“For nine years I kept what happened to me in silence until another girl reported it. In 2009 he was 16 years old, and the only adult actor traveling in the group was 45 years old. One night, he kissed my neck, touched me, and brought my hand to feel his erection. ‘Look how you make me,’ he told me. Afterwards, he put his fingers in me and gave me oral sex. Thanks to someone speaking, I was able to get out of that room”.
Belén López Peiró (Buenos Aires, Argentina) hoped that her work would have greater diffusion among feminist circles and those committed to gender issues. However, when the Argentine actress Thelma Fardin He denounced Juan Darthés, his filming partner in Ugly Duckling, the hit Disney Channel series, recommended Why did you come back every summer (edited in Spain by Las Afueras) as a reading that had helped her give voice to the abuse she suffered at the hands of the “galán” of Argentine soap operas.
The force pushes. The referents help. The voices are multiplying. Empathy soars. Why did you come back every summer is a complete polyphony exercise in which Belén López Peiró speaks of abuse as a collective framework in which her story is not the protagonist, nor is her voice, but the structural and patriarchal network that a woman faces at the time to report them.
“When my mother saw that my book was good for other women, that she was not the only mother, that I was not the only victim and that in society there are 1 in 5 girls who are abused, it helped a lot”, says Peiró to The Independent. The young Argentine writer was abused in the family environment on repeated occasions, but in Why did you come back every summer, “I could not continue narrating in the first person, I had to write those voices that circulated in my head and that had equal or greater weight than the abuse.” Thus, the narrative acquires an impersonal approach that is interspersed between police and judicial stories.
Raw, direct and without frills, Peiro’s work has become a literary revolution that has given women who have worn the same shoes a boost. »For my family it was a blow to read Why did you come back every summer, but writing thinking that the first reading is going to be done by the family is self-conscious, silent. They had to understand that this is not my story, but one more story of abuse.
For Belén, beyond the fact that other women have been able to empathize with her story, her work has the power to prevent. “We can’t always talk about accompanying after rape, abuse or violence.” Thus, “I am one of those who think that these issues have to be everywhere”, especially in schools. “That teenagers are reading it and start asking questions about it is one of the most beautiful things that happened to me,” he admits, referring to the great repercussion of Why did you come back every summer in his native Argentina.
Justice is so slow that it does not repair the women who report it, but rather sets the aggressors free. There is a social and family structure that supports them
–
For the author, there is a generalized notion that “a woman who denounces and speaks comes to bother her.” “When you speak, things are not going to be the same and there are many people who are not willing to make those changes.” Thus, Peiró affirms that “there is a social and family structure that supports the aggressor, that places him in a place of power and that is very difficult to break. Justice is so slow that it does not repair the women who report it, but rather sets the aggressors free. After reporting the events in 2014 and publishing the work in 2018, his case remains without resolution. The Argentinean tried to compose herself and find refuge through writing, which allowed her to “regain control and speak.”
«There is a deeply rooted macho culture, that’s why Why did you come back every summer It did not have an impact only in Argentina, because the abuses have no borders or geographical limits. The title of Peiró’s work refers to the constant questioning of women when they denounce, or when they say they have been a victim of abuse, rape or violence. “Every time a woman denounces the answer is, ‘well, but she must have done something, surely she caused it.” If your boss raped you, why did you go back to work? If your husband hit you, why did you come home? Boys are never asked why did you get horny with your niece? “
The victory of ‘Ni Una menos’
With 38 votes in favor, 29 against and one abstention, the Argentine Senate approved on December 30 a historic abortion law that will allow the voluntary interruption of pregnancy. A tide of women dressed in green jumped for joy at the news, after a long struggle that endured the rejection of the same bill two years ago. Belén López Peiró was there.
“When ‘Ni Una Menos’ started in 2015, I was very involved with the issue of abuse, rape and femicide, because it was what I had to experience in the first person, until I realized the harsh reality of clandestine abortions. We fought a lot, we marched a lot and it is an immense achievement, “he says. “Catholicism had and has a lot of power, imagine, the Pope is Argentine,” he laughs. “The issue is to separate, one thing is the sexual and reproductive health of women and another is faith.”
Thus, Argentina intends to encourage other countries in South America to follow in its footsteps. «The movements of the Me Too and the Not one less They were expanding and having an impact on feminist movements in other countries, ”explains Peiró. “It’s like a wave.”
Is it legitimate to separate the artist from his work?
Roman Polanski, Kevin Spacey, Sean Connery, Michael Jackson or Diego Armando Maradona. The five have been accused of abuse and the five have generated a magnanimous debate about whether it is lawful to cry, admire them and separate them from their work. The death of the Argentine star generated a huge feminist debate that, to some extent, forced his fans to rethink their tears for the abuse he had exercised on some of his ex-partners. That was the case of Rocío Oliva (who in 2014 reported having been beaten by means of a video in which it is clearly observed how Maradona assaults him) or Claudia Villafañe (mother of two of his daughters, Dalma and Giannina, who accused him of psychological violence in the Office of Domestic Violence of Argentina).
«In what cases do we separate? For example, if we know that a writer is a rapist, do we stop reading it or continue reading it? There are many authors who say that there are great writers who have participated in episodes of violence and they read them knowing it. There are others who cannot play their works again, ”says Peiró.
«The Diego thing was something very strong, because beyond feminism it also touched on the social question. In our country, that a person who comes from the village has reached the place where he arrived without ever forgetting his town, his family and everything that is the left ”, is what explains the sociological phenomenon of Pelusa. «I have very fanatical friends and I could not define or say how much something could or could not hurt. Or if it was wrong for them to feel pain because of the times their father cried with them watching Diego play football, ”says the Argentine. “The collective pain included the complexity that the same person who had made you happy could also be a wicked person inside.”
Thus, the author admits that «I like to think of a feminism that does not say how far it is correct to go, how far not; yes the one who thinks and makes us wonder how we can love a person who may have these characteristics.
After the hurricane that Why did you come back every summer generated, Belén López Peiró is finalizing the details of Where I do not stand, his second novel that will be out in March and that is a “different” continuation of the work that has traveled the world to talk about abuse without labels or censorship.
–
