Bolivian women demand action to stop gender violence

People gathered Friday in Bolivia’s largest city to commemorate women killed in acts of gender violence and to demand policies and actions to confront the problem.

The event took place in the main square of the eastern metropolis of Santa Cruz, where victims’ relatives and friends were joined by activists for women’s rights.

“Rest in peace, Sister, we shout for you,” read the message on one placard, while others described individual deaths.

Eva Morales, an activist with the Peace and Hope Foundation, told EFE that “violence has been naturalized as part of our culture.”

“We have a case of female homicide every three days,” she said, citing official statistics showing that 76 women died of gender violence in the first half of 2018.

Santa Cruz, with about 1.5 million inhabitants, accounted for more than a quarter of those deaths.

A recent case that shocked Bolivia was the rape-murder of a 19-year-old woman by a friend of her boyfriend.