Argentina: 'Green Scarf' Demonstrates Against Femicides

Feminist organizations gathered Friday in the center of Buenos Aires, Argentina for a massive Green Scarf demonstration (pañuelazo) to reject the 27 femicides that were registered in the last month.

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Armed with "Not One Less" banners and green scarfs - which represents legal, safe and free abortions - hundreds of Argentines marched from the National Congress to the Plaza de Mayo.

"The more we go out to the streets to defend [our lives], the more the State shows its absence. This is why we demanded today a real budget," Sele Fierro, a member of the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), said and added that the massive demonstration is a "blunt response" to femicides in Argentina.

According to the latest study of the "Now You See Us" Observatory, one woman is murdered every 26 hours in Argentina.

"They can kill us, they can rape us, they can beat us, and what the State shows is that nothing happens. So we have to protest in order to see if the number of women and transgender people killed goes down," she said.

Since 2010 the Argentine Ministry of Health developed a Protocol for Legal Termination of Pregnancy (LTP), which can be applied either when a woman has been raped or when the life of the mother or the embryo is endangered. In spite of this, there are provinces such as Mendoza that have not adhered to the protocol.

Early January, Argentines were shocked by the case of a 12-year-old girl who was raped and whose LTP rights were denied in the province of Jujuy. Due to some health complications, however, a cesarean section was finally performed on her, which revealed an already-terminated embryo.

After extensive criticism of the case, which was prominent in Friday's demonstration, the government of Jujuy said that it will update the province's local protocol.

"In this country, if a girl gets pregnant it is because she was raped. So we have to continue asking for LTP as well as for a comprehensive sexual education to prevent violence," Fierro explained.

Vanina Biasi, an activist from the Plenary of Female Workers, sustains that what the government of Jujuy did was to "force" a minor.

"Violence against women is growing and is framed in political and social conditions," the activist said and stressed that the Argentine ruling class is reinforcing a sort of "submissive behavior" on the middle and lower classes.

"If abuses, rapes, subjugations and clandestine abortions keep on happening, we will continue to be a well-controlled people, [a condition] which allows minorities to dominate majorities," Biasi highlighted.