Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, and gender discrimination.

Abusive, violent relationships like Liliana’s are a persistent global problem with a long history. Global femicide rates are high, with most victims dying at home: A November 2024 report released by the United Nations shows that family members or partners are responsible for the deaths of over 50% of women homicide victims (“140 Women and Girls on Average Were Killed by a Loved One Every Day Last Year, UN Finds.” PBS Newshour, 25 Nov. 2024). The United Nations has also confirmed that the number of countries reporting femicides has declined significantly in the previous five years, so the current data are an undercount (“Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member Femicides.” UN Women, 2024). Some deaths, like honor killings (the murder of an individual believed to have dishonored the family; in women, it is often a response to perceived sexual impropriety), are not reported as femicide but as suicides, obscuring the true reasons for women’s deaths.

Intimate partner violence in Mexico is widespread; Liliana is one among many women subjected to abusive relationships that result in death, with Rivera Garza reminding readers that approximately 10 women or girls succumb to femicide each day in Mexico, a statistic that the United Nations confirms. Rivera Garza reflects on these tragedies as she searches for her sister’s case file in the Azcapotzalco neighborhood of Mexico City, the very district where Liliana died: “The only body of water that runs through this area of the city, Los Remedios River, carries industrial waste or garbage. The corpses of so many women have sunk there, only to reemerge later downriver, silently floating around the old factories and urban wastelands” (24). This grim image reminds readers that women are treated like literal garbage, their bodies dumped in a polluted river—an attitude that partially explains why many, like Liliana, never receive justice. The structural breakdown of social and political order in regions of the country, like the border city of Juárez, is another reason why these violent crimes frequently go unpunished. Mexico’s rate of impunity is approximately 95%. 

It is within these global and regional contexts that Rivera Garza tells her sister’s story and its aftermath. Rivera Garza’s family, like hundreds of others, has gone decades without justice while enduring victim blaming and survivor’s guilt. Rivera Garza’s story highlights the systemic failures that contributed to Liliana’s death and her murderer’s ability to evade justice, revealing Gendered Violence and Systemic Injustice as Intertwined. Yet, as Rivera Garza observes, contemporary feminist activists have taken to the streets to demand justice. For instance, Norma Andrade, whose daughter was murdered in 2001, told UN News that she seeks symbolic justice through her activism (Minard, Nathalie, and Ana Carmo. “Mexico: Boom in Organised Crime Making Femicide Invisible, Local Activist Says.” UN News, 5 Dec. 2024). These activists have kept women’s names alive and refused to allow authorities and society to forget them. Rivera Garza’s memoir similarly refuses to let Liliana’s memory fade and provides an alternative form of justice in the absence of state action, Bearing Witness as Activism.