Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice
42 pages • 1-hour read
Cristina Rivera GarzaLiliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice
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Themes
Gendered Violence and Systemic Injustice as Intertwined
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, and gender discrimination.
Cristina Rivera Garza’s sister, Liliana, experienced gendered violence beginning in her teen years and culminating in her femicide at the hands of Ángel Gonzalez Ramos in 1990 when she was 20 years old. The memoir centers, to a large extent, on reconstructing the course that this relationship took and exploring the societal context in which it unfolded. In doing so, Rivera Garza argues that violence against women in intimate relationships reflects and feeds off of a broader culture of misogyny, which has profound consequences for both women and their loved ones.
Liliana herself is the primary example. Liliana’s writing reveals details and raises questions about her years spent experiencing Ángel’s violence while trying to liberate herself. She struggled to find the language to define it because there was little public discourse about intimate partner violence during her life: Femicides were not classified as gendered violence, and women’s murders by abusive partners were deemed crimes of passion. What little discussion there was often blamed women for the violence they suffered, accusing them of “leading men on” or attributing their deaths to the fact that they were sexually active. Indeed, this was the response to Liliana’s own murder: Some believed that Liliana should not have been allowed the freedom to go to Mexico City to study or that her parents should not have permitted her to date at a young age. In this environment, Liliana had difficulty recognizing the exact nature of the danger she was in. For instance, she wrote about her apartment as the space where she knew safety, yet this would be the location where she died, as is true for many women.
Rivera Garza’s discussion of the legal response to Liliana’s murder reveals the institutional underpinnings of this misogyny. Liliana never received justice from the system that investigated her murder. Liliana’s murderer went on the run, and the authorities never apprehended him. While this in and of itself might not indicate corruption or neglect, other details of the investigation do, including the fact that the police at one point demanded a bribe to continue their efforts—a clear indication that they did not regard Liliana’s life as having intrinsic value. Her case file was eventually archived, and her sister struggles to retrieve it decades later as she seeks to reopen the case; the negligence that allowed for it to be lost symbolizes a broader disregard for women’s welfare.
Such victim blaming and institutional apathy compounded the grief and trauma of Liliana’s family. Ilda tried to seek justice on her own initiative but merely ran into further misogyny, as Ángel’s family and even a former girlfriend refused to reveal his whereabouts. Ultimately, the family turned inward in response to the absence of support—a reaction that the memoir frames as understandable but counterproductive, as it merely contributes to the silence surrounding gendered violence.
Managing Lifelong Grief by Confronting Trauma
Love, grief, and trauma’s specter run throughout Rivera Garza’s memoir. She wonders, while stopping for lunch one day while trying to retrieve her murdered sister’s case file, if one can ever enjoy life while in mourning. She continues to grieve 30 years after Liliana’s violent death, her sense of loss exacerbated by the absence of justice. Her memoir is, among other things, a way of confronting her trauma. In doing so, she does not move past her grief, but she does find ways to live alongside it more peacefully.
Descriptions of the origin of Rivera Garza’s trauma provide a basis for the memoir’s broader exploration of grief. Rivera Garza writes about her out-of-body experience when she learned about Liliana’s death from representatives of the Mexican consulate. She describes herself as “someone” going through the motions of making phone calls, booking a flight, and traveling to her parents’ home in Toluca where she would make funeral arrangements and bury her sister. This descriptive method asks readers to feel the shock that comes when one learns of the unexpected loss of a loved one and suggests that bereavement can also entail a loss of self. Although this acute dissociation faded, she and her parents remained caught in a kind of limbo for years afterward; descriptions of them visiting Liliana’s grave depict them as “stuck” in the moment of her death.
In part, this reflects the lack of closure surrounding Liliana’s case, coupled with a system that continuously retraumatizes survivors. For instance, when Rivera Garza travels across Mexico City seeking Liliana’s abandoned case file, she must explain at each office why she is there, forcing her to relive her trauma each time. However, the memoir also suggests that grief, by its very nature, is never really “over” and that what matters is how one approaches this fact. Rivera Garza’s approach to Liliana’s archive of notes, letters, poetry, and observations is emblematic of this distinction. Initially, she and her parents find the thought of engaging deeply with Liliana’s story too painful to contemplate; however, the decision to do so ultimately proves healing, and not merely because it serves as a proxy for justice. Rather, combing the archive allows Rivera Garza to reconnect with her sister, who becomes the book’s co-author.
Elsewhere, Rivera Garza observes, “Living in grief is this: never being alone” (116), noting that the bereaved constantly feel the presence of their lost loved one. While this can itself be a source of trauma, the memoir ultimately suggests that it does not have to be: Rather than being haunted by a loss that one tries to ignore, one can embrace grief as a bridge to the deceased.
Bearing Witness as Activism
The memoir opens with Rivera Garza’s attempts to reopen her sister’s murder case nearly 30 years after Liliana’s death. This activism on behalf of her sister links Rivera Garza to dozens of other activists in Mexico who have fought for justice for their loved ones who died by femicide, as well as to a feminist community that has raised awareness about the problem of intimate partner violence in Mexican society and beyond. However, while Rivera Garza pays homage to the important work that these activists have done, it quickly becomes clear that it will not be her primary route toward creating change: The authorities’ failure to prosecute Liliana’s killer makes the legal avenue a dead end, necessitating that she find a different kind of activism.
The memoir itself emerges as the solution to this problem. For one, it gives Rivera Garza a platform to speak out about the problems of domestic violence and femicide, thus breaking the silence and misinformation that often surround these issues. For instance, Rivera Garza counters the victim blaming to which Liliana and other victims of femicide are often subject, arguing that Liliana was not passive in the face of abuse. She tried, until the day she died, to free herself from Ángel’s violence. In this, she showed herself to be a woman with agency who desperately fought for control over her destiny but who could not reasonably be expected to overcome the societal forces arrayed against her. In a similar vein, Liliana’s archive reveals that Liliana struggled to name the danger she faced due to widespread misconceptions surrounding intimate partner violence. In naming that danger for her, Rivera Garza both rectifies a past injustice (Liliana’s inability to access lifesaving information) and seeks to prevent future injustices of a similar nature.
However, the memoir has a purpose beyond raising awareness, and Rivera Garza’s incorporation of Liliana’s own writing is crucial in this respect. Because violence against women (and the institutional apathy surrounding it) hinges on dehumanization, Rivera Garza takes care to grant her sister individuality and agency. She lets Liliana co-author the book and speak for herself by transcribing her letters and other writings. She highlights Liliana’s gregarious nature, her creativity, and her compassion and love for others—traits that are not strictly necessary to understand her story but that nevertheless contribute to readers’ sense of her as a full person. Worried that her sister’s memory will vanish if the system’s records of her case are never found, Rivera Garza thus preserves Liliana’s memory in a way that provides the justice she never received via the courts. Writing for El País in 2023, Rivera Garza notes that Mexico’s current Ley General de Víctimas treats memorial and truth as “acts of restitution” (Rivera Garza, Cristina. “What Is the Killer Laughing at?” El País, 5 Feb. 2023). The implication is that readers collectively participate in a kind of “cosmic justice” by reading about and embracing Liliana’s story.
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