Femicide in Latin America: Argentina’s Shocking Femicide Case Highlights Gender Violence Despite Laws

The recent global wave of far-right governments and neoliberal administrations has placed the political landscape on its head, with policies that include racist deportations in the US, major cutbacks in public health and education in countries like Argentina, and attacks on women's and minorities’ rights across the world, especially in Latin America. But is a shift in femicide in Latin America also visible? 

We’ll cover the current state of femicides in Central and South America, with a special focus on Argentina’s recent triple “narcofemicide” that has shaken the nation due to its horrible nature.

Femicides Across Central and South America

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), violence against women and its most extreme form (femicide, feminicide, or gender-based violent deaths of women, depending on each country's terminology), takes place systematically and persistently in the region. It affects women and girls of all ages and occurs in all settings, from the domestic sphere to public places. Femicides or violent deaths of women for gender reasons in 2023 were especially prominent in countries like Brazil (1463 in total), Mexico (852), Argentina (250), Honduras (248), and Colombia (177). However, Honduras leads in the rate of femicides per 100,000 women with 4.8, followed by El Salvador (1.6) and Brazil (1.4). Honduras’ case can be explained by its high rates of organized crime. If we take a closer look at the Caribbean, we see that Trinidad and Tobago (43), Jamaica (13) and Haiti (9) are the first countries in the femicides’ ranking.   

“In 2023, at least 11 women were murdered every day for gendered-related reasons in Latin America and the Caribbean. This painful and unacceptable number reminds us that, despite progress with laws and protocols, femicide is still present in our region and is the most extreme expression of patriarchal and violent patterns,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC.

Journalists Laura Glanc, Tatiana Rein Venegas, and Alejandra Otamendi’s article for Americas Quarterly states that, despite a wide range of anti-femicide laws in Latin America, the femicide rates are not dropping as fast as homicides are. For example, the rate of femicide victims per 100,000 women ranged from 0.4 to 6.0 in 2022, and many cases remain unaccounted for due to different legislation in each country (for instance, some don’t include disappearances, and others leave out murders when the perpetrator commits suicide after the deed). Despite these setbacks, many women continue to carry the voice of the victims in different ways, whether it is by taking to the streets or by more symbolic forms, such as the women embroiderers in Mexico.

Argentina’s Brutal Triple Narcofemicide

Despite having been the first country to legalize gay marriage in Latin America and the third to legalize abortion, Argentinian women are still being murdered regularly. According to the Observatorio Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven (Now They See Us Observatory), there have been 178 femicides from January 1 to September 29, a figure that represents 1 death every 36 hours. Here are some key facts: 

• 40% of the victims were murdered by their partners and 29% by their ex-partners
• 66% of the victims died in their own homes
• 15% of the victims had reported previous incidents of violence to the police
• At least 149 children were left motherless
• There have been another 287 unsuccessful femicide attempts
• In 2024, Milei's first year of government, there were at least 267 femicides, one every 33 hours
• In December 2024 alone, there were 33 cases, one every 22 hours

In recent news, a triple femicide has shocked the nation: a narco group tortured a 15-year-old girl while her two friends (both of them 20 years old) were forced to watch. Then, they were brutally murdered, dismembered, and thrown into a dumpsite. And if that weren’t enough, the whole thing was livestreamed for a private channel with 45 members. The investigation has labeled the incident as a “narcofemicide” to highlight how gender-based violence is intertwined with drug-related crime and takes on specific characteristics in the context of small-scale drug trafficking. These were three women from an underprivileged neighborhood who were being sexually exploited (one being a minor, no less) and were living extremely vulnerable lives. 

Something we cannot lose sight of is that there are no good and bad victims. Some people online and even certain traditional media representatives have tried to downplay what happened by focusing on who the victims were, with distasteful arguments such as “Good girls don't get these things done to them” or “This is what happens when you mess with drug traffickers.” They have even tried to blame Lara's mother, the youngest victim, asking why she wasn't in school at the time. 

Regardless of whether she was a schoolgirl, a sex worker, a transgender woman, or a criminal, no woman deserved what was done to her. The victims of femicide are exactly that: victims, victims of a system that seeks to make them invisible, stigmatize them, and, above all, revictimize them through the systematic violation of their privacy, sharing their intimate photographs and chats, highlighting the length of their skirts, and addressing any personal information, no matter how onrelated it is to the ongoing investigation. One of the most famous examples here in Argentina is Melina Romero, a 17-year-old girl whose body was found in a dumpsite in 2014. Clarín, one of our major newspapers, published a profile on Melina titled Una fanática de los boliches, que abandonó la secundaria (“A Club Fanatic Who Dropped Out of High School”). More than ten years have passed, and yet articles of this kind are still commonplace.

The Role of Public Policy in Preventing Femicides

As we know, there isn’t a simple solution to end femicides for good, but there are things we can do as countries to prevent them. This is where public policies come into play, especially those that protect the most vulnerable, the women and children who live in areas where the state does not reach. However, our governments don’t see eye to eye: Milei’s administration cut down or defunded 13 programs linked to gender policies with the stroke of a pen. Not only that, but he’s also attacked the category of “femicide” itself and has threatened to remove it as an aggravating factor in the Penal Code.

Amid this bleak outlook, one thing is certain: where the state backs down, it is the narco-state that gains ground, an all-too-familiar situation for women in Latin America. And if we don't do something now to stop this, the needle pointing at femicide rates will spike more and more.

Resumen en español

En América Latina y el Caribe, el feminicidio sigue siendo una de las expresiones más extremas de la violencia patriarcal. Según la CEPAL, en 2023 al menos 11 mujeres fueron asesinadas cada día por razones de género. Aunque existen leyes y protocolos en casi todos los países, la tasa de feminicidios no desciende al ritmo esperado. Las diferencias legales y metodológicas dificultan comparaciones: algunos países no incluyen desapariciones o casos en los que el agresor se suicida. En Argentina, pese a avances en derechos como el matrimonio igualitario o el aborto, la violencia persiste: en 2024 hubo al menos 267 femicidios, uno cada 33 horas. Un caso reciente de triple “narcofemicidio” reveló cómo la violencia de género se entrelaza con el narcotráfico y la vulnerabilidad social. El artículo critica además la tendencia a revictimizar a las mujeres en los medios y en la opinión pública, culpabilizándolas por su estilo de vida.