On the afternoon of 19 October, Claudia Arias and her aunt Susana Ortiz made their way to the centre of Mendoza, where they joined a crowd of thousands who had gathered to protest against a wave of violent attacks on women in Argentina.
It was one of half a dozen demonstrations across the country, organised on social media by a loose collective of activists and journalists after the rape and murder of a 16-year old schoolgirl, Lucía Pérez, in the coastal city of Mar del Plata.
Their message was #NiUnaMenos, which literally translates as “not one less”, but signifies “not one more woman” lost to violence, often committed by victims’ husbands, partners or close friends.
Four days after Arias and Ortiz protested in Mendoza, they were stabbed to death at their home along with Arias’s 90-year old grandmother, Vicenta Díaz.
Police arrested Arias’s ex-partner, Daniel Zalazar, a 30-year-old taekwondo instructor. Prosecutors say he murdered the women after an argument over the paternity of Arias’s seven-month-old daughter, Mia.
Zalazar also allegedly stabbed the baby and Arias’s 11-year-old son, Lucas, both of whom remain in critical condition at a Mendoza hospital. Arias’s younger son, Bautista, managed to escape from the house and hid in the boot of a car with his dog, Coco, police said on Wednesday. Officers said it took the eight-year-old several hours to reopen the boot from the inside and then call the police.
“It was a massacre,” Claudia’s father, Rolo Arias, told reporters. “We went to protest at the #NiUnaMenos marches – and then it was our turn.”
Zalazar was held after showing up at a nearby hospital asking to be treated for wounds he claimed he had sustained in a holdup attempt. He is facing charges of murder and “gender violence”.
Seven out of the top 10 countries for female murder rates are in Latin America. And although Argentina does not head the list, almost daily reports of male violence against women have provoked deep soul-searching in the country.
Four years ago, congress passed a law defining domestic violence, gender-based killings and other categories of hate crimes against women as “femicide”. But activists argue that Argentina needs to change more than its legislation.
“The reason [for these attacks] is Argentina’s macho culture,” said Fabiana Tuñez, director of Casa del Encuentro, a shelter for abused women in Buenos Aires.
Machismo runs deeps in Argentina, and manifests itself daily on any city street. Directing flirtatious comments – known as piropos – at passing women is considered an art form by many men, although it often consists of little more than crude catcalls and aggressive propositioning.
Even the president, Mauricio Macri, has defended the practice. “Deep inside, all women like to hear a piropo, even women who say they don’t,” Macri said in a radio interview in 2014 when he was mayor of Buenos Aires.
“I don’t believe them. There can’t be anything nicer than being told how pretty you are, even if it comes along with vulgarity, like being told what a nice ass you have.”
Human rights campaigners argue that such behaviour is symptomatic of a culture that refuses to see women as worthy of respect.
“There’s always been violence against women in Argentina, but we’ve noticed that it’s been getting worse lately,” said Sabrina Cartabia, one of the organisers of last week’s protests.
Cartabia believes the increasingly violent attacks can be seen as a crude response to recent gains made by women in Argentinian society, such as laws reserving 30% of elected positions for women. There are now more female university students than males – and statistics show they perform better academically.
“The violence is a reaction that wants to put us back into a traditional role where we don’t fit any more,” Cartabia said.
News reports of the Mendoza killings stirred a terrible sense of deja vu for Jimena Aduriz. In 2013 her 16-year-old daughter, Angeles Rawson, was abducted as she returned to her apartment from a nearby gym class in the Colegiales neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. Her body was later found at a recycling centre, wrapped in a garbage bag.
Last year Rawson’s attacker, Jorge Mangeri, a caretaker, was sentenced to life imprisonment after one of the first convictions under the femicide legislation.
Aduriz argues that Argentinians need to reconsider the way they think about such crimes. “We have to make people understand that gender violence doesn’t start with the first blow, it starts when the man begins to control the woman, to mistreat her, humiliate her publicly, to tell her what to wear,” she said.
“There’s a lot of work put into reducing her self-esteem, so by the time the blow arrives the behaviour has been naturalised.”
Aduriz’s painful experience has taught her that victims of violence should not be silent. “Women suffering gender violence have to speak out, they have to report it, and people who are witnesses to someone suffering must not leave them on their own.”
Three years after her daughter’s murder, Aduriz is still struggling with the loss. “You have to find some way to give the pain a new meaning with whatever tool you have at hand – your faith, some kind of service, or helping to educate people about this.”
Aduriz has channeled her pain into volunteer work at the National Council for Women and at the Uguet Mondaca shelter for women in the Buenos Aires suburb of Burzaco.
“In the media you only hear about the most extreme cases, but the reality is that many lives are being saved thanks to the increasing awareness,” she said. “I see it at the shelter, many women are now able to escape from abuse and mistreatment thanks to what’s now being done.”
But she admits that sometimes she feels nothing will ever heal the wound. “It’s a pain that doesn’t stop with putting the killer in jail,” Aduriz said. “I’m very religious and I know I will meet my daughter again in heaven, but meanwhile I have to continue my life on earth without her.”