“They Killed Me “, A Letter In Memory Of Argentinian Travelers Killed In Ecuador

Some time ago, social networks around the world and especially those in South America were scrambling to search for and find two young Argentinian travelers who disappeared during a trip to a very beautiful country, Ecuador.

According to the official version, the sad story was resolved in a day and through the internet. Marina Menegazzo and María José Coni were brutally murdered by two heartless.

Their relatives and friends wonder why they agreed to stay in a precarious residence on the Ecuadorian coast that night of February 22.

Alberto Mina Ponce and Aurelio Eduardo Rodríguez are their murderers. They didn’t want them to touch them, they didn’t want to submit and they were cowardly murdered.

They didn’t respect their decision, they didn’t respect their integrity, they didn’t respect their life. Today the whole world is dripping with hatred towards them, a hatred that will pursue these two assassins all their lives.

But, as we said, social media, and the press of outrage and grief began to ask inexplicable questions like: what were they doing traveling alone? How were they dressed? Why did they go to the house of these two men? What were they waiting for? 

We answer them: Alone? Who else were they going to go with since they were traveling? What do you mean, how were they dressed? Are they the culprits of their assassination? Why do people ask these kinds of questions at these times?

The appropriate question is to know what we are going to do with these two murderers and how we are going to get rid of the virus which is polluting this so sick society. 

The sad letter they wrote

They did not write it themselves, but we did it according to what they would have written. The author of this open letter is Guadalupe Acosta and she invites the whole world to put themselves in the shoes of these women and to speak out against the machismo, gender violence and the injustice of the questions about these murders.

Here they killed me.

I refused that they touch me and with a stick they blew up my skull. They stabbed me and left me to die in my blood.

Like garbage, they put me in a black polyethylene bag, wrapped in tape and threw me on a beach, where I was found several hours later. 

But worse than death, it was the humiliation that came next.

Since the moment my lifeless body was found, no one has wondered where was the son of a bitch who had destroyed all my dreams, my hopes, my life. 

No, they started asking me unnecessary questions. To me, a dead woman who can neither speak nor defend herself. 

What clothes were you wearing?

Why were you alone

A woman should not travel without being accompanied …

You went to a dangerous neighborhood. What were you expecting?

They accused my parents of giving me wings, of giving me my independence, like any human being. They told them that we were probably on drugs and that we had looked for him, that we had done something, that they should have watched us.

And it was dead that I understood that no, that for the world, I am not the equal of a man. That dying is my fault, and that it will always be like that. Whereas if it was two young men who were murdered, the people would send their condolences and with their false and hypocritical speech, they would invoke greater punishment for the murderers.

But since I’m a woman, it’s downplayed. It’s less serious, because, of course, I looked for it. By doing what I wanted, I found what I deserved because I was not submissive, because I did not stay locked in my home, because I spent my money in my dreams. For all this and more, they condemned me.

E it pains me, because I am no longer there. But you are, there you are. And you are women. And you have to put up with being told the same talk of “making you respect” all the time, that it’s your fault if they yell at you that they want to touch / lick / suck your genitals in the street. because you are wearing shorts under 40 ° C degrees, that if you travel alone, you are “crazy” and something will surely happen to you. If your rights are being violated, it is because you have been looking for it.

I ask you, for me and for all the women who have been silenced, whose lives and dreams have been shattered, to raise your voice. We are going to fight, I by your side, in spirit, and I promise you that one day we will be so numerous that there will not be enough bags left to silence us all.