In a country once lauded as a progressive bastion in Latin America, protections are being dismantled by a populist leader, and gender-based offences are on the rise
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n the week before her murder, Fernanda Soledad Yramain lay awake at night listening as a motorbike circled the house where she was hiding. “She kept saying ‘it’s him’,” remembers Daniella Viscarra, Soledad’s sister-in-law with whom she had sought refuge in the Tucumán countryside. “She was scared all of the time.”
A month earlier, in September 2024, 29-year-old Soledad had ended a relationship with her boyfriend, Francisco Timoteo Saldaño. They had been together since she was 14 and he was 35, and shared three children. In the final year of their relationship, Saldaño had turned violent.
“She started coming round with bruises on her arms, crying. He held a knife to her throat and said he would kill her,” says Sandra Yramain, Soledad’s aunt.
