Medellin Colombia – On May 30, 2024, Stephanie Barranco's former partner murdered her in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses at the bustling Santa Fe shopping mall in Bogotá, Colombia.
Natalia Vásquez, from the Suba neighborhood, just 20 minutes south of the shopping center, was also a victim of femicide in Bogotá that day. According to Bogotá’s Minister of Women, Vásquez had already obtained a protection order against her killer, who was also her former partner, who had been threatening and harassing her for months.
Barranco and Vásquez are two victims in a growing list of female murders. justice for all In addition to tracking cases of female murder and attempted female murder, the Justice for All Foundation provides free legal representation to victims' families after a crime has been committed.
As of the end of May, the group had reported 109 murders of women in Colombia in 2024, 69 of which were committed by the victims' current or former partners.
A week before Barranco and Vásquez were killed, Front Line Defenders and HRD Memorial reported that Colombia was once again leading the list of most dangerous countries for human rights defenders.
Organizations that protect human rights defenders and commemorate those killed have highlighted the “conflict-filled hyper-masculinized environment” as a risk factor for women’s rights defenders and those advocating for gender justice.
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Hypermasculinity and femicide
The link between hypermasculinity and female homicide has been studied for some time. According to Professor James W. Messerschmidt of the University of Southern Maine, female intimate partner homicide occurs when men feel threatened because they can no longer dominate and control those they see as their property.
Likewise, a 2021 report by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) found that militarized masculinity in Colombia “constitutes a violent gender identity based on deeply unequal power relations and is reinforced through gender-based violence.”
Yamile Roncacio Alfonso, lawyer and founder justice for allI spoke to Latin America Report Talks about the connection between militarized masculinity and the current femicide crisis.
“connection [between Colombia’s militarized masculinities and femicide] “It exists not only in the prevalence of femicide by region, but also in the ways in which women are murdered.” she said “Female murders occur most often in the areas most affected by the war: Antioquia, Valle del Cauca and Bogotá. However, men who commit femicide tend to use traditional violent methods of killing used by various armed groups. For example, beheading.”
Many residents of large cities like Bogotá and Medellín arrived in these cities after fleeing conflict zones or being forced to migrate.
Hypermasculinization conflict in Colombia
According to the Colombian Center for Historical Memory, Colombia has been embroiled in some form of armed conflict since the mid-1940s. But all conflicts are rooted in two issues: control over land distribution and competition for influence over the state.
As WILPF reports, this has resulted in a militarized masculinity, in which Colombia has experienced “the use of weapons, the use of violence, the performance of aggressive and often misogynistic masculinity, and the fusion of specific practices and images of masculinity.”
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Natalia Henao Tamayo, writer and researcher at the Center for International Political Studies and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Latin American Social Sciences, said: Latin America Report We talk about the prevalence of gender-based violence beyond armed conflict.
“The gender-based violence that many people experience during armed conflict is perpetuated because women’s bodies continue to be used as battlefields,” said Henao Tamayo.
Investigators also highlighted how domestic violence remains prevalent even after wartime, and how this worsens the situation for many women in Colombia.
Likewise, Signe Svalfors, a PhD student at Stockholm University, explains that this type of militarized masculinity permeates society, extending patriarchal gender norms and transforming the meaning of people, objects, and ideas “beyond the battlefield.”
According to Svallfor, in Colombia, conflict has been masculinized by giving men weapons and political rights and providing care to women.
According to the researchers, this process increases the acceptance of violence, makes aggression a pathological adaptation among men, increases the number of women who remain in violent relationships, and reinforces traditional gender roles.
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“Femicide occurs in an ecosystem that tolerates violence against women,” said Roncacio Alfonso. “Colombia’s patriarchal society has normalized this behavior.”
Researchers Jose A. Gutiérrez and Emma Murphy from the University of Santo Tomas and the International Institute for Conflict Resolution concluded that violence during conflict is simply an intensified version of violence that occurs during peacetime.
Accordingly, as WILPF points out, Colombia is currently experiencing a phase of “post-conflict” in which men are pressured to continue to adopt a militarized model of masculinity in order to engage in violence, despite the 2016 peace process reached between the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group, the FARC.
“It is no coincidence that the areas with the highest concentration of guerrillas and paramilitary groups during the armed conflict are also the areas with the highest rates of femicide,” asserts Roncacio Alfonso.
Colombia's Femicide Crisis
Colombia's Attorney General's Office issued a warning earlier this year about the country's high rate of femicide.
The government’s response is tied to a broader trend. The PARES Foundation, which works to democratize public information, has denounced a 0.47% decrease in female homicides in 2023, compared to 633 in 2022 and 630 in 2023. Last year, almost two women were victims of female homicide every day in Colombia.
“All those who commit femicide are men, and many of them kill their former partners. But they don’t do it out of anger and there is no such thing as a crime of passion,” said Roncacio Alfonso.
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According to lawyer José Arvey Alarcón Rodríguez, Colombia introduced femicide as a judicial term through Law 1761 of 2015 to “ensure the investigation and punishment of violence against women due to gender-related motivations and discrimination.” introduced.
As the lawyer emphasizes, Latin America is the most dangerous region for women. Unlike other regions with high rates of female homicide, such as Southeast Asia, where femicide is practiced from birth, and Africa, where female homicide occurs primarily as a result of inter-ethnic warfare, Latin America ranks first globally for its high rate of domestic violence.
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He said, “125 years had to pass before the woman’s death was judicially considered an autonomous crime and not her fault. “Femicide will continue to exist until the social language and mental constructs that associate femininity with male physical possession are relaxed.”
In her book, Take a tour around the iceberg (Turning the Iceberg Over) Roncasio Alfonso also emphasizes that it is essential to view femicide as the tip of an iceberg that includes various forms of underlying and cultural gender-based violence. “What women experience every day, often called ‘micro,’ is ignored as inherent to femicide.”
This is the situation of Stephanie Barranco, in a conversation with a Colombian radio station. snail radio, Barranco's father described his daughter's relationship with her killer as toxic. “(A few days before she was killed), he grabbed all her clothes and cut them up. That man was protective of her, because if she wasn't his, she wouldn't belong to anyone else.”
Likewise, Natalia Velazquez got a protection order because she wanted to escape an abusive relationship. Speaking to national news outlet Red+, Velazquez’s uncle explained that her niece’s former partner and alleged killer “stalked” her while she was in a government women’s shelter.
According to a report by Colombian news station RCN Noticias, Velazquez was a victim of domestic violence during the last months of her relationship with the killer. Not only did she decide to leave him, she also reported his crimes to the authorities while trying to gain sole custody of her three-year-old son.
“As a society, we have failed the victims of femicide,” said Laura Tami, Bogotá’s minister for women, after the murders of Barranco and Velasquez.