This Tragic Facebook Post Confronts Victim Blaming And Asserts A Woman’s Right To Travel Alone

The post above is a poem of sorts. It mourns the murder of two Argentinian backpackers who reportedly accepted a place to stay from two men — a notion which one of the victim’s mothers vehemently denies — while calling out some of the media coverage (and social media postings) concerning the deaths.

[Note: Two men are currently in police custody, but Argentinian investigators have been sent to Ecuador to look into irregularities in the handling of the case.]

To date, the post has been shared 548 thousand times across Facebook.

A translation:

Yesterday I was killed.

I refused to be touched, and they cracked my skull with a club. I was stabbed and left to die, bleeding.

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

But worse than death, was the humiliation that followed.

From the time they had my dead body nobody asked where the son of a bitch who ended my dreams, my hopes, and my life was.

No, rather than that they started asking me meaningless questions. To me, can you imagine? A dead girl, who can not speak, who can not defend herself.

What clothes did you wear?

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, letting me be independent, like any human being. They said we were on drugs and we surely asked for it. They said they should have looked after us.

And only when dead I realized that no, that for the rest of the world I was not like a man. That dying was my fault, and it will always be. While if the headline would have said “two young male travelers were killed” people would be expressing their condolences and with their false and hypocritical double standard speech would demand higher penalty for murderers.

But being a woman, it is minimized. It becomes less severe, because of course I asked for it. Doing what I wanted to do, I found 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 grieved, because I’m no longer here. But you are. And you’re a woman. And you have to deal with them rubbing it in with the same speech “earn respect,” it’s your fault they shout at you, it’s your fault they want to play / lick / suck any of your genitals on the street for wearing shorts when it’s 40ºC outside. That same speech that says you’re a “crazy woman” if you travel alone and that if something happens to you, if somebody trample upon your rights, you probably asked for it.

I ask you, on behalf of myself and every other women ever hushed, silenced; I ask you on behalf on behalf of every woman whose life was crushed, to raise your voice. We will fight, I’ll be with 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 up us all.

The post, written by Paraguayan student Guadalupe Acosta quickly became a rallying cry and led to the hashtag #viajosola (I travel alone, feminine form). Some of the tweets examine victim blaming in general while others allow women to explain why they choose to travel alone:

https://twitter.com/MsKayeDC/status/707935095613620225

https://twitter.com/Tiff_Nog/status/707933207392608256

https://twitter.com/EmmaPetersen11/status/707910194081058817

https://twitter.com/phildenercy/status/707871943794540544

As a long-time travel writer, I’ve seen this conversation come to the forefront a few times over the past decade, perhaps never with so much immediacy as this (for obvious reasons). It’s a delicate topic to breach — because it’s absolutely horrifying and we want to be respectful — but it’s also an important one and doesn’t deserve to be ignored. Guadalupe Acosta faced the tragedy and its aftermath with insight and emotion, and she’s obviously struck a nerve.