province to the Capital is not easy at all.. Furthermore, we are with a government that imposes fear, but we are putting our bodies on the streets, I think we are going to resist everything,” Elizabeth said.
In the document, which was read around six in the afternoon, emphasis was placed on the growing climate of hatred and economic violence. “It is not freedom, it is patriarchal violence. The Barracas massacre was lesbicide. With hunger, hatred and colonial racism there is no Ni Una Menos.” This year the march was marked by the murders of Pamela Fabiana Cobbas, Roxana Figueroa and Andrea Amarante for which Justo Barrientos, a 67-year-old resident of the hotel, is detained.
“I am here to repudiate the Barracas lesbicide. “It is not freedom, it is hatred,” he says. Alma Fernández, one of the promoters of the Transvestite – Trans Labor Quota Law. “I am for those who are no longer here, those who are here, but above all for those who will come. The hate I perceive is not being able to be on the emotional agendas of the country, of the State, of public policies, of the lack of trans quota in every sense. I am for the intention of transvestites and trans people to build a life project,’ he intended.
The organization also highlighted the climate of violence towards sexual diversities: “The speeches and acts of hate promoted by the government and its followers are responsible for the attacks on the LGBTIQ+ community that have increased, reaching their worst expression.” In addition, they criticized the actions of the “misogynistic judiciary” and denounced the media siege.
A line of Federal Police officers extended along Hipólito Yrigoyen Street, in front of them a security cordon made by mothers and teachers who stood in the way of the high school students. Carmela is 16 years old and arrived with her classmates from the Jorge Donn High School. “We come to try to support history and contribute our grain of sand to mark it,” she said. “We come to support it, so that the historic struggle that existed, which was terrible, does not die. I also notice in people that they are much more afraid, there is fear in the streets”he added. The fight to defend history, the grain of sand that Carmela wants to contribute has to do with the Milei government’s attack on policies with a gender perspective. Only 7 of the 43 main care policies remain in force. “Economic violence is violence,” they denounced in the text. “See how the police are around, demonstrating the violence that marks us so much every day. That violence that is also seen at home, in food, in the needs that are growing,” he said. Cynthia, 35-year-old activist of the Excluded Workers Movement.
On the street despite the fear. The idea was repeated in the interviews, it arose spontaneously. “This year everything is different. There is fear of going out to the streets to fight. The fear for the system in which they are working of repression continues. There is fear of losing things that we had gained on the street,” he commented. Carmen Gauna, 50 years old, teacher from Avellaneda. For her, the street is the common thing, that’s how her parents instilled it in her. “I believe that rights are won on the streets and even more so now, we are in a critical situation, people have a hard time, we work in a neighborhood cafeteria and hunger is felt a lot. We have to fight to reverse it,” she explained.
And in that going out into the street, in putting the body, the memory of Nora Cortiñas, the co-founder of Madres de Plaza de Mayo who died on May 30 at age 94. “Norita, sweetheart, here are the girls for the revolution. We will win,” she read on a purple sign covering a saleswoman’s cart. “Nora Cortiñas Presente”, the phrase was repeated throughout the afternoon.
“In the face of the hatred and cruelty of this Government, we continue to organize, weaving networks that sustain us,” the document says. On the street, Elizabeth, with her daughter and her son next to her, stated: “They know that they have a mother who was always here and that she will continue to be here, for me, but more than anything for they”.
CBD/FB/MG
