With “Ni una mujer menos, ni una muerta más,” the late Mexican poet Susana Chávez protested femicides in Juarez in 1995. In the more than 20 years since the uttered these words, they have becoming a rallying cry as femicide continues being a persistent issue around the world. In Mexico, the last decade has seen a rise in the number of female victims of homicide amid the war on drugs. Of the 52,210 recorded killings in the last 32 years, almost a third occurred in the last six years. As their names are replaced by new ones in the media, a group of women are working to remind us of the lives lost to gender-based violence.
Titled No Estamos Todas, this project started by two 24-year-old illustrators who chose to remain anonymous, aims to put a human face on the topic of femicide. Working with other artists, they have drawn nearly 100 women to “start a conversation about the lives that machismo violence have taken from us,” they told Broadly. Each image is captioned with the words, “we’re not complete, we’re missing” before they fill in the name of the victim and add any details on her, such as her age.
Each artist receives all available information about each case and then draws something inspired by their lives. They don’t use images of the victims, however. The women behind No Estamos Todas gather information about femicides through Yucatán Feminicida and a map that activist María Salguero created.
“The list that Frida Guerrera circulated affected us and we wanted to do something in response; we wanted people to keep talking about what’s happening in [Mexico],” they said. “No Estamos Todas was our response to the need to be heard. We [want the project] to be a celebration of their lives. We want to remember [these women] as people with aspirations, histories, and dreams.”
Check out a few of the illustrations below.