The killing of 20-year-old Vanessa Guillén, a Mexican-American Army specialist who disappeared from Fort Hood, Texas on April 22, whose remains were found more than two months later on June 30, has spurred conversations about violence against women in the military. Hundreds of women, in what has been called the “military’s #MeToo moment,” have shared stories about sexual harassment and assault, illustrating a culture of violence within the ranks of the U.S. military.
Before her disappearance, Guillén told her family that she had been sexually harassed. News of her experience with sexual harassment spurred other women service members to share their own stories under the hashtag #IAmVanessaGuillen. After her remains were found, a criminal complaint released by the Department of Justice alleges that fellow soldier Aaron Robinson murdered Guillén at Fort Hood, dismembering and burying her body with the help of his girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar. On July 1, Robinson died by suicide. Aguilar has been charged with tampering with documents or proceedings and has pleaded not guilty.
As Vanessa Guillen’s murder, horrific in its own right, has helped uncover a pattern of violence within the military, it also reveals a larger global epidemic of violence against cis and transgender women. Femicide, generally understood to mean the murder of women for being women, a term often applied abroad, is a global issue that significantly impacts Black, Indigenous, poor, and migrant women. It’s oftentimes thought of as violence relegated to peripheries, border cities like Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, or endemic to regions like Latin America or Africa. The truth is that femicide is an ever-present and growing crisis in the United States.
There are various types of femicide, and it can be hard to collect data on these killings because some countries don’t collect information that could categorize them as so, according to the World Health Organization. Compounding that difficulty is that various places define the word differently — for some, femicide means the killing of women because they are a woman, while for others it’s any murder of a woman. Some countries, like Mexico, have passed laws against femicide, giving a legal meaning to the term: the murder of a woman can be classified as a femicide if her killing was motivated by gender. The U.S. hasn’t adopted a standardized definition for the term but the federal government tracks domestic violence killings. The Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994 recognizes domestic violence as a national crime.
While there's no consensus on what qualifies as femicide, this kind of violence has been on the rise globally. In Latin America, El Salvador and Honduras are consistently among the countries with the highest femicide rates globally, while Mexico saw a 145% jump in femicide cases between 2015 and 2019. Last year, South Africa declared femicide a national crisis when nearly 3,000 women were murdered between 2018 and 2019.
These numbers are shocking, but often ignored are the rising rates of femicide in the United States.
In 2018, 114 women were killed in Los Angeles County, the highest number since the beginning of the decade, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. That report found that “women are less likely than men to be killed in a shooting, but more likely to be beaten, stabbed or strangled.”
The number of women killed in the U.S. has been steadily rising since 2014, according to the most recently available data from Violence Policy Center, and 1,948 women were killed by men in 2017. Women under 29 and women of color, including trans women, are disproportionately murdered—Black and Native American women experienced the highest rates of homicide between 2003 and 2014, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disappearance of Native American women is a critical problem—nearly 5,600 were reported missing last year, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center and this is violence that has persisted over centuries and permeates communities. And, so far in 2019, at least 26 transgender or gender non-conforming people were killed in this country.
Women Count USA: Femicide Accountability Project is an online database organized by Dawn Wilcox, a nurse who tracks femicide in the U.S. Of the 1,838 women and girls killed in 2018 the majority were killed by current or former partners, according to the organization.
There are stories and names behind these numbers. Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau was a 19-year-old Black Lives Matter activist held captive and sexually assaulted before being killed in Tallahassee. Nina Pop, a Black trans woman who was stabbed to death in Missouri, and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a Black trans woman whose body was found near the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, were both murdered this year.
Guillén's name, too, is on that list.
The day Guillén's killer died, her family held a press conference demanding answers from military authorities. Vanessa Guillén's sister Lupe Guillén gave a gut-wrenching speech condemning the military for sidelining the family during their investigation and for failing to protect her sister, who she says experienced sexual harassment. “My sister Vanessa Guillén was sexually harassed yet nothing was done,” she said. “She deserves respect. She deserves to be heard because if this can happen to my sister, it can happen to anyone else.”
After finding her remains, the Army Col. Ralph Overland, commander of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment and Guillén’s regimental commander said in a statement that Guillén's killing “devastated” everyone. The Army website says an “Army Regulation 15-6 Investigation” is being conducted into claims of sexual harassment, the “standard method of investigation” into such allegations.
The rage you hear in Lupe’s voice is one shared by thousands searching for truth and justice for their slain loved ones. It’s a rage and desperation commonly experienced by relatives of femicide victims.
Recognizing femicide as an issue in this country means understanding how it's linked to violence against women globally.
A powerful video surfaced in February, a few months before Guillén's remains were found, of Yesenia Zamudio, the mother of 19-year-old María de Jesús “Marichuy” Jaimes Zamudio, a Mexico City university student who died after falling from a window in 2016. Her death was ruled a femicide, and her mother says Marichuy was thrown from the window.
“I have every right to burn and to break,” said Zamudio during marches against femicide. “I’m not going to ask permission from anybody, because I am breaking for my daughter." Zamudio, who has become a fierce advocate against gender violence, was addressing a crowd in Mexico City during a demonstration honoring Ingrid Escamilla, yet another woman brutally murdered in Mexico. “This has destroyed our lives. Unfortunately, we are many mothers that feel this pain,” she said in a separate interview.
Authorities have yet to arrest anyone in connection with Marichuy's death, though Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission found that the investigators had failed to conduct a fair investigation. While Mexico’s political corruption and impunity presents challenges specific to the country’s relatives of femicide victims seeking violence, the rage of a mother, of a sister, of the community of a woman disappeared and murdered certainly has global resonance.
Guillén’s family and their lawyer Natalie Khawam are demanding an independent congressional investigation into her disappearance and killing; in July, the military announced a panel of civilian consultants would investigate "command climate and culture" at the base where Guillén was killed. Her family also calls on congress to create an independent agency that would handle reports from military members who are victims of sexual harassment and assault. #IAmVanessaGuillen demonstrates the power of solidarity against sexual harassment, yet reckoning with gender violence in this country also means recognizing how entrenched patriarchal violence is, and how it extends beyond the military’s ranks.