Powerful Post Written From the Perspective of Two Murdered Backpackers is Going Viral  

A college student from Paraguay has written a powerful post about victim shaming from the perspective of two young women who were murdered while traveling Ecuador.

The post by Guadalupe Acosta comments on violence against women and the difficulty of coping with associated victim blaming.

According to BBC 22-year-old María Coni and 21-year-old Marina Menegazzo were traveling through Ecuador when they met two local men. The girls had run out of money so were receptive to an offer by the men for a place to stay.

The girls were murdered and their bodies were found in plastic bags a few days later.

The two men reportedly confessed to the murders with one of the men confessing that he hit Coni over the head with a board after Coni wouldn’t let him touch her.

Acosta wrote the Facebook post in response to the victim-blaming that ensued after the two Argentine women were found dead.

The piece was translated into English by The Huffington Post.

“Yesterday I was killed.

I refused to be touched, and with a stick, they cracked my skull open. I was stabbed and they let me bleed to death.

Like waste, they put me in a black polyethylene bag, wrapped with duct tape and I was thrown to a beach, where hours later they found me.

But worse than death was the humiliation that followed. 

From the moment, they found my inert dead body nobody asked where the son of a bitch that ended my dreams, my hopes and my life was. 

No, instead they started asking me useless questions. Me, can you imagine? A dead girl, who can not speak, who can not defend herself.

What clothes were you wearing?

Why were you alone?

Why would a woman travel alone?

You were in a dangerous neighborhood. What did you expect?

They questioned my parents for giving me wings, for letting me be independent, like any human being. They told them we were surely on drugs and were asking for it, that we must’ve done something, that they should have looked after us. 

And only once dead did I understand that no, that to the rest of the world I was not equal to a man. That dying was my fault, and it will always be so. But if the headline would have read “two young male travelers were killed” people would be expressing their condolences and with their false and hypocritical double standard speech would demand the highest penalty for the murderers.

But when you’re a woman, it is minimized. It becomes less severe, because of course I asked for it. By doing what I wanted to do, I got what I deserved for not being submissive, not wanting to stay at home, for investing my own money in my dreams. For that and more, I was sentenced.

And I was sad, because I’m no longer here. But you are. And you’re a woman. And you have to deal with the same speech about “making others respect you,” about how it’s your fault they shout at you on the street that they want to touch/lick/suck one of your genitals because you’re wearing shorts when it’s 40ºC of heat outside, about how if you travel alone you’re “crazy” and surely if something happened to you, if they trampled all over your rights, you were asking for it.

I ask you, on behalf of myself and every other women who’ve been hushed, silenced; I ask you on behalf of every woman whose life and dreams were crushed, to raise your voice. Let’s fight, I’ll be next to you in spirit, and I promise that one day we’ll be so many that there won’t be enough bags in the world to shut us all up”