Needle and Threat
At first glance their colorful letters, lace and flowers stood out. But reading one sentence after another, it was impossible not to feel a chill running up your spine. Each of these fabrics told stories of femicides that occurred between 1998 and 2015 throughout the country.
In Guanacaste, Costa Rica, alone during the last six years there were 25 femicides, and between 2015 and 2017, an average of 4,600 complaints of domestic violence were filed with the courts.
As part of many workshops to the women in these comunities, they received psychological support, legal advice and help to start their own businesses. In one of the modules, women had to creatively visualize violence, through a photograph, murals or posters. They chose to embroider.
Rosario Gutiérrez, promoter for the National Institute for Women, was one of the ones in charge of holding workshops. When I asked her for those embroideries to photograph them for this photo story, she let go of them as carefully as someone releasing an amulet, along with some requests: take good care of them and ask the souls for permission before handling them. It is impossible to ignore that, on that square of white cloth, the stories of two women coexist: the one who was killed and the one that was able to escape from the circle of violence just in time.
