By Irene Escudero
Madrid, Nov 25 (EFE).—Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza said Monday that her sister, murdered in 1990, would have had a greater chance of survival today, as she marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (Nov. 25) and called for collective memory, justice, and action against gender violence.
“We live in a society with a great tolerance for the suffering of women,” Rivera Garza told EFE, stressing the need to pause each Nov. 25 to “think critically about the incontrovertible existence of gender violence.”
The author said the day should serve “to be together, to remember those who have been taken from us, and to commit to working for a different future.”
Rivera Garza is in Madrid for Tuesday’s world premiere of The Invincible Summer of Liliana, the stage adaptation of her award-winning book recounting the femicide of her sister Liliana on Jul. 16, 1990.
She argues that although violence is not necessarily worse today, feminism has brought it “to the center of public conversation,” giving women more tools to identify abuse and seek help.
Yet, she warns that “even now, with better language and mobilization, this violence is still so insidious,” tied to a “perverse relationship between romantic love and violence.”
Impunity and the search for ‘cosmic justice’
Liliana’s case remains unsolved. Her killer, Ángel González Ramos, fled and has never been found.
“Impunity in Mexico reaches beyond 95%,” Rivera Garza said. “The message to potential femicides is that they can do whatever they want without facing consequences.”
She also points to social complicity: “The man who killed Liliana, who has a warrant against him, escaped because his mother protected him, his sisters covered for him, and his friends helped him flee.”
When society shields abusers, she said, “we become accomplices and part of that impunity.”
With no criminal justice, she seeks another kind: “restorative justice connected to truth and collective memory.” Naming victims at marches and commemorations is a way to “correct the patriarchal narrative,” a form of “cosmic justice,” she said.
Liliana returns to the stage
For 75 minutes, Liliana “comes back to life” onstage at Madrid’s Conde Duque cultural center through actress Cecilia Suárez.
The monologue places “a heavy and specific responsibility on Suárez’s shoulders, and she does an excellent job,” Rivera Garza said, calling the performance “sensational.”
After six days in Madrid, the play is expected to travel to Mexico, Latin America, and back to Spain.
Following the Pulitzer Prize for Best Memoir or Biography, the book will also be adapted into a documentary and a fiction film.
Rivera Garza said she remains astonished by the impact of her sister’s story: “It’s Liliana doing her thing and achieving things on her own.”
As for recent speculation linking her name to the Nobel Prize in Literature, she shrugged it off as “from another universe,” adding that what matters most is “that Liliana keeps traveling the world.” EFE
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