Is the US Press Deaf to Women’s Voices?
January 19, 2011
by C. Espinosa
|Is the US press deaf to women’s voices? You betcha! Six female Nobel Prize winners from all over the world join the voices of thousands and millions of women in the state of Chihuahua for the murder of a mother who demanded justice for the murder of her own daughter. And I can’t find this in the US press.
Why hasn’t the US press covered the voices of 6 female Nobel prize winners… on a matter that affects women in a particular place, but that to a greater or lesser degree impacts all women throughout the world including in the US, where women are the object of domestic violence and rape perpetrated often with impunity?
This is a very sad story, but the story becomes larger when you realize that the press in the US does not consider important what 6 female Nobel prize winners do on behalf of other women.
This is the story:
“Rigoberta Menchu, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Wangari Maatahi, joined womens groups from throughout the world in Ottawa, Canada, to condemn the murders of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz and her daughter, Rubí Marisol Frayre, and to demand to the Mexican government presided by Felipe Calderón a swift and expedite resolution of this case” (Source link)
Marisela was murdered in the main plaza of Chihuahua, in front of the State government palace, and under the view and vigilance of authorities. The cameras from the government buildings caught the entire event.
The following video shows when three judges unanimously let the perpetrator free, and the mother screams in anguish. Then the scene in the plaza shows how the mother is protesting, setting banners in front of the state capitol; she can be seen trying to flee the assassin, crossing the street, but he kills her.
Video source (Warning: The following video depicts an actual murder. Viewer discretion is advised.):
The sequence of events:
Under the existing violence in Mexico, particularly in the state of Chihuahua, where I am from, a male took advantage of the climate of violence to murder his wife, Rubi Marisol Frayre, thinking it would be easy to get away with it. Well, it was. Since he has political influence, he was able to get his case dismissed. The mother of the young woman murdered, Marisela Escobedo Ortiz went to protest in front of the State Government palace, after she herself had for two years to investigate the murder of her daughter because the authorities would not do it. They dismissed the case because of lack of evidence. Sounds familiar?
Once she got enough proof , the murderer was convicted because he confessed that he killed her and set fire to her body. Nonetheless, the murderer has been able to flee, even when the woman had told in advance several times the authorities where they could apprehend him. Under this circumstance, she decided to protest in front of the State Government Building. A video shows how a gang member comes and murders her ( the mother, Marisela), and everyone in Chihuahua thinks it was his son in Law who ordered the murder. To this day, he is still at large.
The climate of gendercide in Chihuahua is well known worldwide with the unsolved killings of hundreds of young female factory workers. Women’s groups associate this with the climate of discrimination and mistreatment of women in the state.
“The six Nobel Prize winners reminded in their declaration that the
Interamerican Court of Human rights,in its sentence against the Mexican
state because of the murder of the hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez,
declared that the State has maintained a policy and culture of
discrimination against women, which causes gendercide and its subsequent impunity”
If you want to follow up on this story you will have to do it in Spanish, as our press has not covered it in the US.
Other links:
There seems to be a rise of woman exterminating cultures in the last 20 years. Africa, Afghanistan, and this example from Chihuahua. Then there is the cultures who abort female fetuses before they can be born. Sort of a mass male hysteria or something. Clearly men don’t get along too well without us but clearly they aren’t thinking about the issue with their highly compartmentalized brains.
I just posted this on Facebook. This is disgusting.
Good article Cristina, and yes they do not want to hear our voices. We are supposed to smile insipidly 24 hours a day, and pretend that we are trick mirrors in carival side shows and reflect them at twice their natural size.
As far as the language goes, if anyone is interested, yahoo has a program that translates phrases and blocks of text—
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
Imagine this had been 6 male Nobel Prize winners speaking out against the assassination of a father protesting the murder of his son…would their be silence?
If women are all but totally left out of history or not recognized for their extraordinary contributions to society by the men who virtually control everything, why does anyone think these same men would be the least bit interested in their murder?
Like I’ve said here before, women need to create a parallel universe. One that focuses on uniting women of all colors, faiths, creeds and politcal persuasions demanding AN EQUAL PLACE AT THE TABLE.
Clearly the evidence is there that waiting for men to stand up and do the right thing will only ensure that equaility will never be achieved. Like the song says, “sisters are doin’ it for themselves….”
If not now, when?
Kathleen, I agree, protesting to get fair coverage or treatment in the men’s universe just wastes energy that could be spent informing each other and creating our own media. We do need to build our own women’s parallel universe. Many of us already live in such a place anyway as we don’t read or watch any Corporate Media. And look at how the young generations of women have taken to communicating on Facebook. The starts of a female parallel universe are there already.
Now I am not saying a story like this should not be covered in a relevant media. I am just saying look at what the yapping heads do talk about instead, Corporate Media isn’t that relevant.
I noticed that the the media also slighted coverage of the female NASA scientists who found a variation of human DND which substituted arsenic for phosphorus.
Also Obama’s Nobel price should clearly have gone to the woman who risked her life to open schools for girls in Afghanistan. With Globalisation, the world is becoming more dangerous for women. Like it or not,the US had been the best place on Earh to be a women. Now I watch misogyny become more and more popular and the UN’s involment in our affairs is hurting in big ways due to the growing influence of Muslim nations in UN policy.
Did anyone catch Governor Ed Rendel’s (former governor of PA) with Leslie Stahl? I though he was going to hit her. This is a man a voted for twice for majoe and twice for governor. The climate of disrespect for women is getting very ugly. I hate that Sarah Palin’s approval ratings have dropped since the medias false accusations against her last week. It shows that media bias is hurting her, and in my oppinion all women.
Bes,
“There seems to be a rise of woman exterminating cultures in the last 20 years”
You might be on to something… I never expected to see what is happening to women in my hometown…never. The level of violence has increased dramatically.
Bes, Valentina, that’s interesting that you mention things getting worse for women in terms of violence. I wonder if this is the backlash that Faludi wrote about although I don’t recall if her book tackled the issue of violence against women very deeply. Women have made gains but to keep us back we have been re-delagated to the Bitch-Deserves-to-Die class of humanity. Bitches getting assasinated is just part of life now and does not deserve a media headline.
Will this woman’s murder get proper coverage from the MSM. I’m thinking NO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcQlbau9TY4
Bes,
I’m not talking about an “individual” parallel universe. I’m talking about women, half the population, uniting (much like the Africa-Americans did when it came to civil rights and erradicating racism in ONE voice). Individually, sure we can make incremental progress, but the kind of progress we need to succeed needs to be in “leaps and bounds” of unified commitment by women from all walks of life, speaking in one voice and not shutting up or giving up until we have an equal place at the table of life.
It is our “unalienable right” as human beings. We’ve got to stop asking permission, waiting for the right time, conjolling men to recognize us as equals. We have to start being equals in the way we live, talk, work, play and engage with men on all levels. Until we are willing to do this, I don’t think we will ever achieve equality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which men have always taken for granted when it came to themselves.
We need to do the same thing – which is what I was talking about when I mentioned “parallel universe”. The kind that will command respect from men and endow self-respect for all woman. This kind of sea change of women’s view of themselves could not help but be a powerful force in helping those women who still live under dictatorial patriarchy (Mideast, China, Africa, etc.) It’s the kind of parallel universe where women stand together, support each other, fight for each other, instead of attacking each other to appease the patriarchy.
Like Dr. King, I, too, have a dream.
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