After two young women were murdered and victim blamed after their death, a Facebook post defending them went viral.
The two Argentinian women – Maria Coni, 22, and Marina Menegazzo, 21 – were backpacking in Ecuador’s pacific coast region when they were brutally murdered after accepting an offer of a place to stay from two men. They were then found dumped in plastic bags.
Two suspects have since been arrested by local authorities and allegedly confessed to the horrific crime.
Telling the Buenos Aires Herald, Ecuadorean state prosecutor Eduardo Gallardo Rodas said the women had been sexually assaulted.
“The girls had run out of money and got in touch with a friend who, in turn, contacted another friend who lived alone and gave them lodging,” Rodas said.
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“According to the account of the detainee, he and his friend were drunk and one led one of the girls to his room and tried to touch her, she resisted and he hit her with a stick to the head, killing her instantly.”
After their death, awful victim blaming ensued, which insinuated they brought the crime on themselves. People began asking senseless, misogynistic questions like why they took a ‘risk’, and why they were travelling ‘solo’.
Enraged by this, Paraguayan student Guadalupe Acosta wrote a powerful Facebook post from the perspective of the victims.
Part of the translated post reads:
“Yesterday I was killed … But worse than death, was the humiliation that followed. From the time they had my dead body nobody asked where the (person) that ended my dreams, my hopes and my life was.
“No, rather than that they started asking me useless questions. To me, can you imagine? A dead girl, who cannot speak, who cannot defend herself.
“What clothes did you wear?
“Why were you alone?
“Why would a woman travel alone?
“You got into a dangerous neighbourhood, what did you expect?
“They questioned my parents for giving me wings, let me be independent, like any human being. They told them we were on drugs and we surely asked for it. They told them they should have looked after us.
“And only when dead I realised that no, that for the rest of the world I was not like a man. That dying was my fault, and it will always be. While if the headline would have said ‘two young male travellers were killed’ people would be expressing their condolences and with their false and hypocritical double standard speech would demand higher penalty for murderers.
“But being a woman, it is minimised. It becomes less severe, because of course I asked for it …
“I ask you, on behalf of myself and every other woman ever hushed, silenced; I ask you on behalf on behalf of every woman whose life was crushed, to raise your voice. We will fight, I’ll be with you in spirit, and I promise that one day we’ll be so many that there won’t be enough bags in the world to shut up us all.”
The full post can be seen here and has been shared over 730,000 times.
It started a viral trend across Twitter in support behind women, with the Spanish term #viajosola, translated to ‘I travel alone’.
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