https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/may\/03\/cuentalo-latin-american-women-rally-around-sexual-violence-hashtag<\/p>\n
It began as a call to arms to women in Spain after last week\u2019s incendiary acquittal of five men
\non rape charges in Pamplona.
\n\u201cWe must tell of the aggressions, the violations, compa\u00f1eras,\u201d the journalist Cristina
\nFallar\u00e1s tweeted, urging her followers to speak out over sexual violence using the hashtag
\n#Cu\u00e9ntalo.
\nBut across the Atlantic the message was also received loud and clear, with hundreds of thousands
\nof Latin American women seizing on the Twitter campaign to denounce the rampant gender
\nviolence blighting their region and their lives. Each day 12 Latin American women are victims of
\nfemicide, according to the UN\u2019s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
From Buenos Aires to Bogot\u00e1, often horrific accounts of abuse rained in as word of the hashtag \u2013
\nwhich roughly translates as \u201ctell your story\u201d \u2013 spread. Argentina\u2019s Clar\u00edn newspaper said more
\nthan 430,000 tweets featuring #Cu\u00e9ntalo were posted in one day alone.
\n\u201c#Cuentalo is tearing my soul into a thousand pieces … Each story tells me we must carry on
\nfighting for women,\u201d tweeted Paula Andrea, a Colombian model.
\nSome chose to use the Spanish-language initiative to recount their own experiences.
\n\u201cOne night my ex-husband wanted to have sex when I didn\u2019t. To avoid being raped, I locked
\nmyself out on the balcony and spent the whole night there without my kids noticing,\u201d tweeted
\nAna Alonso Ferrer from Cuenca, Ecuador\u2019s third largest city.
\nMany, though, chose to tell the stories of women who had been robbed of their voices \u2013 friends,
\nrelatives or strangers lost to a seemingly unstoppable wave of deadly violence against Latin
\nAmerican women.
\n\u201cMy husband shot me in the head, wrapped up my body and threw it in the Potrerillos Dam,\u201d
\ntweeted a woman in Argentina, channeling the voice of one recent murder victim there. \u201cI\u2019m the
\none telling you because Concepci\u00f3n Arregui cannot.\u201d
\nKarla Hern\u00e1ndez, a politician in El Salvador who has campaigned against femicide, used the
\nhashtag to highlight the case of a female police officer thought to have been shot and disappeared
\nby fellow officers last December. \u201cMy family are still waiting. They don\u2019t know if I\u2019m dead or
\nalive,\u201d Hernandez wrote, adding: \u201cI\u2019m telling you because Carla Ayala can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vargas, part of the Colectiva de Mujeres Contra La Violencia group, said she believed #Cu\u00e9ntalo
\ncould help revive the experiences of forgotten Latin American women. \u201cThis hashtag is a really
\nimportant way of telling these stories … The campaign is a chance to give voice to those women
\nwho have neither access to justice nor the means to share their stories,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The urgency of the campaign in Latin America was underscored by a violent attack on a young
\nChilean woman by five men on Sunday that has been compared to the attack in Spain which
\ninspired #Cu\u00e9ntalo.
\nErika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International\u2019s Americas director, said she was not surprised the
\ninitiative \u2013 which follows 2016\u2019s #NiUnaMenos (\u201cnot one less\u201d) movement \u2013 had struck a chord in
\na region with such high rates of violence against women.
\n\u201cLatin America and the Caribbean remains one of the most violent regions with regards to girls
\nand women\u2019s rights in general. Fourteen of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide are
\nhere in the region including countries such as Mexico, which tops the list, Central American
\ncountries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and Argentina and Brazil. It is
\nsomething that is endemic,\u201d she said.
\nBut femicide was only \u201cthe most radical expression of discrimination and violence against
\nwomen\u201d in a region notorious for machismo, Guevara-Rosas added. It is also home to six of the
\neight countries with blanket bans on abortion, for example. Faced with staggering violence and
\nalmost total impunity, society was finding its voice: \u201cOnline and offline, people are mobilising,\u201d
\nshe said.
\nVargas, the Mexican activist, said she hoped #Cu\u00e9ntalo would both highlight widespread violence
\nand boost her campaign to secure justice for Mandujano, one of 19 cases of femicide in Hidalgo in
\n2014.
\nVargas recalled how in July that year, after years of savage beatings, Mandujano fled her husband
\nafter reporting him to authorities. But on 14 August 2014 he tracked her down to a safe house in
\nthe city of Pachuca and shot both her and her brother dead.
\n\u201cFour years have passed and they haven\u2019t detained him,\u201d Vargas complained. \u201cThe feminicida is
\nstill at large.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/may\/03\/cuentalo-latin-american-women-rally-around-sexual-violence-hashtag It began as a call to arms to women in Spain after last week\u2019s incendiary acquittal of five men on rape charges in Pamplona. \u201cWe must tell of the aggressions, the violations, compa\u00f1eras,\u201d the journalist Cristina Fallar\u00e1s tweeted, urging her followers to speak out over sexual violence using the hashtag #Cu\u00e9ntalo. But across the Atlantic the message was also… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1646,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}