This is the help signal that saved Majo Robles and that was born in the pandemic to detect sexist violence

A hand sign in two movements. The palm is open with the thumb facing the center and then the four fingers on the thumb. Majo Robles used it on Tuesday, February 27 during a Facebook broadcast in which he asked his followers for help. “I need you to please pay attention to this. live because I am going to be giving you some key words that I need you to help me with.” The main topic of the video was the demonstration of dresses from her business, Majo Robles Boutique, but the most relevant message would come almost at the end. While he was showing the clothes on a mannequin, a girl appeared in the back of the room, her daughter. A baby could also be heard near her. Majo's expression communicated a tension that she later verbalized. “I'm nervous”. But she also expressed a certainty: “We are going to leave here.” Suddenly a man with a bare torso and wet hair came in and asked for a towel. “I don't have it here,” she replied. He insisted. Seconds later Majo made the help signal with his left hand while he threw an object. “If someone knows that sign, they already know what to do. They send me a private message.” The man disappeared from the image and a few seconds later what was seen was diffuse. The baby's cry could be heard and Majo pleaded: “If anyone is watching this live, please help!”. The man had hit her.

Minutes later, this woman from Oaxaca was bleeding from her nose and her face was swollen from her attacker's blows, as seen in a later video. “Things didn't end well at all. I don't show my face because the truth is I'm quite affected, but I want you to know that as far as possible I'm fine,” says Majo. Minutes later she shows her face. She is inside a patrol car in the Judicial City of Oaxaca. She says that her daughter and her baby are in a shelter and that the man was arrested. Robles is injured but safe for now. Using the help signal was the key.

Signal for help (the help sign) emerged in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic to combat sexist violence that increased with domestic confinement. It has become a warning message that has spread to more than 40 countries. “We developed a hand gesture as a silent call for help, to be used without leaving a digital trace, during our new lives full of video calls,” explains in a statement the advertising agency that devised the sign for the Canadian Women's Foundation.

'The responsibility should not fall on the victim'

Aimée Vega Montiel, researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities at UNAM and specialist in Feminism and Communication, explains to EL PAÍS that the help signal is one of several resources promoted by feminism from organizations and academia, and that institutions have adopted to address violence against women, but clarifies that the responsibility of reporting and asking for help should not fall on the victims.

“Yeah [la señal] reads as the only measure to stop or address violence against women, we will be reducing the analysis of the structural nature of violence to specific measures that it is up to the victims to adopt. Along with this measure, others would have to be taken that involve the actions of the authorities, of the institutions responsible for care, prevention and punishment,” she says.

Vega Montiel considers that the risk of giving too much weight to the sign is that its effectiveness would be affected if Justice eventually released the aggressor or if he reoffended despite receiving a sanction. “It is essential that the Mexican State guarantees women their right to a life free of violence through measures of prevention, care, punishment and reparation of damage.”

Violence against women in the family grew in Mexico, between 2015 and 2022, by more than 100%, says Vega Montiel. In 2022, almost 300,000 complaints were registered, “and that number does not even represent 30% of the total cases. The majority of women and girls who are victims of violence in the family environment do not report it, not because they are not suffering from it or because they are complicit or overlap with this type of practices, but because they do not have a family environment that accompanies them in their process of reporting the aggressor.”

Another resources

In addition to the help signal, whose use has spread on social networks, there are other reporting and support mechanisms:

• 911, where you can report sexual abuse, sexual harassment or harassment, rape, intimate partner violence and family violence.
• The Justice Centers for Women of the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (Conavim), which can be accessed call by telephone.
• The free shelters for women who experience extreme violence, and where appropriate their sons or daughters, located in 25 entities in the country.

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