Originally, I was going to dedicate this discussion post to how I felt as a Nicaraguan woman whose country idolizes populism and Hugo Chavez. However, I can not think about identity realism while my community is mourning in many different ways. I'm going to be vague because I know many of our hearts are heavy but I also can't seem to escape the narratives surrounding this situation.
My chosen novela, Arelys Henao, focuses largely on gender violence and it extrapolates stories that are prevalent in modern-day society. In our communities, women experience a broad range of gender violence that is mimicked in this telenovela. For example, there is a wealthy man who controls his wife through financial constraints keeping her captive. There are also young characters being preyed on by older men and feeling "stuck" because they are threatened with physical violence. These are things that still happen in the world, and in our own community.
My dear city of Athens is mourning the death of a bright young woman, Laken Riley. However, the assumed perpetrator is a Venezuelan man and there has been an outburst of anti-immigrant, anti-immigration backlash. However, I think we are using this situation as a political tactic -especially in a presidential election year to place policies and individuals who are anti-immigrants in power. We should truly be talking about how gender violence exists and perpetrators of "crimes of opportunity" come from all ethnicities. This is not an immigrant issue, this is a gender issue. Men from all over the world hurt women because they feel entitled to our being.
While seeing my telenovela, I almost emailed Dr. A to ask her to allow me to change my telenovela. I thought it was too triggering because I see these instances where women are failed by society in my own life. I am completely exhausted of having every single woman around me get hurt and in some instances killed. However, with gender violence comes a double-sword of the generalization of violent and dominant men. We do our communities such an injustice when we refuse to heal, nurture, and create healthy narratives around each other.
My heart goes out to Laken Riley's family members and all the other folks who are suffering because of gender violence. Ni una menos.
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