Irma Gallo.
I could start writing this review with the following sentence:
On July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was a victim of femicide in Mexico City.
And although in that year that feels so distant the term "femicide" did not exist either in Mexican law or in our collective imagination, the phrase would not be incorrect. Because that is what happened to the younger sister, the only sister, of writer and academic Cristina Rivera Garza: an ex-boyfriend, a man of tiny spirit, heart and reason, who did not understand, who did not want to accept that she no longer wanted anything to do with him, broke into her apartment in Azcapotzalco during the early hours of the morning and murdered her with impunity.
Three decades later, with that vocation of archivist and detective that has animated at least two of his previous works (No one will see me cry, 1999, and Autobiography of cottonShe is convinced that the right word to use to describe her sister's murder is "love," and her heart is on fire. femicideno crime of passion ?since there is no longer room for euphemisms?, Cristina Rivera Garza undertakes the writing of Liliana's invincible summer (Random House Literature, 2021).
I write that "with the vocation of archivist and detective", because it all began with the opening, reading and organization of Liliana's archives: her notebooks and the rest of the things that for so many years remained hidden, silent, immersed in the dry darkness of boxes labeled with her name.
Opening those boxes, and the animal scream, the shock that such an event produced in Cristina's body, were the first steps to unravel what happened during the last hours that her sister was alive.
In July 1990 Liliana was a 20 year old girl, an architecture student, beautiful, brilliant, passionate about her career, living alone for the first time and tasting the freedom that every human being deserves.
A young woman planning to do postgraduate studies in the UK, she had a bright horizon ahead of her.
As in Autobiography of cotton, Cristina Rivera Garza narrates part of her research in the first person. There it was about tracking down, by car, driving along highways and roads taken over by the narco, what was left of Estación Camarón, the town from which her grandparents were expelled by a strike and the devastation of the cotton harvest, which was their way of life.
Here, the writer recounts the long walks, subway rides and Uber rides through Mexico City, from the Roma neighborhood to Azcapotzalco, in search of the file on her sister's femicide, and later, in the desire to know the apartment where she was murdered. Even if it had already changed, even if the layout of the space was not the same as when Liliana lived there.
This part, in Liliana's invincible summer, is the narration of the monster of bureaucracy in the prosecutor's offices, where they send the writer from one office to another because the file is not there; of the tiredness of the feet that walk along avenues looking for Liliana's trail; there where she passed to go to school, the stairs of the subway station she stepped on so many times, the sidewalks she walked on, the campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana - UAM - Azcapotzalco where she studied and shared her time during breaks with her classmates. Azcapotzalco where she studied and shared break times with her classmates.
The first line of Liliana's portrait is drawn from the words of her diaries. Cristina says that
Liliana was by far the real writer in the family.
Because the young woman filled her notebooks with transcriptions of poems and songs, but also with her reflections and the narration of her moods, some anecdotes, the most important things of her days.
The first time Liliana wrote Angel Gonzalez Ramos' name was on a Sunday, June 10, 1984.
Angel is the man whose description matches the one given by neighbors to the police with the one who entered the young student's apartment that morning when all the pain in the world took place.
Angel is the individual who exercised against Liliana a continuous violence that she did not know how to name, although towards the end of her days she was already determined to banish from her life, to begin to walk towards another side.
Angel is the guy who managed to escape through the roofs of the neighboring houses when the police came for him, to execute the arrest warrant against him for the murder of Liliana.
Angel is, therefore, the unpunished feminicide.
The second part of Liliana's portrait is constructed from the testimonies of her friends and classmates. They agree on her attractive, determined and generous character, on her talent for architecture, on her leadership. Also, in the dark and insistent presence of a guy who visited her from Toluca, who didn't get involved with her group of friends, who she never wanted to talk about, someone from her past who insisted on continuing in her present. "Sometimes he would pick her up at the university," some say; "he would arrive on his motorcycle and they would leave, skidding, both of them without helmets," others say.
Another trace is the one the writer makes of her sister: through Cristina Rivera Garza's story we get to know the girl Liliana was; her sisterly quarrels, her will to believe in love once she reached adolescence, her unquenchable thirst for freedom.
The next line, almost certainly the most loving, is that of her parents' testimonies. Ilda Garza Bermea and Antonio Rivera Peña are the sketchers. Liliana in the womb ("she came pierced," says the mother), Liliana as a baby ("she sucked the finger of her left hand," writes the father), Liliana as a child, Liliana as a teenager in love with a man who did not convince either of them:
But how he made her suffer in high school. I don't remember when they broke up for the first time, or if it was the first time, but Lili cried a lot.
Ilda, the mother, remembers.
I confronted Angel several times. One of the ones I remember most had to do with the fact that he would come to see her at the house in front of the house. Liliana was already in college and for us it was a luxury to have her in the house. Your mother cooked something special (...) That day I couldn't help it. Through the window I saw that he was there on the sidewalk, on one side of the lawn, with a biker shorts, a dirty T-shirt, all unkempt. I came out immediately and told him that was no way to visit a girlfriend. I told him that when I was young, I wore my best clothes to see Ilda. Shoes shined. Clean hair. I also told her that, if she wanted to keep visiting Liliana at home, she had to show more respect for her?
Antonio, the father, writes.
For the story of the feminicide of her beloved sister, the author resorts to the omniscient narrator who looks at everything with the necessary distance to describe the discovery of the body of the young student by her friend Manolo, the arrival of the police, of Ana, a very close friend, and of the reporter who covered the story for the newspaper. La PrensaTomás Rojas Madrid.
What happened next - how she was notified in Houston, where she lived; how she bought the plane ticket over the phone; how she flew to Mexico City; how she took care of her sister's funeral because her parents were away in Europe - Cristina Rivera Garza writes as if the words were moving with difficulty through a dense fog, as if on a stage where no one is recognizable. Everything is confusing. The edges are blurred. I don't know who is who. The grieving sister moves like a zombie through the scenarios she will now have to face, oblivious to everything but the pain that overcomes her: "Someone is approaching through the crowd at the airport". "Someone opens the door of an office. "Someone mentions the word money. "Someone says: this is an injustice." "Someone says: I will miss her," she writes.
Undoubtedly, at the origin of this book is the need to name.
For the first time I know I can pronounce your name without falling to my knees (...) The air of your full name: Liliana Rivera Garza.
The author writes.
There is the need to say, with all its letters, that the patriarchy killed Liliana. That what happened to her was a feminicide. That her murderer is free, living with impunity.
But also, and above all, that justice will come for her and for all the women who die every day at the hands of their partners, their parents, their colleagues, their so-called friends, their brothers, their schoolmates.
The need to say it and repeat it: that we are forever angry and that we are going to throw the patriarchy away.
