Editor's Column: #NiUnaMenos

In the past year, the United States has witnessed drastic changes in its public discourse around issues of sexual harassment and abuse. While these changes have granted considerable traction to women’s issues in the U.S., shocking femicide rates continue to rock Latin America as it struggles to correct inefficiencies in law- enforcement procedures for the murder and abuse of women.

According to UN Women, over 66,000 women and girls die annually as a result of homicide and domestic violence around the world. In the same study, researchers found that Latin American countries account for 14 of the 25 countries with the world’s highest rates of femicide. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), about 12 women lose their lives to murder every day in Latin America.

The trend has not gone unnoticed, and popular movements have sprouted up across the Americas to protest violence against women. In 2015, Argentine activists established the “Ni Una Mas,” or, “Not One Woman Less” movement, an anti- femicide campaign whose slogan continues to gather crowds in cases of unindicted murders against women and girls.

In early February, El Popular reported hundreds of protesters gathering in the Peruvian city of San Juan de Lurigancho to demand an indictment in the murder case of a local girl named Jimena Renace. The crowd marched with banners reading “Ni Una Menos” and, “Jimenita, the people are with you.”

In the same week, El Observador reported on a televised conversation between four Argentine feminist thinkers who drew a wide viewership while discussing women’s issues and the success of the “Ni Una Menos” movement in its home country.

While the #MeToo movement has swept the socio-political scene in the U.S., activists further south have rallied under their own chant, and they seem determined to safeguard the lives of every Latin American woman—and not a woman less.