The Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato argued on Monday, September 21, at the Tecnológico de Monterrey that patriarchy is an order of power and not a set of customs, and that women's demands are not against men, but for all of humanity.
Segato, one of the most cited voices in Latin American feminism, delivered the lecture Pensar el mundo con Rita Segato, part of the Alfonso Reyes Chair at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, before nearly a hundred students, faculty and listeners, according to La Jornada. The session took place at midday and featured professors María Concepción Castillo and Mónica Lloret, specialists in her work. Author of Estructuras elementales de la violencia and Contra-pedagogías de la crueldad, she has carried out research and field work in Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico and Argentina, according to El Universal. Her conceptual frameworks are used by prosecutors' offices, civil organizations and courts across Latin America to classify femicide.
In her remarks, reported by El Universal, Segato argued that "if our demands reach their destination, the course of history changes and power hierarchies, domination, collapse." She described patriarchy as "a fully political order" in which both men and women are educated. On expressive violence she held that "there is no problem of impunity. There is an exhibition of impunity that seeks to display territorial dominion," and warned, according to La Jornada, that "our threshold of tolerance for violence has risen brutally." In her reading, those who exercise that cruelty "are not psychopaths, but everyday criminals," and she recalled that "one is not born a man, one becomes one."
Segato's visit to Mexico coincides with an ongoing debate in the region over how to name and prosecute gender-based violence. Her visit continues this Tuesday, September 22, with the presentation of El camino de regreso, her first book of poetry, at 17:00 at the Casa Universitaria del Libro of UNAM.
This piece was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
