SEMBRANDO LUCHA
In Mexico, she is the symbol of social struggle, she survives in a country that has taught her to live and survive in resilience. She can be found in the streets, singing feminist hymns, breathing in tear gas, wearing the cross of the feminicides on her shoulder or wearing the portrait of those who are still being searched for, with their hands in the ground cultivating the future or searching for a loved one. "She" is the woman, the mother, the wife, the sister, the daughter, the friend, the neighbor... There are many of them and they are all united by the same cause, that of fighting for their rights, for a dignified life free of violence.
It is easy to notice the numbness that invades our minds in front of figures too dizzying to be assimilated: 11 feminicides per day, 100 thousand missing persons of which 847 are women simply in 2022, or an impunity of 94.8% of investigations in matters of violence... Embodying these societal phenomena through the history of Mexican women becomes a struggle in its own right.
This photographic project started in 2018, is the convergence of the lives of women of all ages, whose profiles intersect and complement each other. The common denominator that unites them is the conversion from victim to true advocate. Survivors of feminicide, leaders of search groups for missing persons, abortion counsellors, political prisoners... whether they are feminists, activists or artists, individually or collectively, they organize themselves with courage, will and determination, generating a social impact and becoming a source of inspiration for all others.
The strength that Mexican women embody is undeniable. To understand it, we need only look at its essence, which is fueled by love, empathy and the desire for justice.
This photo project was started independently in 2019.
The National Geographic Society's Covid-19 Emergency Fund supported the project in 2021, with the collaboration of the Mexican Photojournalist Lizbeth Hernández . In 2022 the project could be continued thank to the Women Photograph Project Grant.
Young girls members of the association of the casa CAMI of Quintanaroo. The association addresses Mayan women by promoting actions in favor of the rights of indigenous and Afro-Mexican women, but also by preventing violence against women, sexual and reproductive rights.
June 25, 2021, Felipe carillo puerto, Quintana Roo, Mexico
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Mariana, 13 years old, wears the pink cross symbolic of feminicides. A cross that she painted herself to be able to march with it during the demonstration of March 8 a few days later. Since she was a child, Mariana has accompanied her mother in her activities for the association Red Messa, which accompanies the families of victims of feminicide and women victims of violence. Marina is the youngest of six children, and later on she wants to become a lawyer to defend women's rights.
Ciudad Juárez, March 03, 2021
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On the afternoon of March 8th 2022 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the march for International Women's Day took place. Hundreds of demonstrators of all ages and groups marched through the streets of downtown to demand no more violence against women.
Tuxtla Gutiérrez is one of the seven municipalities with a Gender Alert in the state and despite this, last weekend another femicide occurred when a woman was found lifeless and with signs of violence inside a car, in the company of a man.
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, March 8th 2022
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The leader and founder of the Collective of Rastreadoras del Fuerte, from Sinaloa Mirna Nereyda Medina. She remembers the response of the prosecutor's office when she came to file a complaint following the disappearance of her son Roberto Corrales Medina, who disappeared on July 14, 2014: "We are investigators, we are not looking for a body." So it is this indifference of the authorities and the police that pushed this retired preschool teacher, to act alone to find the body of her son and was forced to take the shovel and pickaxe and search the clandestine graves in the vicinity in the hope of digging up the remains of her missing loved one. Three years after the creation of the "Rastreadoras" collective, Mirna found her son buried in a grove in the municipality of El Fuerte in the state of Sinaloa following an anonymous call indicating his location.
Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, 11th July 2018
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In the Grand Canal of Ecatepec there are sites of accumulation of waste and concentration, because the riverbed is alive, and these points of concrentration can become traps where human remains or bodies can be found that have been thrown from some place.
Thus, since the beginning of November, mothers of the disappeared, members of the National Search Brigade, people in solidarity and members of the Search Commission of the State of Mexico have re-launched the search for the disappeared in Ecatepec: a municipality that has the most disappeared people in the state, 497 under the current administration of Alfredo del Mazo alone.
1st december 2021, Ecatepec, Mexico
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Portrait of Maria Elena Rios in a field of the symbolic flower of the Día de muertos "el cempasúchil" in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. After being the victim of an acid femicide attempt in September 2019 by her ex-boyfriend, the 27-year-old saxophonist is now fighting for justice. Disfigured, it is thanks to music and her instrument that she has managed to be reborn and find the strength to continue her struggle.
Oaxaca, October 23, 2020
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Sisters Argelia and Sara from the indigenous Mazateca community of the Cañada Region, have been fighting for the freedom of their father Jaime Betanzos and six other political prisoners from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca for seven years. They grew up in the mountains of the Sierra Mazateca, among coffee crops, which serve as sustenance to follow the legal process of their cases and as a form of resistance by preserving the seeds that their father cultivated before entering prison. Oaxaca ciudad, Mexico on April 20th 2022.
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María del Carmen Volante, mother of Guadalupe Pamela Gallardo Volante, missing in Mexico City, since 2017. Since then she is looking for her daughter and on the Sunday 24th April, with hundreds of women protested in Mexico City against the recent femicides and disappearances in the state of Nuevo Leon and throughout the country after the case of Debanhi Escobar, an 18-year-old girl whose body was found in a cistern, has shaken the country once again, where 10 women are murdered every day. 24th April 2022, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
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