For a little over two hours, the streets in downtown Bogotá, around the Luis Ángel Arango public library, filled up by the dozens. People lined up to secure a spot in the auditorium where a ‘rockstar‘ of feminism in Latin America, Rita Laura Segato (Argentina, 74 years old), would speak. More than 300 people attended her event in person, hundreds more joined the conversation via YouTube, and a few more gathered at the regional branches of the Banco de la República in five cities to listen to her live broadcast.
One day after the event, Segato looks tired but enthusiastic. In the morning, she was at the offices of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the Colombian transitional justice system, where she advises on the investigation of sexual violence cases. From the music room of the Library, she tells EL PAÍS her vision about progressive power in the region, talks about her disappointment with Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, and her now distant relationship with Francia Márquez. She generally warns about the limits feminism faces when entering the State.
Question. Three years ago, at the start of the Government, you said you hoped Francia Márquez’s voice would be heard by President Petro. Today, when she herself has said she has been ignored, how do you evaluate that role within the Government?
Answer. When Francia considered running as a presidential pre-candidate, she asked me for advice, but due to my lack of faith in the state and politics, I told her I disagreed because she risked losing her main political capital, which was being among the people. Later, she became a vice-presidential candidate alongside Petro, but I always sensed that wouldn’t work and that it would harm her greatly. And I was not wrong. But then she accused me of being racist in a radio interview, and it is quite difficult to accuse me of racism. She accused me unfairly, and now I believe, although I feared I had advised her poorly, I was right.
Q. So what do you think happened to Francia Márquez within the Government?
A. The State vampirized her. It took away her strength, it stole her charisma. And in its place, it left only a dangerous narcissism.
Q. In several Latin American countries, progressive governments have come to power with feminist banners, but the balance has been bittersweet, starting with Colombia. What difficulties does that project face when moving from discourse to the exercise of power?
A. Feminizing a public office is a very difficult task. I just had a disappointment even in Mexico. I was a great admirer of the figure of President Claudia Sheinbaum and how she embodies power, but I was disappointed. In Mexico, there was a terrible femicide, that of Fátima, famous in history for the infinite cruelty by three neighbors who killed a 12-year-old girl with intense cruelty. I met Fátima’s mother during her struggle in the Zócalo, and she has been asking the president for months, along with the feminist movement, to receive her. And she did not receive her, nor did she receive the mothers searching for their children. There lies the error of politics that considers sexual crimes against women as a “minor crime.”
Q. But then is this an individual inconsistency of those leaders, like Sheinbaum or Petro, who claim to be progressive?
A. It cannot be read individually. It’s like racism: we all think we are not racist, but racism is the air we breathe. The same with patriarchy, it is the air we breathe. These are very deep, deeply rooted structures. To dismantle that worldview, which is the hegemonic view, a very profound work is still needed. Society will not change, and the course of history will not go in another direction.
Q. In Colombia, there is a right-wing candidate, Paloma Valencia, who seeks to be the first woman president of Colombia. Could that be an achievement for feminism, despite her positions?
A. No, no, no, no. Margaret Thatcher was a female organism of the species. So was Condoleezza Rice, and few men have as many deaths on their conscience as she does, who was also black and a woman. The body alone is not enough. The body is no guarantee of anything. Thatcher was the greatest enemy of women among all UK ministers. So it is a mistake of feminism to think that the body is a guarantee. There must be a gender consciousness that women come from a history of managing and administering life differently from men.
Q. And even more so when many of those women oppose rights already won by women, such as abortion…
A. Abortion is a joke because those people only say they are pro-life, but they cannot tell you anything else. They are manipulated to go out on the streets and do not have a deep awareness of their struggle. The pro-life stance is a lie. We all stand for life, but life everywhere. Because if you fight for life only when it is in a woman’s womb, but after birth, then let it die, then you are lying.
Q. Recent cases like those of Gisèle Pelicot and Jeffrey Epstein have reactivated the slogan that “shame must change sides.” Are we facing a real change or still in the symbolic realm?
A. I believe there is a transition, we are just not understanding it yet. In a sexual crime, the central figure is not the main event: it is the ties between the perpetrator and his peers. That must be the focus of analysis and understanding of all gender crimes, but people cannot shift the focus. In the Pelicot case, what must be understood is why he does that with other men, so much so that he needs to sacrifice a victim to seal a bond of collaboration and sympathy with other men. What I call the male corporation. And in the Epstein case, the sacrificial victims are many children, even babies, but what must be understood is why power consolidates through those victims.
Q. Does that explain why so many people knew about those crimes and never reported them but omitted them?
A. Exactly. The most important thing is loyalty among the members of the brotherhood, to be able to call themselves members of that corporation. If that does not fall, the world will not change, but if it falls, all humanity will experience a historical change of course.
Q. Going to the case of Argentina, with a figure like Javier Milei, how has that society changed with the arrival of an authoritarian figure like him?
A. I am quite absent from my country all the time, and that is a problem I have. The issue is that when mistakes are made from the critical field, from insurgency, from the search for a better world for more people, they are paid for much more dearly. That is what I have to say about Argentina. There were very big mistakes, and they are being paid for at a very high cost.
Q. You have worked on the concept of “masculinity mandate.” How can it be dismantled in practice, especially among men?
A. Men have to disobey. They have to mock that mandate, slip out of it, dismantle it. They must work on starting to have more relational, more genuine relationships among men. I laugh because when men get together, they talk about football or something else, because men do not know how to converse. We do self-examination, but there is no male conversation. They don’t know how to converse nor have introspection about what they think. It’s strange, isn’t it? Reflection and speech are what change the world.
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