大男子气概与谋杀

Culture

文艺版块

Bookreview

书评

Femicide in Mexico: Machismo and Murder

墨西哥杀害女性问题：大男子气概与谋杀

An author reconstructs the life of her murdered sister.

一位作家重建了被谋杀的妹妹的人生。

Liliana’s Invincible Summer. By Cristina Rivera Garza.

《莉莉安娜不可战胜的夏天》。作者：克里斯蒂娜·里维拉·加尔扎。

In the early hours of July 16th 1990 Liliana Rivera Garza, a 20-year-old architecture student, was murdered in her flat in Mexico City by her on-off boyfriend Angel Gonzalez Ramos.

1990年7月16日凌晨，20岁的建筑系学生莉莉安娜·里维拉·加尔扎在其墨西哥城的公寓里被男友安吉尔·冈萨雷斯·拉莫斯杀害，她和男友一直分分合合。

He fled and has never been found.

拉莫斯逃走了，至今未被找到。

Three decades later—or, to be specific, because the specifics matter, 29 years, three months and two days later—her sister, Cristina, arrived from her adopted home in Houston to do justice in her own way: by writing about Liliana’s life.

三十年后——确切地说，因为确切细节很重要，应该是29年零三个月零两天之后——她的姐姐克里斯蒂娜从休斯顿的收养家庭来到墨西哥，用她自己的方式伸张正义：通过写下莉莉安娜的人生。

In 2019, when the author returned to the country of her birth, Mexico had become more cognisant of femicide as a phenomenon than it had been in the past.

2019年，当作者回到她出生的国家时，墨西哥对杀害女性这一现象比过去有了更深的认识。

In 2012 the government made murdering a woman because of her gender a specific crime in the federal criminal code.

2012年，墨西哥政府在联邦刑法中将因性别原因而谋杀女性定为一项具体罪行。

Women’s-rights groups regularly campaign on the topic, plastering murdered women’s names over street signs.

女权组织经常发起与此相关的运动，在路牌上张贴被杀害的女性的名字。

Off paper, though, too little has changed.

然而，在现实世界，情况几乎没有改变。

Women across the world are killed at shocking rates by men, usually partners or former ones.

世界各地的女性被男性杀害的比率之高令人震惊，通常凶手是其伴侣或前伴侣。

But Mexico’s violence stands out.

但墨西哥的暴力事件尤为突出。

Women there are murdered at more than twice the rate of those in the United States.

墨西哥女性被谋杀的比率是美国女性的两倍多。

The level of impunity is grotesque.

有罪不罚的程度也极为荒谬。

In 2017 less than 10% of reported murders were resolved in Mexico, compared with over 60% in the United States.

2017年，只有不到10%的谋杀报案在墨西哥得到解决，而在美国，这一比例超过了60%。

Victim-blaming is strong.

责备受害者的倾向很强烈。

“If she had waited for marriage to have sex,” people whisper of Liliana. “If she had not had an abortion…”

“要是她等到结婚之后再发生关系的话，”人们这样低声谈起莉莉安娜，“要是她没有堕胎的话……”

Anger at this lack of accountability seethes through Ms Rivera Garza’s book.

里维拉·加尔扎的书中翻涌着对这种不负责任的言行的愤怒。

Her main goal, however, is not an abstract analysis of femicide but to chronicle a life lost to it.

然而，她的主要目标不是对杀害女性进行抽象分析，而是记录因此而失去的生命。

She does so movingly.

她的记录感人泪下。

Liliana is a good subject.

莉莉安娜是个很好的题材。

She was a talented writer—it runs in the family—leaving an ample archive of notebooks, lists of songs she had listened to, letters sent and unsent and correspondence from friends, often plastered in Hello Kitty stickers.

她在写作方面才华横溢——这是家族遗传的——留下了大量的笔记本、她听过的歌曲清单、已寄出和未寄出的信件以及朋友之间的通信，信纸上常常贴着Hello Kitty的贴纸。

The book weaves these together with police reports, news articles and excerpts of interviews with friends and colleagues.

在书中，这些内容与警方的报道、新闻文章、对朋友和同事的采访摘录交织在一起。

Ms Rivera Garza’s own writing is absorbing and poetic, only infrequently becoming overwrought.

里维拉·加尔扎本身的文笔引人入胜且富有诗意，只是偶尔失于矫饰。

She vividly portrays the talented, adventurous student and her life in the metropolis.

她生动地描绘了这位富有才华、敢于冒险的学生和她在大都市的生活。

Liliana was vibrant and freethinking. She was loyal and direct.

莉莉安娜精力充沛，思想自由，既忠诚又直率。

She thought deeply about love and relationships and how they shaded into possession.

她深深地思考着爱情和各种关系，以及这些是如何逐渐转化为占有。

She was “always speaking to us as though she were coming from a place we were only about to set off to,” says a friend.

她的一位朋友说，她“跟我们说话的感觉，就好像她是从一个我们刚要出发前往的地方回来的”。

Too often those who suffer abuse are considered weak, another facet of the blaming and shaming of victims.

遭受虐待的人往往被认为是软弱的，这是受害者被指责和羞辱的另一个方面。

Nobody thought that of Liliana.

没有人会这样想莉莉安娜。

Yet despite her circle of confidants, she kept to herself the grip her sometime boyfriend had on her, along with his possessiveness, jealousy and violence.

然而，尽管她有一群密友，她依然隐瞒了男友对她的控制，以及他的占有欲、妒忌心和暴力行为。

There were signs, yes, but for the most part no one, not even she, would have imagined he might kill her.

的确，事情并非无迹可寻，但在很大程度上，没有人，包括莉莉安娜自己，会想到男友会杀了她。

That is not unusual.

这并不少见。

Ms Rivera Garza refers frequently to “No Visible Bruises” by Rachel Louise Snyder, a meticulous study of the often-overlooked risk factors for women being killed by current or former partners.

里维拉·加尔扎经常提到蕾切尔·路易丝·斯奈德的《不可见的瘀伤》，这本书细致地研究了女性被现任或前任伴侣杀害的风险，这些风险往往被人忽视。

The book shows powerfully that Liliana’s murder was a tragic waste of life.

《莉莉安娜不可战胜的夏天》有力地表明，莉莉安娜被谋杀是一场可悲的生命浪费。

The reader wants more of her, for her story to continue; but that would have required that she carried on living.

读者想知道关于她的更多事情，想让她的故事继续下去，但这需要她继续活着。

Instead the end is given over to the two sisters’ parents.

书中最后的结局交给了两姐妹的父母。

“Liliana lay crosswise in my uterus,” their mother recalls.

“莉莉安娜斜躺在我的子宫里。”她们的母亲回忆道。

“I have always believed in freedom because only in freedom can we know what we are made of,” says their clear-eyed father.

“我一直相信自由，因为只有在自由中，我们才能知道我们有多大能耐。”她们眼睛明亮的父亲说。

“Freedom is not the problem. Men are the problem—violent, arrogant, murderous men.”

“自由不是问题所在，男人——暴力、傲慢、杀人的男人——才是问题所在。”