Feminicide as a trending topic on social media has become one of the resources most exploited by the digital machine financed by the United States to wage a communications war against Cuban society.
An increase has been noticeable over the last few months of incidents recounted using a storytelling mode, an approach that rather than presenting basic information in a straight-forward manner, narrates an emotional story.
More refined and subtle than traditional yellow journalism, storytelling describes everything from the weapon used to the spot where the victim’s body was found, including testimony from family members and intimate details of the relationship between the female victim and the man who killed her, in a morbid manner that is no less sensational, but using more sophisticated techniques to provoke an emotional response.
Toward this end, several digital platforms are articulated: some openly recognizable as part of the counterrevolution and others accredited as correspondents of foreign media, along with those who receive funding directly, poorly camouflaged as representatives of “independent” journalism.
While some web pages simply reproduce on the internet the impact of combining the words Cuba, gender violence, feminicide, feminism, silence, murder, and crime, others include a photo of the victim alive, alongside one of the body, others post contents that appear to be more serious enlisting the participation of academic figures.
This approach is meant to gain acceptance among readers by attempting to present an interest in “visibilizing” the problem, contrasting with the largely unaddressed need for information in greater quantity and depth, in our own communications media.
But media manipulation is something totally different from visibilizing. Such manipulation, especially when used for political purposes, does not allow for analysis, ignores statistics, promotes superficiality and hampers the work of specialists, relying exclusively on the emotions that serve their interests, targeting audiences seeking culture and information with their propaganda.
The number of cases in Cuba that have been described on social media is cited, but this is not a statistic of any validity. These lists are put together and promoted as some sort of social indicator, when in reality they are no more than a compendium of stories. True and painful cases, no doubt preventable and deserving of greater institutional attention, but maliciously exploited to produce emotional rejection, rather than giving an idea of Cuba’s internal reality as compared to the region and the rest of the world. Media manipulation provides no statistics, no information or context.
According to 2016 data reported by Cuban institutions to Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) Gender Equality Observatory - which clearly needs to be updated, although the situation in our society has not changed significantly over the last four years – during this year, occurring in the country were 47 murders of women considered feminicides which the United Nations defines as the murder of a person specifically because she is female. The majority of these murders are committed by the victim’s male partner, as an escalation of a long-term abuse.
On the basis of ideas proposed in the 1970s, by U.S. writer Diana Russell, who defined femicide as the murder of a woman on the part of a man, motivated by hate, contempt, pleasure or a sense of ownership, Mexican anthropologist
Marcela Lagarde, in the 90s, introduced the broader term feminicide, to describe a preventable act that occurs under conditions created by the absence or inadequacy of action by the state. This perspective on the definition, however, is not taken into account in the majority of statistical compilations prepared around the world.
In 2019, as part of Cuba’s national report to the United Nations on implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda, the annual rate of feminicides per 100,000 women was cited as 0.99, in our country.
Compare this to rates across Latin America, a region in which, according to data collected by Cepal, eight countries have a higher incidence than Cuba, and another five have a rate more than twice that seen here. But to appreciate the damage done by media manipulation of the issue, we can oblige those who insist on absurdly comparing a poor, undeveloped island country with the so-called First World.
This is not a simple task. The parameters used in calculations are not the same as those used by Cepal. In the United States and Canada, the major concern is not primarily the general incidence, but the alarming difference seen in rates of feminicide among black and white women in the U.S. and the disproportionate number of Native American women who suffer this fate in Canada.
According to the European Union, at least ten of its member counties either do not count feminicides or do not have data the organization considers of comparative value, even within the bloc. Among the countries without any information, cited are Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, and Ireland; while data from the Netherlands, Austria and Greece is considered incomplete.
Leaving aside the fact that figures vary, depending on the source and criteria used to identify feminicide, Germany reports that, in 2018, 122 women were murdered here, victims of domestic violence. Using this formulation, 112 were reported this same year in France, although there were 137 in 2019. In Italy, the figure cited is 115 in 2018 and 94 in 2019. In the UK, non-governmental organizations cite the figure of 146 women.
This means that, if the anti-Cuban media machinery had knowledge of all the cases of feminicide in Cuba, it could only exploit one case a week, one which we very much lament, while in France one such tragic story is reported every two days. In Germany, sadly, every year, more than a hundred cases of unfortunate women could be circulated on the web, complete with their respective photos, headlines, and public impact.
In comparison with France and Germany, which given their demographic characteristics have lower rates, but with twice, almost three times, the number of cases, the media potential in Cuba would be less than half of theirs, but no communications war is being waged against these countries. These realities give some idea of the role that subjectivity, manipulation and distortion play in political exploitation of the issue.
One intention of this campaign is to dismiss the work of the Federation of Cuban Women - which has been fighting domestic violence since 1980, long before other countries – that of the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex) and National Assembly’s commissions, as well as any project that emerges from, and functions within, Cuba’s socialist, civil society.
This means ignoring campaigns like Eres más (You are more), Evoluciona (Evolve), and Únete (Join us), to name a few, as well as work coordinated by the United Nations with the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Center, among others. Mentioning all the individuals and entities involved would be an exhaustive task.
These are the efforts, supported by and in collaboration with the Cuban state, which have ensured that progress is being made in addressing gender issues in Cuba. Not those who have made a superficial, politically motivated spectacle of the deaths of women, under the “alternative press” label, when the implementation of effective policies is achieved precisely via joint work with “official” actors.
The defense of women’s rights in Cuba needs created, novel, personal and group initiatives and projects of concrete value, that must continue to emerge and be duplicated by young activists, who need not agree with all government methods or criteria, but who are willing to work in conjunction with the state and existing organizations toward the common objective.
The manipulative media machine seeks to attract such activists to an elitist feminism, fanatical and superficial, assumed as a way of life, which for some opportunists provides a good source of income, thus alienating them from the goal and the practical ability to do something truly transformative and revolutionary.
Creating a negative image, absurdly using “official” as a venomous label, is intended to confuse and deny recognition of the work methods and collaboration with which Cubans have made our country a place where gender violence is the focus of government policy at the highest level, something to which activists in few other countries can aspire.
The obligatory importing of initiatives that have emerged in other countries, like
the “Me, too” campaign or “Yo sí te creo” (I do believe you), deployed in a toxic manner, equivalent to public lynchings of individuals and institutions, to destroy the prestige of persons and promote legal procedures to be used as reality shows, is the scenario some would like to see in Cuba.
Being conscious of true intentions is the only way we can avoid being manipulated. Understanding that, when we see one of these posts appear on our Facebook page or other social media, both the crudest and the most sophisticated, we are witnessing a re-victimization of these Cuban women: first by those who took their lives, and then by those who attempt to callously explot them for their own purposes.
