BY Oriana López Uribe
When we march together, we are denouncing injustices, we are demanding visibility in front of society as a whole. We are somehow calling for other people to see what we see.
In Mexico City for many years, I marched as part of the feminist movement. In small marches, where the city government was our ally, they protected those few of us so that the cars would let us pass, so that everything would happen without any problem for us.
In Mexico, male violence is too lethal, it is said that there are 9 femicides a day. Faced with this femicidal violence, many young women from different social strata, tired of seeing how the government did not prioritize addressing violence beyond writing and approving laws that are never applied, took to the streets en masse in April 24, 2016 . I had not seen a march like that before, so big, so moving, that #24A for me marked a watershed of what can be done in the streets, that the collective pain was so great that we had to get together to shout and demand justice.
-I am not saying that there have not been other massive marches in Mexico City, this city is the seat of the federal government and is a country full of injustices, of the disappeared, of the displaced, of neoliberal policies that dispossess, exploit, and kill. What I am saying is from my experience, in the causes I am closest to, feminism, sexual rights, LGBT pride, HIV, and violence, there had not been a march as massive as that one, and from there our marches changed.-
In August 2018 another case of femicidal violence against a teenager was leaked to the media. We went out to demand clear actions by the judicial system, which always seems to dismiss complaints, threats, and claims from relatives when someone does not come home. In front of the Prosecutor’s Office, feminists demanded justice in different tones, one throwing pink glitter in the face of the Mexico City prosecutor, another throwing an object against the glass door, breaking it into pieces. The dignified rage, all together we are stronger. We are, at that moment, the denouncers who have felt silenced, ignored, and manipulated by the narcissistic state, and where we no longer know what else to do to be heard. We are crazed with pain, strengthened among ourselves to point out, highlight and burn everything wrong in this rotten system because we know we are supported because together we shouted. We All Did It, to protect those burning, painting, and breaking, so that if they criminalized one, they would have to take us all in.
From that moment on, the Mexico City government became a ruthless enemy, strengthening its narcissism, and polarizing it. In that moment the city government decided to become an arbiter of feminism, creating a narrative that we were not good feminists for attacking women police officers, (even though they were representing the patriarchal state with its most brutal arm, the police).
What happens when the injustices of the state, with its narcissism, are replicated in the social movements? When your feminist allies decide not to listen to you, but rather point at you, or even punish you without giving you the right to reply. For that, there are no marches. And even the marches are no longer that safe a place to shout and denounce the patriarchy because you know that some of them will no longer be holding space for you, or maybe they never did, because now when you look back, you notice they have never been able to collectively take responsibility and risk themselves to protect others in direct actions.
What protection mechanisms do we have within social movements, if they do not let you be a peer, if they apply vertical logic and decide to stand on whatever step they can use to leverage their opinion without dialogue, not looking for long term solutions but rather a quick fix without reparations, based on what looks politically correct rather than building from a deep political (and politicized) nuanced understanding of systems of oppression and of manipulative tools. The power they have from a look of “should be” is far from horizontality, dialogue, and reparations.
There is no credential vending to belong to social movements, we are activists not for our ideals, or for our words, but for our coherent actions. The system is not only outside being unjust, but the system is also in ourselves when we control others, and when we control ourselves. The patriarchy inhabits us and that is why we must keep questioning ourselves, always be able to look in the mirror and see ourselves as whole, and keep creating mechanisms to keep ourselves accountable (to the movement and ourselves) about our daily capacity to fail, to offer apologies, to repair the damage and to repair ourselves. Otherwise, if we believe that we possess impeccable feminism and that it is not necessary to look in the mirror from time to time, we become as narcissistic as the patriarchal system.
And now my question is, where do we find security again? In the mirror, in feminist accountability with yourself, and with others who share the same practices and values.