MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine women stage 9th “Ni Una Menos” march

In 2022, 252 femicides were reported nationwide.

Thousands of Argentine women marched Saturday through the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities nationwide in the now traditional “Ni Una Menos” (Not one [woman] less) demonstration against gender violence and femicides.

It was the ninth such rally before the National Congress after 252 women and girls were killed in 2022.

“One of the axes is economic violence, which has to do with thinking about what are those economic processes that make it very difficult to think how to get out of macho violence in terms of how it affects the economy. We can think about the depreciation of salaries, subsidies, the problem of access to housing, the non-recognition of community work or care work,” Luci Cavallero of the “Ni Una Menos” group told Télam.

The group issued a document calling for a “democratic justice with popular participation, in which it is guaranteed that the victims are heard, that answers are constructed to hold those who commit damages accountable, and that reparations are made to the victims.”

Argentine President Alberto Fernández said that “From the Government, we accompany this struggle with concrete policies to eradicate machismo and its worst consequences.”

“Guaranteeing equality, protecting those who suffer violence, and expanding rights are fundamental steps for our societies to change definitively,” he added.

“An egalitarian future where not even one less woman is missing is possible,” he went on.

In Fernández's view, Ni Una Menos “transcended the borders” of the country “and became a symbol of a historic struggle.”

“It was women and the LGBTI+ collective” who “raised their voices against inequality,” he also pointed out. But “it is everyone's task to rethink the behaviors of our society,” he warned.

Meanwhile, the Peronist La Cámpora youth movement headed by Deputy Máximo Kirchner published a letter defending every woman's right to be “Alive, free and unindebted.”

The group was critical of the country's Judiciary regarding the “magnifemicide” attempt against Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“With this Judiciary there is no Ni Una Menos,” the group insisted, adding that “the Judiciary Party ... operates with impunity” beyond its “constitutional mandate.”