Cristina Rivera Garza, Mexican writer, poet and academic established in the world of letters at a national and international level, dared to “open the box” of her sister Liliana, a victim of femicide in 1990, and with this achieve a text that did not not only led her to be awarded the 2021 Xavier Villaurrutia Award but also with the Pulitzer in the category of Memoir or Autobiographyand join the complaint against the gender violence that exists in Mexico.
Cristina Rivera Garza, originally from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, studied sociology at the FES Acatlán of the UNAM and a master’s degree and doctorate in Latin American History at the University of Houston. She has been a professor at universities in Mexico and the United States, and a columnist in various national media. She has been recognized on several occasions for her almost 20 novels, short stories and essays.
”The invincible summer of Liliana”, a critical book that navigates between fiction and non-fiction, It was the story that Cristina had wanted to tell for several years.but that she was barely able to put on paper once she found herself calm and ready to read the documents that her sister left before being murdered by her partner at the age of 20.
It was at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, 30 years after the crime, when Cristina had the courage to open that “affection archive”, as she calls it, and to investigate the case again; to seek out Liliana’s friends from her Architecture degree to recognize her and reconnect with her strength, her intelligence, her charisma and her freedom.
Through these stories, Cristina also narrates the signs of violence that Liliana experienced by her boyfrienda normalized violence disguised as romanticism that at that time was more difficult to identify, to verbalize and, even worse, to denounce.”
That hidden and continuous violence, that violence that silenced homes and collapsed dreams, that was covered up and confused, camouflaged under the perverse and powerful layer of the language of romantic love. My sister was not killed by a man in love with her, but by a male criminal,” said Cristina.
The writer manages to incorporate her sister’s voice into the text and revives and shares it in each letter, turning the work into a worthy tribute of love that evokes memory and justice for non-repetition, for Liliana and for those who already They are not because of violence against women.
In Mexico, between 10 and 11 women are murdered every 24 hours for reasons of genderaccording to information from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
”Every time we lose a woman who is violently taken from us, we all lose, not just family, not just friends. It is tragic,” he highlighted in an interview with TV UNAM.
The writer has also emphasized the importance of stopping placing feminicides as the protagonists of these stories, as many writers have done, and, rather, talking about them.
Without a doubt, the feminicide It is just the tip of the iceberg of countless violence against women and girls that is experienced daily, not only in Mexico but throughout society. Opening our own boxes and memories, perhaps going through moments of pain, is a first step to eradicating them.
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