[This story was originally published in Spanish for Cronkite Noticias/Arizona PBS here. The accompanying Spanish podcast can also be found at this link.]

English translation -- 

The Fight For a Just Punishment

On February 18, 2021, Gabriela Camacho waited outside a courthouse in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with friends, family, and supporters. It was afternoon and they had already been there for hours. With banners in hand, they shouted slogans and demanded justice for Gabriela's sister, Adriana, and her nephew Santiago, murdered last year.

After nearly 12 months of delays, Camacho, her family and her friends demanded that the court make a decision and give the murderer, Erick Gustavo, the maximum penalty. Officers would not let her in and she was placed in a waiting room, but was sent outside when the building closed. As soon as the hearing ended, she greeted her mother Patricia Bermúdez with tears and a hug. She was desperate for the news.

“Daughter, 34 years old, daughter, they gave him 34 years. Justice was served,” Bermúdez said.

Camacho, remembering the meeting, said "I hugged my mother and I started crying too."

Adriana Camacho, 36, and her son Santiago, 5, were poisoned by her ex-partner. (Photo courtesy of the Camacho family)

Time Constraints

On February 24, 2020, Adriana Camacho, 36, and her son Santiago, 5, were poisoned by her ex-partner. Due to an Ecuadorian law, similar to the statute of limitations in the United States, the murderer had to be prosecuted before the first anniversary of the crime.

"In Ecuador there is something called preventive detention that lasts one year, 365 days," said Camacho. “If the person deprived of liberty, the prisoner, has not had a sentence after this year or after one year, he can be released. Because that's what the law says. So it was important that this sentence be given before the year.”

In this case, Gustavo was sentenced less than a week before his preventive detention ended.

Definition and Classification

Femicide is defined differently in each country, but the idea of gender violence is universal. In 2014, it was specifically written in the law of Ecuador. Article 141 defines femicide as, “The person who, as a result of power relations manifested in any type of violence, kills a woman for the fact of being one or for her gender condition, will be punished with imprisonment from 22 to 26 years.”

The judge declared the death of Adriana and Santiago a case of aggravated homicide, and not as two homicides or one femicide. And because their murders were not classified as femicide, Camacho said they were not given gynecological exams.

"They never checked her to see if she had been abused or if she had sex in the last hours of her life, neither did the child," Camacho said. “So not having that conception that a process must be respected and that the investigation has to be initial as if it were a femicide. Unfortunately it has consequences that can be very detrimental to the final result.”

Camacho admits that the concept of femicides is still new in Ecuadorian law and also in how the public understands it. She agrees with international conventions that say that every murder of a woman must first be investigated as femicide.

"In Ecuador, it doesn't work like that," Camacho said. “First they think that, in the case of being a woman, first they think that you committed suicide, they think anything else. So they do many things wrong from the beginning of the process and all these things then have consequences of all kinds.”

Inconsistent Numbers

In 2020, there were 118 femicides in Ecuador, according to the Latin American Association for Alternative Development (ALDEA) which is tracking them. But if you ask the National Police of Ecuador for that same figure, they will tell you that there were 76 femicides. Adriana Camacho technically wasn’t considered one of them, despite her family claiming that she was.

"At the national level, we had 76 femicides in 2020," confirmed Corporal Segundo Marco Valenzuela Ruales, an investigating agent for gender violence at the Ecuadorian National Police. “Forty-five percent are with knives. Most are produced in the urban perimeter in private space, taking place on Saturdays. Most victims' ages range from 18 to 30 years.”

When asked if the police kept a record of how many cases were unsolved, Corporal Segundo Valenzuela Ruales answered no. In fact, information on femicide cases is not shared between agencies.

"The prosecution would have their records, the police have their records and the court will have their records because we record everything we receive," he said. "So we do not know the particulars of each case. We suddenly come to investigate, but we do not make statistics, as I would like to give you.”

Internal Problems

Lawyer Jacqueline Veira, coordinator of the legal support team for CEPAM, a non-profit organization that promotes gender equality in Ecuador, said there is a lack of focus on recognizing the particular characteristics of a femicide.

“There is even a lot that only happens in a couple relationship, ignoring or distorting the historical problem of subordination and discrimination against women,” said Veira. "That leads to recording it as common murders."

This is what happened in the case of Adriana Camacho. According to her sister, it was more difficult to classify her death as femicide because the abuse was psychological.

"So they don't recognize and it is very difficult for them to identify what gender violence is about," Camacho said. "Especially if it is not about physical abuse and if the person does not have capture or aid tickets, distancing, then, as in the case of my sister, the violence occurs psychologically by manipulation."

Camacho also said that, from her experience, there are many unnecessary delays within the justice system that make things difficult for the families of femicide victims.

"For example, all the suspensions that we went through throughout the trial process," she said. “Because it turns out that one day the defendant's lawyer had another trial. That he was also about to expire another person's preventive detention.”

Additionally, she said some of the delays could have been avoided with better office management. For example, judges sometimes had conflicting trials and other hearings. But if done more efficiently, she says it benefits victims and criminals.

"Actually they are administrative issues that if they handled a good calendar in which the audiences are simply not crossing each other, it would not happen,” said Camacho. “Then imagine the victims. It would be avoided – processes as dramatic as these, and likewise, criminals would also have a quick sentence and would know from the beginning what is going to happen with their lives. But it doesn't work as it should.”

A group of people protest outside a court in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The protesters ask to combat femicides in Ecuador. (Photo courtesy of the Camacho family)

Measures of Protection

According to the database of the National Police of Ecuador, provided by Cabo Segundo Valenzuela Ruales, almost 10 percent of the victims of femicides in 2020 had filed complaints against their murderers.

In 2019, Stephanie Fyock, an American living in Ecuador, created a foundation in the providence of Santa Elena to help victims of domestic violence. As a victim of domestic violence herself, Fyock said many women never report their abusers.

"How many women do not report?" Fyock said. “They have no remedy. Many of these women refuse because they have nowhere to go, they do not have a job. In other words, they are with the husband's family, with the in-laws. So they deny the complaint and are left in a horrible situation."

From her own experience in obtaining protection against an ex-partner, Fyock has seen the harrowing evidence of an excess amount of unprocessed cases on police officer's desks. She was surprised by the number of people. "I saw pictures, images, horrible things, I mean women, completely beaten," said Fyock.

Not Another One

On social media, Camacho, her family and friends have used the hashtags # EllasNoSonNónimosSonVidas and #NiUnaMenos to raise awareness about femicides. Using an Instagram account called Justicia Para Adriana y Santiago, the Camacho family honored the lives of the 118 victims of femicides in 2020. They presented photos and details of the women's lives, and used slogans such as: “If they touch one, we all answer.”

In Camacho's opinion, a lot would have to change so that there are fewer femicides in Ecuador.

"I think yes, there should be less machismo, but absolutely everything in our country would have to change, from the public to the private," she said. "What they teach us in our homes, in schools, what we experience in our workplaces, on the street, in public."

In fact, Veira said that the macho construction is the product of the patriarchal system.

"Not recognizing the historical problem of inequality and oppression of women leads to making the magnitude of the problem invisible," said Veira.

Camacho said that in Ecuador, a woman is killed every 72 hours. With these types of statistics, she says that the State is to blame because they have not initiated any kind of public policy or pressed for the sentences to be lengthened. She said the law, as it stands, sends a message to men who are thinking about murdering their partner and tells them that even with the maximum sentence they will still be young when they are released.

"It is telling men that it is very possible that if you kill your partner, your friend, the neighbor or that stranger you met on the street," Camacho said. “It is very likely that they will not catch you. It is very likely that they will not be sentenced as femicides, but as homicide or murder, and that your sentence may be lowered. So the State actually gives an open letter to him, to the machistas to commit their crimes."