Marcela Lagarde on Feminicidio

What changes when a form of violence receives a name? In this discussion at FLACSO Ecuador, Marcela Lagarde moves the analysis of feminicidio beyond a killer and a victim toward social tolerance and state responsibility. Her concern is not only whether criminal law contains a term, but which arrangements allow a woman’s life to be disregarded before and after a killing.

The institutional recording documents an event in Quito on 16 October 2015, uploaded on 23 October, lasting about 77 minutes. Its legislative discussion belongs to that political moment, rather than explaining any country’s current law. It provides a route through the relationships among naming, research and institutional reform.

From an individual killer to conditions that sustain danger

At approximately 26:50–34:05, Lagarde explains her choice of feminicidio. Beyond a perpetrator’s misogyny, she considers social tolerance of violence against women and girls and the state’s reproduction of those conditions. Investigation and accountability cannot then stop at identifying an exceptional individual. Routine disregard, institutional inaction and the organization of social life become part of the problem.

The concept should not be reduced to deciding which spelling—femicide, femicidio or feminicidio—is correct. The recording presents Lagarde’s political and conceptual choice, not a universal definition shared by every jurisdiction. The question is what a name makes visible and what it leaves out: how translation and criminal categories connect research with public duties, rather than simply supplying a stronger label.

The state occupies a double position. It is an object of criticism and a potential site for prevention, investigation and the realization of rights. This tension resists an easy promise that stronger state power necessarily protects women. Responsibility requires questions about what particular institutions do or fail to do, and whether affected people can compel change. A formal promise of protection is not equivalent to effective access.

At approximately 49:19–57:40, Lagarde distinguishes a criminal offense from comprehensive law and policy for a life free of violence. Punishment is not dismissed as meaningless; it cannot replace work on equality, living conditions and enforceable rights. She also distinguishes brief sensitization from sustained professional formation. Expressing sympathy and knowing how to apply protocols or provide access to justice are different capacities.

This suggests a way to evaluate reform: does a change only multiply names and declarations, or alter institutions’ capacity to respond? That is a question developed from the discussion, not a net legal effect already measured in the video. Whether penalties work and how policies operate still require evidence from specific places and periods. A concept cannot settle every empirical debate by itself.

Terrorizing Women compares research connecting misogynist killing to labor, racialization and state relations. The Force of Witness asks who continues searching, documenting and demanding a response after violence. These routes move from the moral gesture of seeing victims toward responsibility for which institutions must respond, and how.