Woman with Gloria Steinem (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - El Salvador: Femicide - full transcript
Every year, hundreds of women in El Salvador are being murdered just because they're women. We explore the culture of machismo and gang violence to find out why.
I've traveled the world
as a writer and an activist
for my entire life.
What we are talking about
is a revolution.
We are the women that
our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you
that by confronting the problems
once marginalized
as "women's issues,"
we can tackle
the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor
at play,
a story you've never been told.
The greatest indicator
of the world's stability,
wealth, and safety
is the status of women.
Veronica.
Carlotta.
Karima.
**
In the small
Central American nation
of El Salvador,
a war is raging
between rival gangs
and the government.
There is a homicide every hour,
giving El Salvador
the highest murder rate
in the world.
Women are being killed
in a particularly savage way,
not only by gangs
but also by their husbands
and boyfriends.
These kinds of killings,
with their brutality
and highly intimate nature
have their own name --
femicide,
the deliberate murder of a woman
just for being a woman.
**
We just got here,
and there's a woman's body
laying down there.
We don't really
know anything about her.
Police won't talk to us yet.
But all we were able to find out
is that she's in her 40s,
and then she was shot.
Hundreds of women die violently
in El Salvador every year.
Often, their bodies are left
in the street like this,
in full view of families
and children.
This woman is one of many caught
in the crossfire
of a decades-long war
between El Salvador's
rival gangs.
And no one is immune
to the violence.
You're a live reporter, right?
- Yes.
So have you been, like,
to scenes like this
a million times?
All the time,
like, almost every day.
Here, it happens so much,
that it -- it has become,
like, our normal reality.
**
I have a little daughter.
And I would love to have
a better country for her
because we love our country.
We feel proud to be Salvadorans.
But this is the reality
we're in.
**
The violence is
at an all-time high.
Government troops
under a tough-on-crime president
are cracking down on the gangs,
who are in a constant battle
for territory.
The result is all-out war.
This last month has been
the most violence
since the end of the civil war,
like, 20 years ago.
Last week alone, there were
190 people killed over 5 days.
No place sees the effects
of this violence
more than the city morgue.
**
We just arrived
at Medicina Legal.
We're following the body
that they picked up
from the crime scene.
**
There's just bodies coming in,
in plastic bags.
And people coming in
to look at them and see
if it's their son or daughter
or husband or brother.
**
**
Most of the victims
at the morgue
are young men
between 20 and 24 years old.
But just under 10%
are murdered women.
It's easy to assume
that these deaths
are just more tragic casualties
of gang warfare.
But a close examination
of female victims
tells a different story.
Many of these bodies come in
torn up by extreme violence,
a strong indication
that their murders
are gender-based,
in other words, femicide.
Can you see any signs
on this woman
that might suggest
whether this is femicide or not?
What does hatred look like
on a body?
Women in El Salvador
are being killed differently,
with more hatred than men.
The question is, why?
**
El Salvador's
two main rival gangs,
Barrio 18 and MS-13,
have been at war with each other
since the 1990s.
And the population of
the nation's poorest barrios
are the collateral damage.
Although more men than women
are dying in the conflict,
it's the women
who are being killed
in especially vicious ways.
To find out why,
we went to talk to a woman
who used to be a member
of one of these gangs.
Hola.
**
When you join a gang,
it's for life.
But after serving time
in prison,
this woman took a chance
to escape and start over.
She's asked us
to hide her identity.
Did the gangs
treat you differently
because you were a girl?
Did they treat women from
the opposite gang differently?
Why do you think they are
so much more violent with women?
**
Experts explain away this
cruelty as a terror tactic,
a way for gangs
to intimidate rivals
by torturing their women.
While this is true
in many cases,
it doesn't explain
why male gang members,
the hated enemies
of their rivals,
are almost never killed
as brutally as women.
Our contacts here have managed
to set up a meeting
with two members of Barrio 18
and two of their associates.
They have asked us
to hide their identities.
We're gonna try and ask them,
why is there so much violence?
And why are they taking it out
on women so much?
S-So we met with a woman
that used to be in a gang.
And she told us,
when men are killed,
usually, they're just shot.
And when women are killed,
they're raped.
They're beaten.
The extreme violence
against women
isn't just gang tactics.
These men have a choice
whether or not
a woman will suffer.
And the brutality
also isn't just aimed at women
from other gangs.
Do you --
Do you feel ashamed of that?
**
**
Femicide in El Salvador
is not just a phenomenon
of gang warfare.
We're finding out it starts
inside everyday relationships
between men and women.
**
I-I just don't believe
violence ever
exists in a vacuum
out of context.
It always has a history,
and it comes from somewhere.
To understand femicide,
you have to look
at a certain mindset
towards women
that permeates the culture here.
It's called machismo,
a hyper-masculine attitude
that values
male dominance and pride
at the expense of women.
We picked a popular bar
in one of the safer
neighborhoods of San Salvador
to ask a group of local men
what they had to say about it.
Silvia Juarez is a lawyer
and activist at ORMUSA,
the Organization
of Salvadoran Women for Peace.
This attitude is something
she and her colleagues
have been fighting against
their entire careers.
How do we connect machismo,
culturally, to what's happening?
**
This is Unimujer,
a police unit that ensures
that reports of violence
against women
are addressed before
they escalate to femicide.
**
Unimujer is one
of 13 special police units
largely staffed
by female officers.
**
Is there as much machismo
in the police
as there is in
Salvadoran society in general?
**
It's encouraging
that Unimujer is looking out
for the well-being
of Salvadoran women.
The question is,
is anything being done
to punish these perpetrators?
**
**
In 2012, a law went into effect
that put femicide on the books
as its own criminal category,
making special provisions
to protect women
from gender-based violence.
**
Despite these efforts, crime
against women in El Salvador
remains extremely high.
And most perpetrators
walk away unpunished.
In fact,
over 75% of femicide cases
never end up in a conviction.
Impunity is a huge problem
in El Salvador.
**
The level of violence
and hatred and brutality
that goes into
the killing of women
really make it critical
to investigate femicides
as a separate crime altogether.
**
This law raised public awareness
of gender-based violence
and also brought new attention
to some recent
high-profile cases.
**
But, so far,
none of them have served
a day of jail time.
Silvia Juarez
was one of the authors
of this landmark law.
For her, the problem is clear --
Until the machista attitudes
that permeate
the justice system are removed,
women will be judged
on a double standard.
And the men who abuse
them will do so with impunity.
**
**
It is a message
the women of El Salvador
are taking
to the streets themselves.
And the march today
kind of gave me hope that,
by taking the issue
of violence against women
out of the house
and into the streets,
these women are a --
really able to fight back
and maybe will be able
to start changing things.
Since we were last
in El Salvador,
hundreds more women
have been attacked and killed.
And while the problem may be
most extreme in this region,
it's by no means confined
to Central America.
Femicide is a global problem.
But El Salvador
should be a warning --
When women continue
to be targeted
because they are women and
when the justice system
allows it to continue,
there is little
to prevent society
from descending into
instability, violence,
and chaos.
To support
women's rights in El Salvador,
...y Cecilia.
Guadalupe.
**
Margarita.
as a writer and an activist
for my entire life.
What we are talking about
is a revolution.
We are the women that
our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you
that by confronting the problems
once marginalized
as "women's issues,"
we can tackle
the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor
at play,
a story you've never been told.
The greatest indicator
of the world's stability,
wealth, and safety
is the status of women.
Veronica.
Carlotta.
Karima.
**
In the small
Central American nation
of El Salvador,
a war is raging
between rival gangs
and the government.
There is a homicide every hour,
giving El Salvador
the highest murder rate
in the world.
Women are being killed
in a particularly savage way,
not only by gangs
but also by their husbands
and boyfriends.
These kinds of killings,
with their brutality
and highly intimate nature
have their own name --
femicide,
the deliberate murder of a woman
just for being a woman.
**
We just got here,
and there's a woman's body
laying down there.
We don't really
know anything about her.
Police won't talk to us yet.
But all we were able to find out
is that she's in her 40s,
and then she was shot.
Hundreds of women die violently
in El Salvador every year.
Often, their bodies are left
in the street like this,
in full view of families
and children.
This woman is one of many caught
in the crossfire
of a decades-long war
between El Salvador's
rival gangs.
And no one is immune
to the violence.
You're a live reporter, right?
- Yes.
So have you been, like,
to scenes like this
a million times?
All the time,
like, almost every day.
Here, it happens so much,
that it -- it has become,
like, our normal reality.
**
I have a little daughter.
And I would love to have
a better country for her
because we love our country.
We feel proud to be Salvadorans.
But this is the reality
we're in.
**
The violence is
at an all-time high.
Government troops
under a tough-on-crime president
are cracking down on the gangs,
who are in a constant battle
for territory.
The result is all-out war.
This last month has been
the most violence
since the end of the civil war,
like, 20 years ago.
Last week alone, there were
190 people killed over 5 days.
No place sees the effects
of this violence
more than the city morgue.
**
We just arrived
at Medicina Legal.
We're following the body
that they picked up
from the crime scene.
**
There's just bodies coming in,
in plastic bags.
And people coming in
to look at them and see
if it's their son or daughter
or husband or brother.
**
**
Most of the victims
at the morgue
are young men
between 20 and 24 years old.
But just under 10%
are murdered women.
It's easy to assume
that these deaths
are just more tragic casualties
of gang warfare.
But a close examination
of female victims
tells a different story.
Many of these bodies come in
torn up by extreme violence,
a strong indication
that their murders
are gender-based,
in other words, femicide.
Can you see any signs
on this woman
that might suggest
whether this is femicide or not?
What does hatred look like
on a body?
Women in El Salvador
are being killed differently,
with more hatred than men.
The question is, why?
**
El Salvador's
two main rival gangs,
Barrio 18 and MS-13,
have been at war with each other
since the 1990s.
And the population of
the nation's poorest barrios
are the collateral damage.
Although more men than women
are dying in the conflict,
it's the women
who are being killed
in especially vicious ways.
To find out why,
we went to talk to a woman
who used to be a member
of one of these gangs.
Hola.
**
When you join a gang,
it's for life.
But after serving time
in prison,
this woman took a chance
to escape and start over.
She's asked us
to hide her identity.
Did the gangs
treat you differently
because you were a girl?
Did they treat women from
the opposite gang differently?
Why do you think they are
so much more violent with women?
**
Experts explain away this
cruelty as a terror tactic,
a way for gangs
to intimidate rivals
by torturing their women.
While this is true
in many cases,
it doesn't explain
why male gang members,
the hated enemies
of their rivals,
are almost never killed
as brutally as women.
Our contacts here have managed
to set up a meeting
with two members of Barrio 18
and two of their associates.
They have asked us
to hide their identities.
We're gonna try and ask them,
why is there so much violence?
And why are they taking it out
on women so much?
S-So we met with a woman
that used to be in a gang.
And she told us,
when men are killed,
usually, they're just shot.
And when women are killed,
they're raped.
They're beaten.
The extreme violence
against women
isn't just gang tactics.
These men have a choice
whether or not
a woman will suffer.
And the brutality
also isn't just aimed at women
from other gangs.
Do you --
Do you feel ashamed of that?
**
**
Femicide in El Salvador
is not just a phenomenon
of gang warfare.
We're finding out it starts
inside everyday relationships
between men and women.
**
I-I just don't believe
violence ever
exists in a vacuum
out of context.
It always has a history,
and it comes from somewhere.
To understand femicide,
you have to look
at a certain mindset
towards women
that permeates the culture here.
It's called machismo,
a hyper-masculine attitude
that values
male dominance and pride
at the expense of women.
We picked a popular bar
in one of the safer
neighborhoods of San Salvador
to ask a group of local men
what they had to say about it.
Silvia Juarez is a lawyer
and activist at ORMUSA,
the Organization
of Salvadoran Women for Peace.
This attitude is something
she and her colleagues
have been fighting against
their entire careers.
How do we connect machismo,
culturally, to what's happening?
**
This is Unimujer,
a police unit that ensures
that reports of violence
against women
are addressed before
they escalate to femicide.
**
Unimujer is one
of 13 special police units
largely staffed
by female officers.
**
Is there as much machismo
in the police
as there is in
Salvadoran society in general?
**
It's encouraging
that Unimujer is looking out
for the well-being
of Salvadoran women.
The question is,
is anything being done
to punish these perpetrators?
**
**
In 2012, a law went into effect
that put femicide on the books
as its own criminal category,
making special provisions
to protect women
from gender-based violence.
**
Despite these efforts, crime
against women in El Salvador
remains extremely high.
And most perpetrators
walk away unpunished.
In fact,
over 75% of femicide cases
never end up in a conviction.
Impunity is a huge problem
in El Salvador.
**
The level of violence
and hatred and brutality
that goes into
the killing of women
really make it critical
to investigate femicides
as a separate crime altogether.
**
This law raised public awareness
of gender-based violence
and also brought new attention
to some recent
high-profile cases.
**
But, so far,
none of them have served
a day of jail time.
Silvia Juarez
was one of the authors
of this landmark law.
For her, the problem is clear --
Until the machista attitudes
that permeate
the justice system are removed,
women will be judged
on a double standard.
And the men who abuse
them will do so with impunity.
**
**
It is a message
the women of El Salvador
are taking
to the streets themselves.
And the march today
kind of gave me hope that,
by taking the issue
of violence against women
out of the house
and into the streets,
these women are a --
really able to fight back
and maybe will be able
to start changing things.
Since we were last
in El Salvador,
hundreds more women
have been attacked and killed.
And while the problem may be
most extreme in this region,
it's by no means confined
to Central America.
Femicide is a global problem.
But El Salvador
should be a warning --
When women continue
to be targeted
because they are women and
when the justice system
allows it to continue,
there is little
to prevent society
from descending into
instability, violence,
and chaos.
To support
women's rights in El Salvador,
...y Cecilia.
Guadalupe.
**
Margarita.