In April, 60 percent of Evyvi Agreda’s body was left with severe burns following an attack from her alleged stalker Carlos Hualpa. He is suspected to have doused the 22-year-old in gasoline on a bus and set her on fire in Miraflores, Peru. Two months after the attack, Agreda has now died from a series of infections resulting from her second and third-degree burns.

Witnesses have said that Hualpa spoke to Agreda as she burned, saying “If you aren’t mine, then you’ll be nobody’s.” Since the attack, she has undergone 15 surgeries.

According to Agreda’s family, Hualpa, a former colleague, had followed and harassed her for two years. Despite Agreda properly filing complaints against Hualpa with authorities, police officials refused to follow up, allowing him to continue to stalk his victim.

As women’s rights activists in Peru condemned the murder of Agreda, they took to the streets on Saturday to protest sexual violence in the country, a move considered to be a “cry against impunity,” and “a cry for equality and for the decent treatment of women,” by Ana María Romero,the country’s women’s minister.

However, not every public official shared the same sentiment.

On Friday, after receiving news of her death, President Martín Vizcarra issued a statement reading: "This type of aggression should lead to the criminal being detained and put in jail for life." An attempt to offer his sympathies, Vizcarra was immediately faced with widespread backlash after adding: "Sometimes that's how life is and we have to accept it."

The women’s rights activists who took to the streets to protest femicide as a part of the NiUnaMenos movement were tear-gassed by police.

The protest followed others throughout Latin America specifically in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil over the past year, under the slogan #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less). NiUnaMenos is a paraphrase of the words of murdered Mexican activist and poet Susana Chavez Castillo: “Ni una mujer menos, ni una muerte más” (Not one woman less, not one more death).

Practically daily, headlines report the epidemic of femicide in Peru, a country that has seen a 55% rise in gender violence over the past year.

Veronika Mendoza, president of political party New Peru, replied to President Vizcarra saying: "No, Mr. Martin Vizcarra, this is not 'how life is.'" She continued, "Eyvi was killed by Carlos Huallpa but also machismo in the state and in society. Promote policies with a gender focus to prevent and eradicate violence, don't let them keep killing us; it's in your hands."

Women’s rights activist and the program director of Promsex, Rossina Guerrero, was one among many to call President Vizcarra’s statement, and his administrative policies, an enabler of continued gender-motivated violence in the country. In recent years, Peru’s political right had aligned with evangelicals and Catholics to revise Peru’s school curriculum to promote traditional family values — a move that women’s rights groups have regarded as a perpetuation of sexist and homophobic attitudes.

“Regrettably, this president has ceded to the ultra-conservatives and doesn’t want to talk about the structural causes of violence against women like machismo,” said Guerrero.“ [Vizcarra] is making political calculations at the cost of women’s lives.”

Evyvi Areda

Get relevant content delivered to you once a week