Ayelén Correa Ruau | Network of Media and Communication Collectives (Argentina)
More than a decade after the emergence of the mass mobilization Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) in Argentina—where hundreds of women and LGBT+ community members demanded an end to all forms of violence—the struggle of women in Argentina is at a critical moment. The historic demands to halt gender-based violence and achieve equitable access to work now clash against the dismantling of public policies, judicial impunity and a fierce offensive against freedom of expression that seeks to silence voices of resistance in the public sphere. In the Global South, gender-based violence and institutional censorship of freedom of expression are not isolated phenomena, but two aspects of the same situation of oppression. This reality is observed with great severity in Argentina, a country militarily aligned with the United States and global Zionist power, which promotes denialist discourses and stigmatizes feminist organizing.
Portrait of Economic Strangulation and Impunity
Violence against women is not a random occurrence, but a planned mechanism to weaken community bonds, destroy democratic regimes and facilitate the handing over of common goods to transnational extractivist corporations. The combined impact of fiscal austerity, gender-based violence and state repression is dramatically exposed in the lives of women: a femicide (the murder of a person on the basis of their gender and being a woman) occurs every 35 hours in the country.
The observatory “Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven” (Now That They See Us) records a tragic accumulated total of more than 3,200 lethal victims for gender-related reasons since June 3, 2015, the date of the first Ni Una Menos mobilization in Argentina. 85% of perpetrators belonged to the victim’s inner circle and 63% of the crimes occurred inside homes. Furthermore, fewer than 3% of femicide perpetrators receive a definitive conviction, 17% of the women murdered had previously filed formal complaints and 10% had active protection orders in place that proved entirely ineffective. Adding to this scenario is the dismantling of state prevention and assistance programs by the current national government of Javier Milei.
Escalating Repression Against Press Workers
The current context reveals that misogyny and violence against women also circulates in the official discourses of the Milei government, institutionalizing media and symbolic violence as forms of a precarious democracy. The Report on Freedom of Expression in Argentina, presented to the National Senate by the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA), reveals a 66% increase in physical assaults on press workers during coverage of social protests. At least 83 journalists suffered direct violence from state security forces in the streets. In this regard, the Freedom of Expression Monitoring by the Argentine Forum of Journalism (FOPEA) recorded an absolute peak of 278 cases of direct attacks on journalists and a total of 374 affected victims across the country, consolidating the systematic use of official discrediting discourses and digital harassment. Institutional violence reaches extreme levels, documenting direct physical assaults on press workers and public intimidation of journalists, creating an information blockade aimed at paralyzing public debate.
Attacks also directly target the economic situation of the working class. The union’s socioeconomic survey details that 70.4% of press workers earn salaries below the poverty line, constituting a strategy of indirect discipline through hunger. This situation is more complex for women press workers: 44% of women experience harassment or labor violence in media outlets.
For this reason, responsible journalism has had to learn to eradicate narratives that isolate femicide as a simple police matter or a “crime of passion.” This fragmentation of the news is intentional: transnational communications corporations impose the spectacularization of pain and “crime reporting” to conceal that gender-based violence is directly linked to the economic precariousness imposed by bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and extractivist multinationals in the Global South. Decolonizing the news and making structural inequalities visible is, therefore, an act of informational sovereignty. This system of domination is sustained by the “pact among men” that organizes patriarchy—a cultural pact that is replicated and amplified in the structures of colonial power and manifested in the owners of large concentrated media outlets who precarize women workers. Imperialism uses this massive cultural control to keep the social fabric fragmented, knowing perfectly well that a demobilized society sunk in fear facilitates the plunder of its common goods. Sustaining dignified wages and gender parity is therefore an unavoidable front line in defending the self-determination of peoples.
The Counteroffensive: Proposals from Feminist Journalism in Resistance
In the face of censorship, Argentine feminisms do not merely denounce—they act as a bloc of political and union resistance through concrete strategies. Recently, the Argentine Federation of Press Workers presented a proposed Professional Journalist Statute Act, a legislative offensive initiative from the working class, even as the Milei government imposed a Labor Reform that works against the working class, promoting labor precariousness and restricting workers’ organizing and social protest.
This proposed law reaffirms the rights of women journalists and their role in building a broad and deep democracy, protected from concentrated power.
This web of material and discursive violence finds a new vector in the deepening of techno-feudalism in Argentine territory. The recent and strategic interference of Silicon Valley magnate and Palantir founder Peter Thiel in the country’s politics and data infrastructure is not an innocent technological investment, but an imperialist advance in social control. Techno-feudalism operates through the forced extraction of data and the privatization of digital common goods, transforming state sovereignty into a corporate fiefdom dependent on the Global North. By implementing mass surveillance technologies and algorithms designed for polarization, digital imperialism not only further precarizes local economies but also atomizes community bonds.
This technological control seeks to neutralize feminist movements and self-managed journalism networks on digital platforms, consolidating a digital panopticon where political dissent is surveilled, indexed and economically punished by transnational corporations.
The economic strangulation imposed on independent media and self-managed community outlets is a classic geopolitical strategy of indirect censorship. By weakening the investigative capacity of local journalism through multiple job-holding and poverty wages, information monopolies of the Global North succeed in imposing hegemonic narratives without resistance. Sustaining gender parity and dignified wages in the South is inherently a front line for defending the self-determination of peoples and the historical truth of our communities against the official discourses of corporate imperialism.
From Buenos Aires to Gaza: One Enemy, One Front Line
The institutional violence suffered in Argentina is not a local anomaly, but the reflection of a global policy of imperialist silencing. While in South America discipline is sought through hunger and police repression, in Palestine and Lebanon a lethal scenario for journalism is unfolding. Internationally compiled figures are alarming: more than 250 communicators have been murdered by Israel’s colonial forces and the mortality rate exceeds 10% among press workers in Gaza. This genocide has a particular cruelty toward women journalists who sustain the narrative of resistance in the territories, as demonstrated by the recent murders of colleagues Amal Khalil, Fátima Ftouni and Mariam Abu Daqqa, executed by colonial aviation even while wearing their press identification.
From Argentina to the Middle East: The Defense of Our Bodies, Our Territories and Freedom of Expression Is the Same Battle
Neoliberalism knows that organized women and independent journalism are the last bastions of resistance against corporate plunder. That is why they try to silence our voices. We are not passive victims; we are the narrators of global resistance. Breaking the informational blockade of colonial monopolies is the first step toward the self-determination of our peoples. From this 2nd International Women’s Conference in Istanbul, we call for the internationalization of feminist and union solidarity. In the face of fascism and imperialist plunder, the women of the world will be silent no more! Long live the struggle of those who resist and communicate in every corner of the Global South!
Sources and Bibliographic References
Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBo). “11 Years of Ni Una Menos: What Has Journalism Learned?” Available at: https://siprebo.com.ar
Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA) and International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Report on Freedom of Expression in Argentina. Presented to the Argentine National Senate.
Argentine Forum of Journalism (FOPEA). Freedom of Expression Monitoring in Argentina. Annual Report on Press Attacks.
Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBo). “Palestine and Lebanon: The Deadliest Front of Contemporary Journalism.” Available at: https://siprebo.com.ar
Gender Violence Observatory “Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven.” Statistics on Femicide in Argentina (June 2015 –present).
Women and Genders Secretariat of SiPreBA. Federal Glossary “Our Media in the Media: Tools for Communication Free from Violence.”
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) / International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Global reports on crimes against the press in the Middle East and records of professional casualties in Lebanon and Gaza.