Malibu residents join the author of “The Vagina Monologues” in Juarez, Mexico to protest violence against women.
By Mollie Vandor
This Valentine’s Day, instead of taking romantic walks on the beach, four local women took to the streets of Juarez, Mexico to protest violence against women. Malibuites Susie Duff, Jodi Plaia, Anna Lovejoy and Jacqueline Tomlinson joined actresses Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Shiva Rose, U.S. Congresswomen Janice Schakowsky and Hilda Solis, and more than 5,000 other people to raise awareness about the murdered and missing women of Juarez.
In the past 10 years, “hundreds of young women have been murdered with impunity in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuaha. Many were abducted and sexually assaulted. Many others remain missing,” said Kate Gilmore, executive deputy secretary general of Amnesty International.
More than 300 women are murdered or missing in Juarez and Chihuaha. Eve Ensler, the playwright best known for the award-winning “The Vagina Monologues,” and Amnesty International planned Saturday’s event. Together, they have created the V-Day Organization, which bills itself as “a global movement to end violence against women and girls through benefit productions of Playwright/Activist/V-Day Founder Eve Ensler’s play, ‘The Vagina Monologues.'”
The Malibu attendees began the event at a rally in El Paso, Texas and then joined the march across the border to Juarez, during which they alternated between chanting “Not one more” and “justice now.” The entire event culminated in a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” featuring many of the celebrities in attendance as well as local Mexican performers.
At the event on Saturday, “I saw everybody from people in wheelchairs to stilt walkers and theater women dressed in traditional Latin costumes,” Duff said. “It was amazing and dramatic. There were even a lot of college-age guys and a lot of men, which was very heartening. It was really all races, colors, and creeds.”
Despite the caliber of the performing celebrities, Duff adamantly proclaimed that the “most incredible part of the performance was when the mother of one of the girls came out and spoke in Spanish about her fury and rage about her daughter. Nothing was as powerful as that mother talking from her heart. It was the face of grief. It was the heart of grief. And it was from a place I hope none of us ever have to get near knowing. That was ten times more important to me than any celebrity or artistry.”
The event also dealt with the reasons behind the violence. “This Latino man talked about the concept of machismo in their culture and how, until that issue is stopped, these murders will never be resolved,” Duff explained. “Women are substandard on every level in Mexican society and no one wants to talk about this.”
Local teachers Plaia and Lovejoy also learned that apathy serves to perpetuate the violence when a Texan cabdriver drove them across the border after the event. When he learned about their participation in it, he said, ” ‘Those girls are probably prostitutes or drug addicts,’ which, of course, is how so many people view the young girls who were killed. They think they deserved it somehow,” Duff said.
“There is nothing that a woman can do to deserve that kind of violence,” Tomlinson remarked. “People just say that to discredit the movement and the problem, and then at some level they are guilty of the same kind of violence themselves.”
Indeed, many of the girls were merely innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of gang or drug activity. Many worked in American owned manufacturing plants just beyond the Mexican border, where American companies can take advantage of cheap labor without complying with American labor laws.
These factories, known as maquiladoras, are in operation 24 hours a day. They use local workers, many of whom are girls living in the Mexican desert who rely on unsafe transportation methods to get to work and often put themselves in danger of murder, rape and brutality simply getting from their homes to their jobs.
“The big question for me,” Duff said, “is what is the complicity of American corporations who run these factories where an overwhelming percentage of the girls who were murdered worked at? They should be providing safe conditions, good pay, temporary housing and buses. Why isn’t the United States investigating these factories and why aren’t we all mounting gigantic boycotts against them?”
“There has to be economic reforms for Mexico,” Tomlinson said. “There is a direct correlation between physical safety and financial security.” The locals of Juarez live without any financial security.
The campaign to end violence against women did not end with the V-Day march. To support the cause, people “should support feminism,” Duff said. “I believe that feminism is really about peace. When women have parity with men there will be a true and lasting world peace. When people treat women with the same care and respect as men, there will be true world peace.”
Tomlinson asserted, “Women have to know how to protect themselves because we are not going to make a difference thinking that we are the weaker sex. We can be just as strong as men are. Support women being strong because there is no reason for us to be paid less than men or not be able to defend ourselves.”
One way Malibuites can learn more about feminism and V-Day is by attending the upcoming performance of “The Vagina Monologues” at the Malibu Stage Co. The performance runs on Feb. 19, 20 and 22 and proceeds will go to local charities supporting women’s rights and battered women.
For ticket information, call
the 310.985.1076 or the 310.804.2395.