One Woman's Commentary on Feminicide

~~Women are dying.
Truth is, women are being murdered.
By the hundreds, by the thousands.
Femicide. Feminicide. Hate.
The killing of women simply because they are women.
Because they are women.
So much hate, so many murders, so many missing.
Their tortured bodies are sometimes found,
sliced off breast, face and other fragments tossed like garbage,
sometimes never found.
Once upon a time, it was Cuidad Juarez, the killing town.
If one wants to know what it is like to kill a woman,
go to Juarez, it was said.
Femicide, feminicide, words born of this phenomenon.
Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano labeled it a low-intensity war waged
on women’s bodies, a Latin American routine.
I learned from Julia Estela Monarrez Fragoso of
sexually fetishized commodities, symbols of their low human value.
From Hilda Morales Trujillo I learned of femicide in Guatemala where,
since 2000, the appearance of women’s corpses  have raised alarms.
Violent deaths of women: Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru.
Transgression of the established patriarchal order.
Patriarchal order of a patriarchal society.
Gender violence, naturalized and normalized.
Corruption of state. Killing with impunity.
Thousands of women murdered, their bodies tortured, mutilated.
Femicide. Femincide. Hate.
The killing of women simply because they are women.
Because they are women.
What do they hate? What do they fear?
Violence against women is on the rise, worldwide,
Is there no place safe?
Pink crosses remind us, won’t let us forget, they have value.
Mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts.
They are not disposable bodies, not deserving of desert discarding.
What can be done to end this plight, this terror, this horror?
There are no headlines, no news, mainstream America does not know,
does not care about the demise of our feminine state.
Action to take, path to follow, organize and inform.
I am a single voice which falls on deaf ears, they do not want to hear.
My story begins here, with my thoughts and my feelings,
All jumbled inside, the words they escape me,
and deep inside they hide.
Get out of the box, the box of which provides a safe, secure world.
Accept the truth of this phenomenon, it is real.