Yenifer López is 19 years old. Since 2016, she has lived in San Mateo County, in the heart of Silicon Valley. She migrated from El Salvador with her mother, Yesenia, for the same reason that thousands of people try to reach the United States: “to fulfill a dream.” But her story is more like a nightmare; and, although today she is a nursing student, she knows that there are wounds that do not heal.

Crossing the thousands of kilometers that separate El Salvador from the United States was not easy. On the journey, which lasted more than a month, the two were as one, as it had always been. “Whether it was in the rain, enduring hunger… At one point I even got hypothermia,” Yenifer recalls. They were also victims of a kidnapping attempt, but despite every obstacle, they crossed the border into the United States. “My mother told me that I was going to meet people I had never met, that I would have a future here, that there would be nothing impossible.” What neither of them imagined was that they would not be free of danger in their dream country.

Last year, Yesenia was murdered in her home. Her death was added to that of 74 other women who were victims of domestic violence in California. This is the term contemplated by law in the United States to refer to abusive behavior in a relationship used as a form of power and control, and expressed in physical, sexual, emotional, or economic actions or threats. In America, legislation still limits gender-based violence to the domestic area and does not recognize femicide as a distinct form of homicide.

Yesenia met her partner shortly after arriving in San Mateo and they had a child in 2017. He was also an immigrant. She wanted to give her children the family she had not been able to build in El Salvador. But the dream faded away. “He really liked drinking. He would hit the walls, he would scream,” Yenifer recalls.

In the ‘Golden State’, popularly known as progressive, about 124 women are murdered by their partners every year. It is an area where Latinas, who represent 20% of the population, are a target. According to official data, of the total number of fatal victims in 2023 (381), 74 deaths were directly related to domestic violence, and of these, 41 of the victims were Hispanic; that is, 55%. But that is an issue that is not talked about or rarely mentioned.

Unlike other countries on the American continent that have included the criminal figure of femicide or feminicide to give visibility to murders based on gender that directly affect girls, adolescents, adults, elderly women and trans people, in the United States this term does not exist. However, a report by the Violence Policy Center from October 2024 shows that almost nine out of ten women murdered in 2022 died at the hands of men they knew. “The relationship of victim to offender differs significantly between male and female victims of homicide. Compared to a man, a woman is far more likely to be killed by her spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member than by a stranger,” the document notes.

Paradoxically, California saw a 14.2% decrease in homicides among the general population last year. However, murders of women increased. And this is an upward trend.

Yesenia was murdered by her partner and father of her second child in July, a couple of days after Yenifer’s high school graduation. In 2023, San Mateo County, with just over 700,000 inhabitants, recorded five homicides and two suicides related to domestic violence, a classification that includes women and men as victims. This incidence of cases prompted the formation of a joint prevention and care force.

One of the first actions by this group, which includes public and civil society bodies, was to meet with community members to understand their perceptions of how the system works. “People are frustrated by their experiences with the court and in their search for support,” Noelia Corzo, who leads this organization, told EL PAÍS. She also denounced that this year the funds allocated to the courts in charge, for example, of issuing restraining orders, were cut, which has weakened the system. Despite the efforts, five deaths have been reported in 2024, a number that includes two children and a nine-month-old unborn child (the victim was pregnant).

“The judge wants to see the bruises, the broken bones”

Senator Susan Rubio, who is of Mexican descent, points out the same shortcomings. “I grew up as a Latina hearing that what happens at home stays at home,” she tells EL PAÍS as she recalls her path to the legislature. In 2016, she made her story public. She confessed that her husband, a political figure, had beaten her for years; she went on to become one of the most active voices in trying to eradicate this reality.

“We are a very progressive state, but we are very far behind when it comes to these things,” emphasizes Rubio, who in 2020 managed to include the concept of “coercive control (manipulation)” in the California Family Code. This criminal type recognizes isolation, economic violence and communication control as forms of psychological abuse. “The judge wants to see the bruises, the broken bones. If they don’t see the scars, it’s not abuse to them. So I changed the law, because coercive control is also violence,” she underscores.

Yenifer did not know that her mother was being abused until the situation got out of hand. And Yesenia did not trust the authorities, as is the case with many immigrants. “Here, Latinas face language barriers and those of us who have been activists know that there is fear of the police,” notes the senator. Studies from the 2000s were already pointing out the lack of “cultural sensitivity” in police responses to Hispanic women in situations of domestic violence, and recommended including immigration factors to better understand their background.

In the early hours of July 28, Yesenia’s partner tried to enter the small apartment where she, their seven-year-old son, and Yenifer were living. “My brother was already asleep. At around 11:30 p.m. he started knocking on the door, looking for a fight. My mom told him: ‘If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police. ’ So he left,” Yenifer recalls. But he later returned. “When he saw that the police never arrived, he came back.” Yesenia had not made the emergency call.

Data from the California Department of Justice indicates that, in 2023, more than half of crimes against women (59%) were committed inside a home. This is what happened to Yesenia. Fernando sneaked in and she saw him but did not understand what was happening. It was dark. Fernando stabbed her five times in the heart and tried to do the same to Yenifer. “The last words he said to my mother were: ‘Mija, I told you this was not going to end well, you deserved it,’” says Yenifer, who survived the attack and is now caring for her brother. More than a year has passed since then. “The scars are healing, but the pain is there forever.”

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