The story of the young Sagrario González Flores sounds like the fluttering of birds. Wings that move violently inside a cage and that allow the sound of the air and the patio at dawn to sneak in suddenly. González, a 17-year-old girl who worked as a maquila operator in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, left for her work very early on April 19, 1998, never to return. Before leaving home she did what she usually did, besides braiding her hair and preparing her white attendant coat, she fed hers two parakeets of hers to whom she said sweet words every time she came near. them.
This is how the first chapter of ten women, the sound production that a battalion of Mexican women from different professions have made with effort, work and creativity during the last two years. The team has been led by Ashley Frangie and Lety Sahagún, the creators of one of the most successful Mexican podcasts on this type of platform globally: doubts are given away. In addition, the production has had the investigative and follow-up work of the journalist Daniela Rea and, in the scripts, the powerful pen of the writer and editor Alma Delia Murillo. A powerful combination to build a sound story whose format is consumed by more and more Mexicans. Stories and productions where the resources of the voice and the weight of the testimonies are enough —as in this case— to reach the depths of consciences.
The producer and presenter Lety Sahagún explained that they have taken advantage of the place they already have within audio productions to tell the story of a day in this country, that is, the story of a place where 10 or more women: “We did it through audio because it is where our strength is, it is the way we know it, and also because we wanted to tell stories that for structural reasons we do not listen to”.
Your flagship project doubts are given away is considered as the podcast most successful in Latin America. It has remained among the 10 most listened to across the continent since 2020, when it was awarded Spotify’s most shared and followed. After the success, it gained strength and also became a producer, Dudas Media, which already participates actively in ten women by Amazon Music.
To weave this long process of telling the stories, the production has carefully chosen actresses whose voices narrate each of the episodes. The testimonies of victims of feminicide such as Fátima, Ericka, Bianca, Maicha Pamela, Sagrario, Idaly, Nataly, Paola, Mara and Fernanda, will be narrated, from the point of view of a tree, a notebook, or a parakeet, in the voices of the actresses Angélica Aragón, Yalitza Aparicio, Mabel Cadena, Zuria Vega, Bárbara López, Karol Sevilla, Bárbara Mori, Morganna Love, Natasha Dupeyron and Eréndira Ibarra.
This new way of telling the great human tragedy that a femicide means could only be achieved with the work and hours that the journalist Daniela Rea spent with the families of each of the victims. Ashly Frangie recalls that in order to relate certain details from such up-close and intimate points of view to women of different ages and social backgrounds, and to make the voice of those objects around them enough to have a powerful effect, Rea’s work and Alma Delia Murillo was key. “Daniela Rea was the one who was in contact with the families. She was in charge of interviewing them, going to each of the places in the country and putting them in the center. The only way we found out about the parakeets is because Sagrario’s mother told the story. Another testimony is told by a tree, and it was precisely the mother who described to us what the trees were like where she lived. And then she went down all those words to the Alma scripts.”
The production will premiere its first two chapters this Wednesday. It will be on March 8 when the episodes can be heard on various platforms. In addition, from this March 1 the website will be enabled tenmujeres.com where it will not only be possible to access the audios, but also women who need support on issues of sexist violence, can do so directly on the site.
In an article published in 2021 in this newspaper, The female revolution of the ‘podcast’, María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, a specialist on the subject, took a tour of the audio productions that are directed, created or carried by women. In this regard, she makes this reflection: “Cases like Stretching the gum, Cristina Miter’s podcast, Cabinet of Curiosities or Deformed Weekly in Spain, shell podcast in Argentina or doubts are given away in Mexico show the relevance of sound creators. The first podcast of masses in the United States, Serial, was produced by a woman: Sarah Koenig. Behind the overwhelming success of The New York TimesAudio there is a journalist named Lisa Tobin. Dawn Ostroff is the director behind Spotify’s formidable commitment to audio. In Latin America, Carolina Guerrero is the CEO of the prestigious podcast of Radio Ambulante and Martina Castro is in charge of the production company Adonde Media. Listening among women is weaving beautiful communities around the world. In short, the female voice can be understood as a nerve that runs through our history and connects centuries. It should not be a coincidence then that words like sonority and sorority are almost identical”.
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