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Letters from Latin America with Leo Boix: June 4, 2024
Femicide and the search for justice in Mexico: a book by Cristina Rivera Garza; and a travel book through Latin America by Welsh poet Richard Gwyn

HUMAN RIGHTS organisations estimate that in 2022 there were at least 4,050 femicides in 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Mexico alone, at least two women die per day as victims of femicide, making the situation even more dire.

Femicide is defined as the most extreme form of gender-based violence and is the “intentional killing of women because they are women,” “committed by partners or ex-partners, and involving ongoing domestic abuse, threats or intimidation, sexual violence or situations in which women have less power or fewer resources than their partners,” according to the World Health Organisation.

Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Bloomsbury, £10.99) by Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza, a deserving winner of a recent Pulitzer Prize, explores the killing of the author’s sister on July 16 1990 in Mexico City by an ex-boyfriend.

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