Ilia Calderón Interviews Violence Against Women In Latin America

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Ilia Calderón admits that reporting cases of brutal violence against women for a special story on feminicide in Latin America - airing Sunday at 7 pm on Aqui y Ahora (Univision) - was deeply moving. “It affected me a lot. It is difficult to see the children, they are left alone,”she says of the children of murdered mothers. “There are traumatized young children and teenagers. Those children are left without a father and without a mother, many fall into the adoption or foster care system. Others have to remain in the hands of relatives because the father goes to jail too.”

One of the cases it reports is the murder of the Salvadoran journalist Karla Turcios at the hands of her husband. “She is the mother of a child who had been diagnosed with autism. The prosecutor told us that everything happened with the boy present in the house, that when he went to dispose of the body the boy was in the body,”says the co-presenter of Noticiero Univisión. The case of the Salvadoran doctor Rosa Maríait has elements in common. “Rosa María and Karla were professionals, they were the ones who worked, they were the providers. The two suffered from physical and psychological domestic violence in silence and distanced themselves a little from their families to get closer to their partners,”says Calderón. “Although everything shows that they are less because they don't have a job or they are simply living, that's the way to try to overcome strength and almost take revenge for the fact that she is the provider, she is the professional, she is the pretty one, she is the admired one. That generates a whole dynamic of aggression”.

The Colombian presenter reported cases that occurred in Mexico, El Salvador and the United States, but regrets that femicide "is a very serious problem throughout Latin America," with alarming figures. In Mexico, to name just one example, more than 3,600 women were killed in 2018, reports Calderón. "These are the cases that are known, there are also thousands of missing women."

He also interviewed the sister of Serymar Soto, a young woman who was murdered before her wedding by her fiancé. They argued and the man ran him over with his best friend and ran away. On the day one year after she had married, she published the dress her sister was going to marry and published the photo of the fiancé because the authorities were looking for him and through Facebook, he found it. He created a page called 'Los Machos Nos Matan en México' and it manages impressive figures because through the page families who are looking for suspects are communicated, they publish cases of women who were murdered and no one answers for them, who were found in a hotel,”adds Calderón.

To denigrate women, they often discard their naked bodies, tied up, in underwear and with a beaten face. “Not in all countries the fact that they kill you for being a woman is an aggravating factor. Femicide does not exist in the United States as it exists in Colombia, Mexico or El Salvador,”she regrets.

The case of Rosa Elvira Celi, a Colombian woman who was raped and tortured in a park, where she was left for dead, moved Colombia. She managed to call the police and tell her nightmare before she died, which led to the creation of the Rosa Elvira Celi law, which was applied years later to punish the murderer of another Colombian, the 7-year-old indigenous girl Yuliana Samboní. Yuliana was kidnapped on the street by an architect, who took her to her apartment to rape and kill her. The murderer received 58 years in prison, as the crime was treated as femicide.

He also reported the case of Cuban Maribel Torres in Florida. "Her partner tried to distance her from her family, led her to live somewhere else," she says. “She suffered assaults. After the murder, he continued to communicate with her family on her phone, [texting pretending to be her], so they thought she was fine. The disappearance came to report months later,”he says. When the killer's sister called her family to tell her that she had abandoned her children and that they were at home, the family learned that Maribel was in danger as she would never leave her children. Maribel's body was found, 8 months later, inside a cement box in a canal.

Brenda Vásquez, a Salvadoran survivor - whose husband almost burned her alive with their children inside their home - told Calderón that she went to the police several times to report her assaults and they advised her to “behave well with your husband, treat him well and he will see that things are going to work "or" the woman has to endure ". “Machismo is deeply rooted in culture, the idea that women have to endure to support the family and because children need a father. The economic dependence of women is a factor for these things to happen,”says the presenter. Although there are organizations, government offices and foundations in these countries for the protection of women, much remains to be done, she says. "Part of the dynamic is to make them feel guilty about what's going on,"account about the aggressors. "Men do a psychological job of crushing a woman's self-esteem until they kill or beat them in a way that sends them to the hospital."

It is a difficult cycle to break, regrets the communicator, but education is key in seeking solutions: "It is not only about educating and empowering girls, but also teaching boys the value of women."

Calderón has an emotional message for victims of domestic violence who can read this: “They have to believe in them and know that this is not normal. They have to look for help, sometimes it is difficult because they find a rejection or a wall from the authorities, but the women who have insisted on seeking help, on trying to report, on going out, on trying to seek their economic independence, leave the abuser today can tell the story. Nor do I want to judge women who have not been able to get out of that circle because they are not to blame either, but the message for a woman who is going through this is that outside there is a world, they can believe you and outside there are opportunities. You have to fight, even if it is difficult, sometimes it takes years, but it is possible to get out and only those who can take that step will survive.”