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| 'The Ants': Linabel Sarlat runs a center to help women victims of violence in Anapra, Mexico. Sara Miller Llana |
Former nun helps Mexico 'femicide' victims recover
Linabel Sarlat runs a support center to help bring economic and spiritual renewal to the women of Anapra, Mexico.
from the June 5, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
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Reporter Sara Miller Llana discusses how "the Ants" creates an oasis of hope for Mexican women.
Ms. Gomez – whose name has been changed to protect her identity since not even her family knows of her ordeal – moved to Ciudad Juárez 12 years ago, at the height of the femicides.
Her husband, like so many in the community, blamed the victims themselves: their supposedly provocative clothes and flirting eyes.
So, seven years ago, after she was picked up for her night shift at an electronic parts factory, when the bus driver drove her up a deserted road of Anapra, pulled her out of the bus, and raped her – a pattern that fit the profile of so many murders she had heard about – she never told anyone, not even her husband. "I want to tell him," says Gomez. "But instead of understanding me, he'll blame me."
She never reported the crime. She quit her job. She could barely care for her kids. And then someone told her about a new therapy group, a notion she'd never even heard of. Tepid at first, she has since become a leader within the group and enrolled in high school classes with dreams of becoming a psychologist.
Simply sharing her story – and hearing so many others just like her own – is what has given her strength to move forward.
"Here I can express myself as I am," she says. "I truly feel like I am a miracle."
Gender roles turned upside down
It is not just public violence against women that The Ants must contend with. Sarlat says almost every woman here has suffered some type of physical or sexual abuse.
It is a crisis that dogs Mexico, but one that is perhaps heightened in Anapra, where rural women suddenly found themselves with financial independence, a situation that turned gender roles upside down.
That is exactly what happened in Gomez's family, which migrated here from rural Mexico.
"When I started bringing money home, I brought problems to our marriage," says Gomez, who married as a teen and never had independence apart from her father or husband. "My husband wanted to control me."
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