“Growing up in Mexico is growing up with violence, it is inescapable. In a macho society, for a woman or girl, violence is omnipresent. Not only in the public spaces but also in the private space, among all generations: grandmothers, mothers, aunts and nieces, daughters.
As a child, my grandmother advised me to accept this violence should my future husband ever beat me. This would mean that my husband loved me.
Machismo is internalized in the Mexican culture, often it starts with psychological violence, escalates to physical abuse, and in the worst cases ends in femicide.
After an exchange year in France when I was 18, I ended up in Belgium, where I have now lived for 15 years. This gave me the chance to see Mexican norms through a different lens and question the normalization of violence in my native country. My interest in the deep-rooted machismo of the Mexican culture thus grew even more.
Unfortunately, that interest also finds its roots in experiences of police violence within my own family. When my mom and aunt were teenagers, they were raped by police officers. If you fear even the men whose job it is to protect you, what should you do as a woman in a country where the law protects murderers and rapists?
Now, women in Mexico are uniting to listen, support, and protect each other. That is why it is important to make this film so that men and women can address these problems, not only in Mexico, and work together for a change. This is why I feel very connected to Mariana’s (Maremoto) fight. She wants to use her art to show women that we are strong and therefore should not always end up in the role of the victim.
I admire Maremoto’s artivism, how she combines her drawings and poetry to talk about hard subjects. She is a storyteller. Her energy and power are translated in the episode that contrasts the roughness and hardness of the situation of women in Mexico. Maremoto gives us hope, such a young artist is reaching thousands of young women with her drawings in Mexico and Latin America asking for change.”
– Karen Vázquez Guadarrama, Director