In my paper, I will examine gender-based violence in Mexico and the feminist movements that have arisen in response. Mexico has had a long history of gender violence and femicide. I aim to examine the gender inequalities that are prevalent in Mexico and how feminist mobilizations have emerged in response to them or have been affected by them. The purpose of my research is to gain a better understanding of how feminist movements were able to develop in Mexico, and how gender played a role in either facilitating or hindering movement emergence.
I found an article by Irma Salas Siguenza where she talks about “the glitter revolution.” The glitter revolution is how she refers to the two feminist mobilizations that resulted in the graffitiing of the iconic monument El Ángel de la Independencia in Mexico City in 2019. Their goal was to bring public awareness to the alarming rates of violence against women and femicide across the nation, and their act of graffiti on the monument not only represented an act of defiance but also a reclaiming of the historical narrative represented by the Angel. She questions why acts committed by feminist movements to protest femicide and gender-based violence are construed as vandalism as opposed to defiance against the longstanding treatment of women. Yet, as she discusses, the media’s response to their actions failed to portray them as feminists engaged in a worthwhile cause. Rather than being embraced as acts designed to fight injustice, their actions were viewed as vandalism. In this regard, Salas suggests that the media and social network reactions reveal the gender inequalities that have been part of Mexican collective memory for a long time. She sums this up well in the title of her article which translates to, when the revolution is feminine it is vandalism.
Siguenza, Irma S. 2021. “Cuando La Revolución Es En Femenino, Es Vandalismo. La Revolución De La Brillantina y La Pugna Por La Memoria.” Sociologia y Tecnociencia 11(1):55-77. doi: https://doi.org/10.24197/st.1.2021.55-77.