A HEART IN THE SHADOW

Nichlas Pollier

Following the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab nations of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, Israel occupied most of the Palestinian land, West Bank. This would prove to be the beginning of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal according to international law. To this day, the UN and the international community condemn these settlements, and Palestinians are living in enclaves in the shadow of Israeli settlements. This has subsequently lead to weekly protests against the Israeli settlements and occupation, which often end with violent and deadly clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Palestine is not a country as we know it. Instead it is territories mostly controlled by Israel.

A Heart in The Shadow is an ongoing photographic reportage through the West Bank, where photojournalist Nichlas Pollier investigates what it means to live under occupation from mainly the Palestinian perspective.

EMILIE TOLDAM

“Calledita te ves más bonita” // “Woman, you look more beautiful when you shut up”

The words seems to be whispered in the air, in the living room, in the supermarket, in the bar, in the kitchen, in the park. Everywhere in Mexico. As always. But enough is enough, the Mexican women think.

They don’t share the same blood, yet they feel that blood connects them. And they no longer want to listen to story after story from women about sexual assault and brutal femicide. Or experience it themselves.

For too long, there has been silence. Now the women are standing together, side by side, to tell their stories and demand change in Mexico.

LIZETH SANCHEZ, 20

A chill spreads over Lizeth’s body. She raises her clenched hand in the air, her purple scarf tied around her arm. She shouts along as loud as she can, in chorus with all the other women and girls standing around her on the crowded street near the center of Mexico City:

“Calladita no me veo más bonita” / “I don’t look more beautiful when I shut up”

A memory flares through Lizeths mind. She remembers it so well.

The day she finally decided to tell her mother everything that had happened.

Lizeth wanted to tell her mother about when she was six years old and her 15-year-old cousin lured her into his room in the family house with the teddy bear she wanted most.

How he hadn’t wanted to play, but instead had taken off her dress and even her underwear underneath. How he wanted to touch her body all over.

She would tell her mother about all the times when the same thing happened over and over again.

And about that Christmas the following year when Lizeth woke up to someone touching her body again. She screamed, but fell silent when her mother’s cousin slapped her across the mouth and assured her that if she didn’t keep quiet, Lizeth’s cousin, who was lying right next to her, would be hurt.

“They abused me.”

Suddenly they are out of her mouth. The words.

“Who?” her mother asks. Her voice is cold.

Cousin, uncle, your cousin, sometimes grandmother’s husband, Lizeth stammers out.

Lizeth’s mother looks her daughter in the eyes.

“These are things you have to go through as a woman,” she says. “It’s not something you should tell anyone.”

“Won’t you help me?” Lizeth asks.

“With what?”

“I’m going to report it.”

“It won’t make any difference.”

Her mother’s words hurt.

Lizeth had tried to report it after Christmas 2016. Her uncle’s sister had also believed her and taken her to the station. But Lizeth’s mother had been right. It made no difference.

Those hired to find out what had happened simply said that she must have provoked it herself. 12-year-old Lizeth, who at that moment hated that her body had developed so early and hated that she had tried to say something.

For years she made sure not to make that mistake again. But Lizeth is now 20 years old, and she has had enough.

She no longer want to play a role in protecting those who have abused her ny keeping her mouth shut.

MARIA ANGEL, 42

María was around 12 years old when she started taking the metro alone. One day, she was going to scouts with a friend. The two girls were standing in the aisle of the crowded metro carriage. Suddenly, María felt a hand firmly grab her crotch. She tried to push his hand away, but in vain. He was too strong.

Fortunately for María, people around them began to realize what was happening. They shouted at the man and pushed him out of the carriage when it stopped at the next station.

This was the day María started to have ‘awake eyes’, as she calls them. Eyes that are constantly alert to her surroundings.

Shout Against Silence

Above the crowds hang large canopies of Jacaranda spring flowers, perfectly fitting with the purple that the feminist movement has adobted as their own.

The flowers provide a bit of shade for the more than 90,000 women who have come to the center of Mexico City on the international womens day the 8th of march to call for an end to violence against women in Mexico, an end to macho culture and an end to silence.

The women at the march do not stand alone with their stories. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported in 2021 that more than 70 percent of women from the age of 15 in Mexico have experienced some kind of violence, and the numbers are even higher in the capital, Mexico City, where it is 77 percent.

Killed For Being A Woman

Every day, 10 women are killed in the country, and official figures say that about a third of these can be defined as femicide - where the murder is carried out on the basis of gender.

María Salguero Bañuelos, a Mexican geophysicist and researcher, started a project in 2016 where she created a map of femicides in Mexico that happened between 2016 to 2020. The different colors mark each year. The green crosses show the femicides committed in 2020.

ESTRELLA BERNAL, 30

“Good afternoon.”

A mixture of a chemical and rotten smell greets Estrella as she meets a white-coated man at the door. He explains to Estrella what she is about to see and what she needs to look for to judge whether it is María Fernanda lying there. Pale.

With the word ‘puta’ (Spanish for whore) marked with a knife on the forehead of her face that is cut off.

“Step back,” Estrella is told as she instinctively reaches for the dead arm.

This can’t be right.

María Fernanda, ‘Mafer’, is Estrella’s best friend, like a sister. Or she was.

Now Mafer lies dead on a metal table right in front of Estrella. With the number the coroner keeps calling her, written on a note hanging around her toe.

The naked body was found in a garbage bag on the side of the road ten days after María Fernanda’s 19th birthday, which she and Estrella had celebrated with a glass of Mezcal at a bar in the festive village of Tepoztlán.

María Fernanda’s ex-boyfriend had turned up unexpectedly at the bar with a huge bouquet of pink roses and said he had a big surprise for her saying she had follow him. He had convinced her. She got into a car with him and his two friends and they were off.

That was the last time Estrella saw María Fernanda alive.

Ni una más. Not one more. Not one more person should suffer the same fate as Mafer. Not one more person should go through what Estrella has gone through during the last four years.

This has become Estrella’s motivation.

And even though she knows that María Fernanda is far from being the first Mexican woman to be a victim of femicide, and far from being the last, she will fight.

Side by side with all the other women who, along with Estrella, are fighting the same fight for justice and the right to be a woman in the Mexican society without a constant fear of harassment, abuse, assault and death.

María Fernanda’s ex-boyfriend was sentenced to 80 years in prison. The two friends have not been found and thus have not been prosecuted. This is better than most cases, says Estrella. She explains that the only reason the case was investigated thoroughly enough to convict the ex-boyfriend was because María Fernanda’s father has good contacts in the Mexican justice system.