With 529 femicides in 7 years in Ecuador, women ask for violence to stop. New civil initiative exposes stories and struggles of families

“Like a tree without a leaf, that’s how one is left when he is an orphan,” Celeste’s son (murdered by her partner in 2017) repeats to his aunt Juana, who is now in charge of the minor.

“I miss him a lot. I would like him to come down from heaven for a little while to hug me, ”says Miriam, who was left in charge of her four brothers, in addition to her children, after the stabbing murder of her mother, Maribel (in 2020 ).

“My cells are in eternity, my cells claim you, Cristi,” says Sonia, mother of Cristina, a young woman from Cuenca who disappeared and was later murdered by a former co-worker in 2017.

They are part of three of the stories and struggles for access to justice exposed by direct relatives of victims of femicides in Ecuador and which are included in a new social cartography, an initiative built from civil society to make visible and honor the lives lost by extreme violence that ends with the death of women.

A societal problem that is on the rise, with no apparent solution, according to rights activists and relatives, and which has become another “pandemic” that is denounced again on International Women’s Day.

In Ecuador, the authorities put at 529 femicides as such that have been registered in the country from August 10, 2014 to February 27, 2022, according to the FemicidesEC tool of the Council of the Judiciary (CJ).

With the entry into force of the Organic Comprehensive Criminal Code (COIP), on August 10, 2014, which typified the crime of femicide, those responsible for this legal figure could be prosecuted.

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It is considered femicide to kill a woman for the fact of being a woman or because of her condition, as a result of power relations, manifested in any type of violence, according to the COIP.

The penalty for this crime is 22 to 26 years in prison for the author.

There are aggravating circumstances for which the maximum sentence is imposed (26 years in prison), such as trying to establish or reestablish a relationship or intimate relationship with the victim; that the crime is committed in the presence of children or relatives; or that the woman’s body is exposed or thrown in a public place.

Also the fact that there are or have been family, conjugal, cohabitation, intimacy, courtship, friendship, companionship, work, school and other relationships that imply trust, subordination or superiority between the aggressor and the victim, as stated in art. 142 of the COIP.

We still require long-term, long-term work to be able to eradicate this other pandemic that is violence against women, girls and adolescents… During the pandemic (confinement) women were not safe in their own homes due to violence

Geraldine Guerra, from Fundación Aldea and the Network of Shelters in Ecuador

But femicide is not the only violent death due to violence against women. There are also murders, rapes with death, kidnappings with death and hired assassins.

In the country, in the last 7 years, 1,338 women have been victims of femicides and violent deaths in Ecuador, from August 10, 2014 to February 27 of this year, according to the Judiciary.

In 2021 alone there were 68 femicides and 159 violent deaths of women, compared to 74 femicides in 2020 and 91 violent deaths of women in that pandemic year, according to official figures from FemicidesEC.

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So far this year and until February 27, 2022, the Judiciary recorded 13 femicides and 31 violent deaths of women.

Civil society groups, such as Fundación Aldea, cataloged 2021 as the most violent year against women and girls in Ecuador since femicide was criminalized in 2014.

In their 2021 registry, from January 1 to November 15 of that year, they registered 172 violent deaths of women for reasons of gender, including 7 transfemicides and 61 cases of deaths by organized crime.

That is, one femicide every 44 hours in Ecuador in 2021. These groups make maps of femicides in Ecuador with information from various entities and with which they collect on their own.

Now, on Women’s Day, they present the cartography called Flowers in the Air, which includes maps, photographs, audios of family members and part of the tours or activities that 8 Ecuadorian women, victims of femicides, whose relatives’ fight keep going.

“In the midst of so much pain that does not calm down, it is time to face a long and expensive trial. As families, we have to prove that the truth is being told. And you have to fight for the dignity of the victim,” says Sonia, the mother of Cristina Palacios, who was murdered by a former co-worker in March 2017. In that year, in November, he was sentenced to 34 years and 8 months. from prison

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Sonia is one of the relatives that appears in Flores en el Aire. She tells what made Cristina happy when she was a child, the places she visited, her dreams, her tastes, among others, as well as the story of her fight for her justice.

“Most violence occurs in the family, the aggressors are their own husbands, fathers, brothers. They are within the inner circle of women, and we must change that. And that’s what March 8 is for, to commemorate the visibility of the feminist struggle to make these inequalities visible and name them, not to give flowers,” says Geraldine Guerra, from Fundación Aldea and the Network of Shelters in Ecuador.

This March 8, at 09:30, this project called Flores en el Aire will be presented in Cuenca. It will be in the room of the Faculty of Jurisprudence of the University of Cuenca, in the streets April 12 and av. Store.

For this work, the families victims of femicide in Cuenca and Portoviejo, who expose their stories, had the support of the Acceleration Laboratory and the Aldea Foundation, within the framework of the so-called Spotlight Project.

In this link: https://www.otrosmapas.org/flores-en-el-aire is the new contribution of this civil society group.

Groups such as Nuevo Horizontes in Portoviejo, Fundación María Amor, in Cuenca, the Sucumbíos Women’s Federation and the Network of Families of Victims of Femicides participated, according to their participants. (I)