‘A whole spectrum of hatred’: women face increased violence in Milei’s Argentina as rights are eroded

Women march on Argentina’s congress to protest against gender violence in Buenos Aires. The writing on the mask, Vivas nos queremos, translates as: ‘We want ourselves to be alive.’ Photograph: Mariana Nedelcu/Reuters

In the week before her murder, Fernanda Soledad Yramain lay awake at night listening as a motorbike circled the house where she was hiding. “She kept saying ‘it’s him’,” remembers Daniella Viscarra, Soledad’s sister-in-law with whom she had sought refuge in the Tucumán countryside. “She was scared all of the time.”

A month earlier, in September 2024, 29-year-old Soledad had ended a relationship with her boyfriend, Francisco Timoteo Saldaño. They had been together since she was 14 and he was 35, and shared three children. In the final year of their relationship, Saldaño had turned violent.