Please note that this article contains graphic depictions of violence against a young woman.
On October 8, 16-year-old Argentinian school girl Lucia Perez was violently raped and murdered in the coastal town of Mar del Plata. Perez was abducted outside of her school, drugged, raped, tortured and impaled. She died the next day from her injuries.
Two men ― Matias Gabriel Farias, 23, and Juan Pablo Offidani, 41 ― are currently being held in connection to her death, and a third man is being questioned for attempting to cover up the crime.
In response to what the case’s prosector Maria Isabel Sanchez called “brutal, inhumane sexual abuse,” women all over South America took to the streets on Wednesday to protest not just Perez’s rape and murder, but the issue of machista violence ― or gendered, sexual violence ― and femicide overall.
El Salvador has the highest rate of femicide in the world, and the murder of women in Central and South America make up for 50 percent of the world’s femicide.
Perez’s murder reignited women’s anger with the issue, and on October 19, women protested from Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo to Mexico City and Santiago, braving the rain, going on strike, and chanting “Ni Una Menos” ― not one less.
