AFFECTS, MOURNING AND JUSTICE IN VISUAL PRODUCTIONS

ABOUT WOMENS INCARCERATION AND DEATHS FOR ABORTION IN

LATIN AMERICA
Nayla Luz Vacarezza1

Abstract: Affects play a fundamental role in the political struggles for the right to abortion in Latin
America. The analysis of visual productions in favor of legal abortion reveals the great efforts made
to generate social empathy towards women and to destigmatize abortion. In recent years, original
visual works that associate abortion with affects such as joy, relief, and pride have gained centrality.
Howeverin a region where abortion continues to be largely clandestine, insecure and even
prosecutedorganizations are constantly creating images that refer to injustices associated with
incarceration and deaths due to abortion. Creating images about these forms of extreme social
violence is a delicate task. Far from all forms of victimization, the visual productions analyzed here
represent, in many different ways, the womens incarceration and deaths for abortion as a call to
political action. Pain, affliction and grief are powerful affects that activate political forms of memory,
action and imagination in pursuit of reproductive justice.

Keywords: Affects. Abortion. Visual Production.

What is the role of affect in visual productions for the right to abortion in Latin America? In
recent yearstogether with the popularization of medical abortion methods and the extension of
abortion support networksnew visual discourses emerged linking abortion with affects socially
considered as "positive". This visual experimentation around "joyful" emotions in relation to abortion
are challenging deep-rooted "structures of feeling" (Williams, 2009) that connect abortion to disgust,
secrecy, pain, fear and guilt.
However, and fortunately, it would not be appropriate to say that affects such as sadness or
sorrow disappear and are replaced by joy, determination, relief and mutual care. The stories of pain
and suffering associated with clandestine and unsafe abortion still appear in the images. The abortion-
rights movements cannot simply forget the pain since women continue to die from unsafe abortions
and the state continues to imprison women for having abortions. Leaving aside these forms of
injustice, violence and suffering would imply denying past and present injustices still suffered by
women.
In a region where "more than 97% of women in childbearing age [...] live in countries where
abortion is restricted or completely banned by law" and where seven countries have legislation that

1
Assistant Researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientficas y Tcnicas (CONICET) - Instituto de
Investigaciones Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.<nayla.luz@gmail.com>.

prohibit abortion for any reason (Guttmacher Institute, 2016), to reflect on the most extreme
consequences of illegality on the life and liberty of women is a first-order political matter. The World
Health Organization presents the most recent health statistics for 2008 which indicate that there were
1100 deaths of pregnant women per abortion in the region during that year (WHO, 2011). That
number represents 12% of the total deaths associated with gestation, childbirth and maternity (WHO,
2011). There are no systematic regional studies regarding the use of criminal law to prosecute and
imprison women for abortion, but Human Rights and Sexual and Reproductive Rights organizations
have denounced many cases, both in countries where abortion is completely prohibited and in
countries where there are legal grounds on which abortion is permitted (Agrupacin Ciudadana por
la Despenalizacin del Aborto Teraputico, tico y Eugensico, 2013; Center for Reproductive
Rights, 2013; Ipas, 2015; Amnesty International, 2016; Deza, 2016; among others).
The abortion-rights and feminists movements in the region denounced that abortion-related
deaths and incarcerations are extreme forms of injustice and violence against women. In addition to
legal, political and scientific arguments, these movements have developed artistic and political work
with strong visual impact drawing the public's attention to these issues. In each of the productions
analyzed in this paper, the pain and grief associated with the deaths, as well as the suffering caused
by the imprisonments constitute grounds for political agitation, that is, for disturbing the mood and
provoking social unrest. The pain is put in motion in the images and in bodies protesting in the streets.
The analysis I present is based on a selection of materials that include both illustrations and
photographic records of protests with a strong visual impact. Following Ana Longoni (2010), I try to
consider these productions in terms of visual politics that, using certain artistic and performatic tools,
promote, revive and renew the creative dimension of political protest.
The persistence of these issues related to suffering, grief and injustice in the struggles over
abortion rights does not imply that this movement can only display its creative power around the
affects often considered as "sad" or that these affects are necessarily "bad" or disempowering. On the
contrary, I would like to show that these visual performances and productions set in motion forms of
affliction and grief that do not necessarily imply paralysis or mere victimization. Affliction and
resistance are deeply imbricated in these productions that mobilize pain to make political claims
charged with a strong desire for justice.

"La Corona [The Crown] and feminist public mourning

Abortion-related deaths have been one of the first pressing issues that the abortion-rights
movement posed in its political and artistic practices. An example of this is an early demonstration
that took place in Mexico City on May 10, 1979. On the Mother's Day, a group of protesters marched
dressed in black as a sign of mourning from the ngel de la Independencia, along Avenida Reforma
to the Monumento a la Madre [Monument to the Mother], carrying a peculiar sorrowful wreath along
with a series of slogans denouncing abortion-related deaths and promoting its legalization.2 This was
a political act and a collective ceremony of great visual impact that brought to public space the grief
for women dying from clandestine abortions and, thus, turning those deaths into a political issue
(Butler, 2006). On that occasion, the protesters' bodies acted in concert on the public scene to express
grief over those deaths while at the same time drawing attention to the injustices of clandestine
abortion and calling for a social transformation.
The Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres [National Women's Movement] organized this
demonstration. Its main activity was later titled "La Corona" [The Crown, The Wreath] by Mnica
Mayer, a Mexican artist who was not present on that occasion but who participated in the
organizational process that led to this protest.3 The sorrowful wreath/crown was blue and ornamented
with flowers and feathers, but also with various objects and materials used to provoke unsafe
abortions. Catheters, knitting needles, medicines and tags with the names of herbs used to induce
abortions such as zopatle and ruda adorned the crown. The use of these objects in the visual politics
in favor of legal abortion aims at making visible and denouncing both, the daily life of abortion and
the risks and suffering historically imposed by clandestine conditions (Vacarezza, in press).
The crown also had two little mirrors attached to it that carry the legend abortadora en
potencia [potential aborter]. The mirror invites those women present to recognize themselves as
someone who could have an abortion and, therefore, as someone who is vulnerable to die in that act
due to clandestine conditions. It is a proposal that encourages the individual recognition of women as
part of a collective that includes women who died and who are at risk of dying due to clandestine
abortions. In the acknowledgement of that shared experience of fragility a social demand is publicly
expressed.
As Judith Butler argues (2006), mourning and recognition of the lives that have been lost as
valuable generate the conditions to re-imagine the political community. On that occasion, protesters
were mostly women, although there were some men, young boys and girls as well. All of them

2
Mnica Mayer (2004) and Marta Lamas (2015) refer to this protest.
3
The photographs recording it were taken by Antonio Mayer, brother of Monica Mayer, and by Ana Victoria Jimnez, a
feminist whose extensive archive is now in the Universidad Iberoamericana de Mxico.

mobilized to remember women who died due to clandestine abortion. Thus, they performed an
alliance between those who are alive and those who are not, in which kinship and intimacy rules that
usually govern private mourning are not followed. Neither they follow the heroic logics that usually
guide public mourning. On the contrary, these are anonymous deaths that result from social
abandonment and which are not registered as a relevant matter for the community. The public
mourning for these deaths draws attention to the need to recognize a common social problem that
exceeds those who can get pregnant.
Mnica Mayer kept a document in which the Delegacin Cuauhtmoc [municipal
administration] authorized the Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres [National Women's Movement] to
"take flowers" to Monumento a la Madre [monument for the mother]. The local government allowed
the demonstration because it assumed that it would be a tribute to "the mother" who, in Mexico and
throughout Latin America, is a symbol of self-sacrificing love closely linked to the catholic virgin
Mary figure. But, this time, the tribute is not addressed to "the mother" as a cultural icon of
reproductive duty but to those who decided not to carry a pregnancy to term and died because of it.
It is a misplaced grief because it is performed in a location devoted to celebrate the maternal ideal
associated with "life" and not with "death." Demanding the public space to recall those who disobey
the motherhood mandate is a disruption of the maternal ideal and its affective repertoires linked with
self-sacrificing love, surrender and unconditional care.
The protesters who marched carrying the wreath also carried signs where it could be read
Luto por las madres muertas en aborto clandestino" [Mourning for the mothers who died in
clandestine abortions] and 80.000 muertas cada ao [80,000 female deaths each year]. The posters
show an early gesture of commitment to quantitatively measure the problem, although today political
language avoids calling "maternal deaths" to those women who died due to abortion. However
given that they are women who died because they had made the decision not to be mothersthey are
called "deaths of pregnant women".
This act of public mourning was not an isolated or exceptional event, but a political strategy
that is repeated and it is part of the movement's protest repertoires at a regional level. In the city of
Sao Paulo, on September 28, 2014, to commemorate the Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion
in Latin America and the Caribbean another ritual of public mourning was performed. In this case,
feminist organizations convened a "Funeral procession for black women who died from clandestine
abortion". In this act of mourning and memory, like in others of the same type, some forms of

indignation are posed against present and past injustices, but this time placing strong emphasis on
racist and classist logics that are reinforced and reproduced in the shadows of illegality.
Since the V Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe [Fifth Latin American and
Caribbean Feminist Encounter] held in 1990, it was decided to promote the regional fight for the right
to abortion on September 28, the same day that, in 1871, the "Law of Free Womb" was enacted in
Brazil. More than a century after slavery abolition, children are born free, but motherhood continues
to be mandatory and, therefore, "freedom of wombs" remains as an outstanding debt in the region.
And that is especially true for poor and racialized women, who have little access to safe abortion.
This funeral procession, as a public manifestation of mourning, is a way of drawing public attention
to the differential vulnerability affecting black women.
For this mourning ceremony people were invited to march along Avenida Paulista wearing
black as a sign of grief. But it was not an act that expressed discouragement or a gloomy emotional
state. On the contrary, hooded women heaved a coffin in protest, but also in a show of intimacy and
closeness with the body of the absent woman. The flowers adorning the coffin, as well as the burning
candles around it express forms of respect for the memory of the absent woman.
These manifestations of "agonistic mourning" (Athanasiou, 2016)where public space is
taken to remember those who have died unjustlylink abortion-rights activism with the Human
Rights movements in Latin America who have already denounced and carried out the work of
mourning for the people killed and disappeared in the dictatorships. It would also be possible to find
points in common with AIDS crisis activism and anti-femicide activism that, in different ways, have
brought mourning into public space as a form of protest.
Public mourning rituals are one of the political strategies of the abortion-rights movements
that reverberate in different ways up to the present day throughout the region. In these political rituals,
those who represent the "other" of the maternal ideal that our culture celebrates so insistently become
worthy of memorialization and public affliction. These rituals inscribe in the public space the
abortion-related deaths as lives worthy of being mourned (Butler, 2006), whose losses were produced
by social injustices that must be solved.
As spectral presences, women who died from abortion haunt the political life of our region.
They are persistently invoked and given public visibility through feminist performances that make
mourning a relevant practice of the struggle for justice and reproductive freedom. From that grieving,
different forms of sadness and affliction arise, but also of indignation and rejection of the injustices
that lead women to die from unsafe abortions.

Bars, butterflies and flowers against the criminalization of abortion

Whether in countries where abortion is totally illegal, or in countries where penal codes allow
abortions on certain grounds, the large number women criminalized due to obstetric complications
and abortions is worrying. We can mention here the cases of Mexico, El Salvador and Argentina as
countries where the feminist and women's movement have intervened strongly with various visual
and performative strategies to denounce state violence and to claim for the release of female prisoners.
The legalization of abortion in Mexico City in 2007 generated a strong conservative reaction
in many states where the constitutions were amended to "protect life from conception" and the
criminal prosecution of women was significantly aggravated (Lamas, 2015). Different feminist and
women's organizations have been promoting legal defense and protesting for the release of female
prisoners.
In El Salvador, reforms of the Criminal Code and the Constitution in 1998 and 1999
eliminated the grounds in which abortion was not punishable, and now it is one of the seven countries
in the region that totally forbid it (Centro de Derechos Reproductivos, 2013). The freedom campaign
for "Las 17" [Seventeen Women] had a great public repercussion; seventeen pardons were petitioned
for women serving prison sentences of up to 40 years due to abortions and obstetric complications.
In Argentina, the case of the young woman Beln, from Tucumn, generated a great social
mobilization that achieved the goal of releasing her in 2016. Beln remained incarcerated for more
than two years for having suffered an abortion that was labeled by the court as aggravated homicide
(Deza, 2016).
Despite the differences between the cases, their particular circumstances, and the specific
legal issues at stake, a careful look at the visual politics deployed allows us to notice some regularities
that are worth analyzing. I believe that through these repetitive elements the abortion-rights regional
movement builds a promising and effective visual language to oppose the criminalization of abortion.
One of the repetitive elements are the bodies shackled or behind bars. In street demonstrations,
women often put themselves behind false bars or shackle themselves. Womens bodies exposed to
the arbitrary power of the state are showed in public space.
Imprisonment, occurring outside of public view, is displayed on the streets and thus becomes
accessible to public awareness. Those women who cannot appear publicly because they have been
unjustly deprived of one of the basic rights of citizenship, freedom, are brought to the public space
by the demonstrators. In these street actions, demonstrators stand in solidarity with those who cannot

be present because they are under detention.4 Showing themselves shackled or behind fantasy bars,
the demonstrators perform an act of resistance demanding female prisoners be released. Those who
put the body in that public scene to denounce injustice challenge the isolation imposed on incarcerated
women. These are acts of great visual impact where bonds of solidarity are built between the detainees
and the demonstrators. Following Judith Butler (2015, p. 171), it can be said that these networks of
solidarity enact a productive contradiction: those who are deprived of their liberty can exercise some
freedom and the right to appear in public, even when they are unjustly deprived of that basic rights.
A recurrent way of promoting solidarity with women incarcerated for abortion has been to
disseminate a first name along with information of her case. Although in all cases the name is
fictitious to preserve the anonymity of women, it plays the role of personalizing and letting the public
to identify the uniqueness of her story. In the case of the young Argentinian woman, Beln, her name
and her story became a political cause that carried a cry for justice. In a demonstration in Tucumn
the city where Beln was incarceratedactivist of Mumal put themselves behind fantasy bars, with
white and green masks that covered their faces and carried the inscription "Somos Beln" (We are
Beln). The green color of the masks is the color that identifies the Campaa Nacional por el Derecho
al Aborto Legal, Seguro y Gratuito en Argentina (Argentinian Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe
and Free Abortion). On the other hand, the white masks unequivocally refer to the early Argentine
Human Rights Movement that used them to make symbolically possible the public presence of the
disappeared (Longoni, 2010). As in those marches to claim for the disappeared during the
dictatorship, each of the demonstrators was depersonalized by covering their faces with the mask and
symbolically lending their bodies, in solidarity, to the incarcerated woman to make their appearance
possible in the public space.
In addition to the bars, the chains, and the masks, other visual elements like the flowers, birds
and butterflies appear in these visual productions. In El Salvador, the campaign for the freedom of
"Las 17" [Seventeen Women] has the flowers as protagonists together with the motto "Una flor por
las 17... No dejemos que sus vidas se marchiten! (A flower for the seventeen women Let's not
allow their lives to fade!). When the seventeen requests for pardon were presented to the Legislative
Assembly in 2014, the event was accompanied by a mobilization of people carrying bouquets of
flowers with the aforementioned slogan and the names of women prisoners. The logo of the campaign,
its videos and other visual material have flowers as protagonists. In this case, the flowers highlight

4
The performative strategy of taking the place of those who are absent is recurrent in the Human Rights movement,
especially in demonstrations related to disappeared persons in Argentina and in the region (See, Longoni, 2010, 2010a).

the urgency of the claim and the fragility of those lives, but they also make a symbolic affirmation of
each of those lives as valuable and beautiful.
The broad movement for the release of women incarcerated for abortion in the region does
not produce images reinforcing sad and victimizing affects as a way of generating interest through
commiseration. On the contrary, even while dealing with situations of extreme vulnerability and
injustice related to deprivation of freedom, this movement creates ways to imagine, visually represent
and act solidarity, justice and freedom.
In an illustration of the Mexican organization "Producciones y milagros" [Productions and
Miracles], a woman shouts behind bars. The characters action seems to want to break with the
isolation imposed by the confinement. The protagonist does not lack capacity for action and she is
not suffering and resigned. On the contrary, she can be seen acting with passion. The character and
the bars are illustrated in black and white, but in the image, is also possible to see fuchsia and violet
birds, flowers and butterflies. These other figures do not seem to respect the divisions between
"inside" and "outside" imposed by the bars. Flowers, butterflies and birds express fragility, but also
beauty and hope placed in the vital persistence in spite of the confinement and the injustice. The
illustration is completed by a slogan that is, increasingly, gaining regional strength: "Ni crcel ni
muerte a las mujeres por abortar (Neither prison nor death to women due to abortion).

Neither prison nor death to women due to abortion

The study of visual productions on womens incarceration and deaths for abortion in the
region shows that some features reverberate (Scott, 2009, 2012) in different locations and
temporalities. Through echoes and loans, feminisms and women's movements are shaping a regional
visual language strongly charged with affects that provide elements for social transformation and
social criticism. The vulnerability to death and to the arbitrary power of the state is not crystallized
into a position that leads to victimization, or to passivity and much less to inaction (Butler, Gambetti
and Sabsay, 2016). On the contrary, in a context of pressing realities, these visual politics produce
and propagate creative forms of mourning, indignation, solidarity and hope.
The public mourning for women who died from unsafe abortions is a way of expressing pain
and recognizing a loss, but it is not accompanied by forms of paralysis or dejection. On the contrary,
it is an "agonistic mourning" (Athanasiou, 2016) and a form of protest that forges a common
experience, disputes the community boundaries and politicizes the causes of those deaths. It is also

an unfinished mourning, which will continue to publicly appear in the region until abortion becomes
legal, safe and free for every woman.
Indignation is a recurring affect that mobilizes criticism and collective political action
(Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta, 2001). The forms of resistance to the injustices affecting women are
also linked to the protests against class and race regimes that make poor and racialized women more
vulnerable of dying or being incarcerated for abortion.
Solidarity is another recurrent affect of these visual politics. The images and performances
respond to the suffering of others while at the same time call the public to respond and to offer their
support. Especially in the performances, solidarity bonds are created when the demonstrators
symbolically occupy the place of the incarcerated women and invite to consider the dead women as
equals who deserve to be publicly remembered.
These visual politics, even in the face of sufferingor, perhaps, precisely because they are a
response to sufferingdo not give up the desire for social transformation. Visual elements are
developed to fight for the release of the female prisoners and for the cessation of deaths. But in
addition to rejecting past and present injustices, it is also a matter of opening up possibilities in order
to end the threat of death and imprisonment over those who want an abortion. Hope is then set in
motion in these visual productions that invite us to envision a future of justice where bodily freedoms
linked to sexuality, abortion and reproduction can be joyfully exercised.

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10
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