Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes was born in February first, 1945, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. At 29, after graduating Pharmacy and Biochemistry school at the Federal University of Ceará, Maria applied for her masters at Pharmaceutical Sciences School of the University of São Paulo (USP). During this time, she met her future husband, Marco Antonio Heredia Viveros, who was a post grad student in Economics, also at USP.
Their love blossomed into marriage in 1976. After graduating and having a daughter, the couple moved to Maria’s hometown, Fortaleza, where they had two more daughters. At this point, everything seemed normal, until it wasn’t anymore.
Maria as a survivor
Marco Antonio is Colombian and after getting his Brazilian citizenship by marrying Maria, the cycle of aggressions started. Not even 10 years after they got married, in 1983, Marco had already committed a double attempt of femicide against Maria. He shot her in her sleep, leaving her paraplegic and causing her to have both physical and mental trauma. Marco told the police the ‘accident’ was caused by an attempted robbery.
The second attempt happened after Maria was discharged from the hospital, four months later. That was when Maria started to understand what was happening to her. With the help of her family, Maria got a juridic assistant and managed to get out of the house, still having the custody of their daughters.
She fought for years for Marco to be judged for his crimes, but both times he was able to be freed. It was only in 2002 that he finally got locked up, 19 years after committing the crimes.
19 years of resilience
After years of resistance, with international attention and help, the law n.11.340 – named after Maria – was created in August 2006, therefore it completed 18 years in 2024, but Maria’s story wasn’t and still isn’t the only one in Brazil FBSP – a governmental organ of public security- disclosed that in 2022, at least 245.713 cases of domestic violence happened, among 1.437 of femicide.
Earlier this month, Maria gave an interview for a podcast where she told about a time she was being interviewed and the reporter asked her what was the reason for her to ‘deserve’ the shot, insinuating to cheating, to which she responded: “I told my true story and even if I had cheated, I didn’t deserve to die”.
Maria founded a non governmental organization and now she lives to fight against all and any gender motivated violence, evenmore, to make sure bad intended people aren’t able to interpret the law against the victim.
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The article above was edited by Manuela Miniguini.
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