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On July 6, the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize was awarded in Mexico City to the novelist Cristina Rivera Garza for Liliana’s invincible summer. An important and exciting moment for the writer because of what the novel represents. In it, Rivera Garza tells the story of her sister Liliana de ella, a victim of femicide 30 years ago at the hands of her partner. However, the award ceremony was not without a bitter aftertaste. The writer Felipe Garrido questioned that the femicide had “a very secondary place” in the history. “There is a character that I think is intentionally overshadowed despite his importance in the plot, he is Ángel, Liliana’s murderer,” he said, and listed several male authors who should be taken, according to him, as an example of novels with feminicidal protagonists.
Those words loaded with machismo, insensitivity and condescension in full tribute, not only to Rivera Garza, but also to his sister, perfectly portray how for centuries in culture, politics and practically in all areas, the only narrative that has reigned has been that of patriarchy.
In it, the victims of violence have no name, they don’t matter, and they only fuel myths such as that of Jack the Ripper, the Ecatepec monster, or the man who, blinded by love, ends up murdering a woman. And there they remain, “he turns them into numbers, reduces them to the moment of his murder,” says Rivera Garza. “We as objects from a masculine point of view,” says the Mexican writer Alma Delia Murillo. “Each time the acts of violence are described in great detail, so objectivewithout any respect for the victim or their relatives, the porno-violence is put to work that, far from producing critical thought and practice, generates the personal and social paralysis typical of terror”, wrote Rivera Garza in Washington Post.
“The world has been narrated from a single point of view: centralized, monolithic, martial, patriarchal, in the image and likeness of those who took over literature,” continues Murillo. She herself admits that that is why she decided to apply for her latest novel my father’s head to the Alfaguara prize with a masculine pseudonym: “I thought that more men than women have won it. 52 men and five women and I had the reasoning that perhaps I would have more chance of being read if he called me: Martín Santos”, he comments. The poet Alma Karla Sandoval directly calls it the “editopatriarchy”. “It is not only what we see and hear, but what we stop seeing and what we stop hearing when the stories are told from a single narrative,” continues Murillo.
That’s why books like Liliana’s invincible summer that they turn history around, surprise and sting. But he is not the only one. More and more stories change the story. For example, Eat dirtby Dolores Reyes; The dogby Pilar Quintana; animal siegeby Vanessa Londono; empty housesby Brenda Navarro; dead girlsfrom Selva Almada or the flying onesby Mónica Ojeda, to name a few.
In an act of rebellion and complete sisterhood, Cristina Rivera Garza names not only her sister, but all the women victims of violence and places them in the center. Out of ignoring and concealment. “If the patriarchal society insisted on telling her murder in the macho key of a crime of passion, which intrinsically blamed the victim and exonerated the aggressor, my sister told a different story. She was an independent girl, happy to live in her own way, owner of an intellectual and sensory curiosity that did not give in to the limitations of the male who tried to break her for years until, aware that she was leaving him forever, he murdered her. night he found her alone, copying poems by José Emilio Pacheco in her school notebook”, the author wrote in the magazine This country.
Colombian writer Vanessa Londoño knows well that moment of being invalidated in public. In the last Hay Festival of Cartagena lived a tense moment when she was interrupted while speaking by the Spanish writer Manuel Vilas. “This invalidation happens to all women in the macro and in the micro,” he says. “The voice of patriarchy operates like this at all levels.” Londoño explains that naming that discrimination was useful for him not to silence something like that anymore. “Latin American women writers are changing the narrative, telling from the other side our role in history, our own anatomies, our place in history, in society, in politics, on the street, as citizens, in relation to ourselves. “, it states.
How was it? What did she want? Where would she be now she? What would be her profession? In this change of perspective, the authors seek for society to begin to look at the lives of women and the holes left by their death. Let them realize what they lost by losing them. What Vanessa Londoño calls: “Regain your humanity”. “We have not learned to name the victims and even less to accompany them until justice is done,” he recalls. adriana malvido in this column The universal.
Constanza Lambertucci recounted in this article that Cristina Rivera Garza’s response that day, during the award ceremony, made the Palace of Fine Arts resound in a standing ovation. She said: “I think we have to see them always, not their killers. We already see their murderers everywhere, they have too much press”. It has just been 32 years since the femicide of Liliana Rivera Garza. Let no one forget her name or that of any murdered.
These are our recommended articles of the week:
And some suggestions to finish:
🎬 A documentary: The three deaths of Marisela Escobedo
Speaking of narratives that put the story of the victims at the center, this documentary tells the life of Marisela Escobedo, a Mexican mother and activist who fought to clarify her daughter’s femicide, find her killer, and expose the Mexican justice system. Directed by Carlos Pérez Osorio.
🎥 A series: Intimacy
A woman must face the repercussions of leaking a scandalous sex tape filmed without your consent. His political career and his personal life are hit by the non-consensual dissemination of images. The series shows the scope that digital violence can have in the lives of two very different women. Directed by Jorge Torregrossa, Ben Gutteridge, Koldo Almandoz and Marta Font. With performances by Verónica Echegui, Itziar Ituño, Ana Wagener and Patricia López Arnaiz.
🎶 A song: Piba Cumbia
To close this Sunday I leave you with this great song by Barbarita Palacios, Julieta Venegas and Micaela Chauque. Have a good week.
#Liliana