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ARGENTINA: Click Here to Escape Gender Violence

Marcela Valente

CIUDAD EVITA, Argentina, Nov 23 2010 (IPS) - “Men are drunks and batterers,” Lorena Maurin tells IPS before heading in to her computer class, an oasis for women in the 22 de Enero neighbourhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

The course is offered in a community centre next to the Santa Clara de Asís chapel in a slum in Ciudad Evita, a working-class suburb on the west side of the capital.

“People from Ciudad Evita don’t count. We’re the lice on the bun in Evita’s hair,” quips Catholic nun Norma Santa Cruz, who heads the programme aimed at bringing technological tools to women who are victims of violence.

The district takes its name from Eva Duarte (1919-1952) — known in Argentina and around the world simply as “Evita” — the wife of former president Juan Domingo Perón who, from her husband’s election to his first term in 1946 until her untimely death from cancer, promoted labour rights and the rights of women.

The nuns in the Santa Clara de Asís chapel and community centre have been working over the last 15 years on behalf of vulnerable local residents, mainly women and children who grow up in a violent environment, Santa Cruz explains to IPS.

Some 20 women who were already involved in the centre, where they brought their children for after-school tutoring or took part in recreational activities, were invited this year to participate in a computer course.

“We asked them to come for that purpose, because if we told them it was about violence, they wouldn’t have shown up,” says Santa Cruz. The goal is for the women to set up an email account, a blog or a Facebook page, in order to use the social networking sites and link up with other women, in a learning process that can help them rebuild — or build — their self-esteem.

The programme, financed by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international network, is called “Take Back the Tech! To end violence against women”.

In Argentina, it is operating in Ciudad Evita and Moreno, another low-income district on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, as well as in Misiones, Formosa and Santiago del Estero, in the north, some of the poorest provinces in Argentina.

In Formosa, the women take computer classes and workshops on violence. “There is domestic violence here, but also trafficking in persons, because this is a vulnerable region on the border” with Paraguay, Elsa Gómez tells IPS.

Gómez is head of the local organisation Ñandé Roga Guazú, where the women are working hard to produce informational videos and flyers for the campaign for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated Nov. 25, and will kick off two weeks of global activities against gender violence.

In Ciudad Evita, the women are not in such a frenzy of activity to produce materials against gender violence, but the computer course has got them talking about the violence that is such a natural part of their lives.

On the afternoon that IPS spends with seven participants in the computer course, none of them are readily able to think of a man who is not like their husbands.

“They’re all like that. I had a bunch of stepfathers who were drunk and abusive, and I don’t want that for my kids,” says Maurín, a 29-year-old mother of two who like her husband works outside the home.

She says that when he goes out on weekend nights, he comes home drunk and violent.

“My kids already know that if he goes out, he’ll come back in the morning drunk, so they’re scared all the time. But he asks me ‘what are you complaining about?’ if I tell him not to go out or not to drink,” she says.

All of the women have the same enthusiasm about the course, which is given by a teacher who comes in from another neighbourhood once a week. They have already learned how to write a resumé, how to use Excel spread sheets, and how to produce a Power Point presentation.

For the presentation, they used an article on violent boyfriends, which one of the women brought in. The ultimate aim is for them to network with other women who suffer violence and are isolated, like they have been.

“Teacher! I tried to open the programme and it shut down,” one anxious participant says. Another clicks with the mouse and waits while nothing happens, until she remembers she was supposed to double click.

Laura Berón hardly talks. When she tries to do so, she breaks down. She’s 29 years old, and has a job and a son. Her husband regularly beats her. They began to see a therapist but it didn’t work — he refused to continue.

“I would see her bruises, but she didn’t tell us anything,” says her sister Beatriz Berón, a 31-year-old mother of two who is also taking the course.

Like her sister, she is victim of abuse at the hands of her partner. “I would like to leave home, but I don’t have anywhere to go,” she says.

Beatriz Berón has a job, and an eight-year-old daughter and one-month baby boy, who she has brought with her to the course. Santa Cruz asks the women not to bring their children, to make this a space for themselves, but it’s not easy. Kids wander in and out of the room, and the baby passes from lap to lap.

Paola Bazante, 36, is the oldest member of the group. She has been married for 20 years and has four kids. When she started coming to the workshop on “murgas” — a form of popular musical theatre performed in Argentina and Uruguay during the Carnival season — she was in a very bad state, she recalls.

But after a while she started going to therapy, “which helped a lot,” she remarks.

She says she was constantly fighting with her husband. “He’s never at home, he shows up when he feels like it,” she says. At first she states that she only suffered psychological violence, but after talking for a while she confesses.

“He hit me once and I hit him back with a broomstick. I told him ‘watch out when you’re going to sleep, because you just might not wake up’. Now he’s scared of me, which is why he doesn’t hit me,” she laughs.

Bazante says the workshop has done her a lot of good, even though her husband, like the other women’s partners, doesn’t want her to go. The men say the women are “wasting time”, “baby sitting other women’s kids,” or will “meet other men,” like the computer teacher.

“This has helped me see that I can make it on my own, that I raised my four kids by myself and that I didn’t need him,” she says. “Now I work, I have my own money. But it’s hard to make the break, to say ‘that’s it, it’s over’.”

The biggest fear does not appear to be the violent men who sleep next to them, but that there is no guarantee that any other man will be different. “They’re all like that; if someone says their husband isn’t violent, they’re lying,” Bazante says.

If they go to the police station to report a beating, they know they will not be protected. “The police tell you why are you reporting him if you’ll just go back to him in two or three days,” she says. And they know that’s partly true. They can’t leave.

Claudia Cisneros, a 22-year-old who is also taking the course, points to cultural aspects. “My stepfather was like that. ‘Women are for cooking, washing and raising kids,’ he used to say.” Her partner also goes out and gets drunk “from Friday to Sunday,” she adds.

“If a guy doesn’t drink, is mellow and gives money to his wife, they call him henpecked or a cuckold,” she says, while the rest readily express their agreement.

“That’s why it’s hard to break things off,” says Bazante. “You prefer to stay, even though things are uncomfortable, instead of getting into something that could be worse. Women have more open minds, but men just don’t change.”