I've traveled the world as a writer and an activist
for my entire life.
What we are talking about is a revolution.
We are the women that our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you that by confronting the problems
once marginalized as "women's issues,"
we can tackle the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor at play,
a story you've never been told.
The greatest indicator of the world's stability,
wealth, and safety is the status of women.
Veronica.
Carlotta.
Karima.
**
In the small Central American nation
of El Salvador,
a war is raging between rival gangs
and the government.
There is a homicide every hour,
giving El Salvador
the highest murder rate in the world.
Women are being killed in a particularly savage way,
not only by gangs
but also by their husbands and boyfriends.
These kinds of killings,
with their brutality
and highly intimate nature have their own name --
femicide,
the deliberate murder of a woman
just for being a woman.
**
We just got here, and there's a woman's body
laying down there.
We don't really know anything about her.
Police won't talk to us yet.
But all we were able to find out is that she's in her 40s,
and then she was shot.
Hundreds of women die violently in El Salvador every year.
Often, their bodies are left in the street like this,
in full view of families and children.
This woman is one of many caught
in the crossfire of a decades-long war
between El Salvador's rival gangs.
And no one is immune to the violence.
You're a live reporter, right? - Yes.
So have you been, like,
to scenes like this a million times?
All the time, like, almost every day.
Here, it happens so much, that it -- it has become,
like, our normal reality.
**
I have a little daughter.
And I would love to have a better country for her
because we love our country.
We feel proud to be Salvadorans.
But this is the reality we're in.
**
The violence is at an all-time high.
Government troops under a tough-on-crime president
are cracking down on the gangs,
who are in a constant battle for territory.
The result is all-out war.
This last month has been the most violence
since the end of the civil war, like, 20 years ago.
Last week alone, there were 190 people killed over 5 days.
No place sees the effects of this violence
more than the city morgue.
**
We just arrived at Medicina Legal.
We're following the body that they picked up
from the crime scene.
**
There's just bodies coming in, in plastic bags.
And people coming in to look at them and see
if it's their son or daughter or husband or brother.
**
Most of the victims at the morgue
are young men between 20 and 24 years old.
But just under 10% are murdered women.
It's easy to assume that these deaths
are just more tragic casualties of gang warfare.
But a close examination of female victims
tells a different story.
Many of these bodies come in torn up by extreme violence,
a strong indication that their murders
are gender-based, in other words, femicide.
Can you see any signs on this woman
that might suggest whether this is femicide or not?
What does hatred look like on a body?
Women in El Salvador are being killed differently,
with more hatred than men.
The question is, why?
**
El Salvador's two main rival gangs,
Barrio 18 and MS-13,
have been at war with each other
since the 1990s.
And the population of the nation's poorest barrios
are the collateral damage.
Although more men than women are dying in the conflict,
it's the women who are being killed
in especially vicious ways.
To find out why, we went to talk to a woman
who used to be a member of one of these gangs.
Hola.
**
When you join a gang, it's for life.
But after serving time in prison,
this woman took a chance to escape and start over.
She's asked us to hide her identity.
Did the gangs treat you differently
because you were a girl?
Did they treat women from the opposite gang differently?
Why do you think they are so much more violent with women?
**
Experts explain away this cruelty as a terror tactic,
a way for gangs to intimidate rivals
by torturing their women.
While this is true in many cases,
it doesn't explain why male gang members,
the hated enemies of their rivals,
are almost never killed as brutally as women.
Our contacts here have managed to set up a meeting
with two members of Barrio 18 and two of their associates.
They have asked us to hide their identities.
We're gonna try and ask them, why is there so much violence?
And why are they taking it out on women so much?
S-So we met with a woman that used to be in a gang.
And she told us,
when men are killed, usually, they're just shot.
And when women are killed, they're raped.
They're beaten.
The extreme violence against women
isn't just gang tactics.
These men have a choice
whether or not a woman will suffer.
And the brutality also isn't just aimed at women
from other gangs.
Do you -- Do you feel ashamed of that?
**
Femicide in El Salvador
is not just a phenomenon of gang warfare.
We're finding out it starts inside everyday relationships
between men and women.
**
I-I just don't believe violence ever
exists in a vacuum out of context.
It always has a history, and it comes from somewhere.
To understand femicide,
you have to look at a certain mindset
towards women that permeates the culture here.
It's called machismo, a hyper-masculine attitude
that values male dominance and pride
at the expense of women.
We picked a popular bar
in one of the safer neighborhoods of San Salvador
to ask a group of local men what they had to say about it.
Silvia Juarez is a lawyer and activist at ORMUSA,
the Organization of Salvadoran Women for Peace.
This attitude is something she and her colleagues
have been fighting against their entire careers.
How do we connect machismo, culturally, to what's happening?
**
This is Unimujer,
a police unit that ensures
that reports of violence against women
are addressed before they escalate to femicide.
**
Unimujer is one of 13 special police units
largely staffed by female officers.
**
Is there as much machismo in the police
as there is in Salvadoran society in general?
**
It's encouraging that Unimujer is looking out
for the well-being of Salvadoran women.
The question is,
is anything being done to punish these perpetrators?
**
In 2012, a law went into effect
that put femicide on the books
as its own criminal category,
making special provisions
to protect women from gender-based violence.
**
Despite these efforts, crime against women in El Salvador
remains extremely high.
And most perpetrators walk away unpunished.
In fact, over 75% of femicide cases
never end up in a conviction.
Impunity is a huge problem in El Salvador.
**
The level of violence and hatred and brutality
that goes into the killing of women
really make it critical to investigate femicides
as a separate crime altogether.
**
This law raised public awareness of gender-based violence
and also brought new attention
to some recent high-profile cases.
**
But, so far,
none of them have served a day of jail time.
Silvia Juarez was one of the authors
of this landmark law.
For her, the problem is clear --
Until the machista attitudes
that permeate the justice system are removed,
women will be judged on a double standard.
And the men who abuse them will do so with impunity.
**
It is a message the women of El Salvador
are taking to the streets themselves.
And the march today kind of gave me hope that,
by taking the issue of violence against women
out of the house and into the streets,
these women are a -- really able to fight back
and maybe will be able to start changing things.
Since we were last in El Salvador,
hundreds more women have been attacked and killed.
And while the problem may be most extreme in this region,
it's by no means confined to Central America.
Femicide is a global problem.
But El Salvador should be a warning --
When women continue to be targeted
because they are women and
when the justice system allows it to continue,
there is little to prevent society
from descending into
instability, violence, and chaos.
To support women's rights in El Salvador,
go to viceland.com/woman.
...y Cecilia.
Guadalupe.
**
Margarita.