The photos of 20-year-olds Brenda del Castillo and Morena Verdi, and 15-year-old Lara Gutiérrez, circulated in the last days of September 2025 alongside the message: “If you’ve seen them or have any information, contact us urgently.”
The girls were last seen on Friday, September 19, around 9:30 PM, leaving an apartment complex in Ciudad Evita, La Matanza—outside of Buenos Aires—on their way to a gas station to meet “a man.” By September 24, the message that accompanied their photos on social media had changed. It was confirmed. The bodies found buried in the backyard of a house in Florencio Varela belonged to Morena, Brenda, and Lara. “The remains, reportedly dismembered, were found in a pit. We demand justice for the girls,” read several posts on Instagram.
During a press conference, Javier Alonso, Buenos Aires Ministry of Security, said the three victims had been forced into a white van and taken to a house about 18 kilometers away, under the promise of payment in exchange for sex. There, they were tortured and mutilated. Their murders were livestreamed on private Instagram and TikTok feeds to an audience of forty-five people.
Buenos Aires authorities attributed the crime to an international drug trafficking organization known as “The Octopuses.” Meanwhile, several major Argentine news outlets—among them the Clarín Group, the country’s largest media conglomerate, known for its conservative editorial line and historical closeness to political and business power—questioned the victims’ character and decisions: Why did they get into the van? Were they partying? Were they prostitutes? Were they mixed up with narcos?
In a video published on Instagram, journalist Virginia Messi argued that the murders of Brenda, Morena, and Lara were not femicides but rather a narco killing during a robbery. Prosecutor Adrián Arribas stopped classifying the crime as “aggravated femicide,” citing premeditation and cruelty.
“No case ever starts out being recognized as femicide,” said Myriam Bregman, national deputy for the Left Front. “It always begins with suspicion—as if the victim must have done something.”
Women’s Bodies as Territory
Tony Valverde, a 20-year-old drug trafficker known as “Little J” who allegedly ordered the triple femicide, was arrested in Peru on Tuesday, September 30. His presumed second-in-command, 28-year-old Argentine Matías Ozorio, was captured just hours later.
During her press conference, Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s Minister of Security, avoided using the word femicide—preferring instead to describe it as a “mafia crime.” Feminist movements recognize the omission as a strategy. Naming it femicide would mean admitting that the State, too, has blood on its hands. Blame shifts instead to drug trafficking organizations, while Milei’s administration can deepen its abandonment of women’s and queer bodies—something it has done since taking power in December 2023.
Patriarchal violence and drug trafficking are not isolated phenomena; narco power expands where the State retreats.
Patriarchal violence and drug trafficking are not isolated phenomena; narco power expands where the State retreats.
Activists on the ground understand this intimately. On September 24, the Ni Una Menos collective — together with the Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de la Argentina (AMMAR), the Columna Mostri, the collective Yo No Fui, and other human rights organizations—marched to Plaza Flores, the Buenos Aires neighborhood where Brenda, Morena, and Lara worked. As they marched, they chanted “The State is responsible!”—a refrain they repeated again three days later in a massive march led by the victims’ families, stretching from Plaza de Mayo—the main city square—to Congress. Demonstrations were held in other cities across the country.
The triple femicide in Florencio Varela exposes a deeper web of drug trafficking, inequality, and state neglect that has taken hold in working-class neighborhoods.
Ana Paredes Landman, a city council member from La Matanza and national deputy for the Left Front, works at a primary school near Barrio Las Antenas, a known hub for narcotics activity. In recent years, attempts to set up “drug kitchens” have multiplied, and it’s been local residents—acting on their own—who’ve tried to stop them.
“The effect is the normalization of these gangs that rule over territories once governed by the State. Children and teenagers often become part of these networks. The State, beyond its direct or indirect involvement with the narco, sustains that absence. Where there’s unemployment and precarity, it’s often the drug trade that regulates social aid and neighborhood survival,” she warns.
Milei’s “Chainsaw”
Two years into Javier Milei’s “Chainsaw Plan” of austerity measures, Argentina faces an economic, political, and social crisis. Purchasing power has collapsed, unemployment has risen, job insecurity is rampant, and ties between figures close to the president and drug traffickers have become increasingly visible.
In a country where wages no longer cover basic needs—and where the government has dismantled social programs for youth and adults—narcos have become the new managers of local economies. They offer loans to neighbors without access to credit, distribute scarce resources such as bottled gas, infiltrate community soup kitchens, and assign precarious jobs. It’s not a new formula: “the narco” governs the territories where neoliberal policies have shredded the social fabric.
The Lucía Pérez Observatory defines narco culture as criminal activity sustained “through the illicit participation of state actors.” At the same time, narco culture produces a specific form of femicide, one imbued with political and cultural meaning. Hence, the concept of narcofemicide: “a special cruelty inflicted on women’s bodies, through degrading methods, sometimes broadcast live to discipline others.”
As Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato notes, women’s bodies become instruments of warning, punishment, and revenge within a narco order built upon capitalist and patriarchal inequality. The anti-feminist rhetoric promoted and amplified by Javier Milei serves as fertile ground for the growth of such crimes.
Violence and Anti-Feminism on the Rise
Today, in Javier Milei’s far-right Argentina, a woman is killed every 30 hours.
In 2024, there were 247 femicides, surpassing the historical average. From January 1 to August 31, 2025, at least 168 cases were recorded, according to the Adriana Marisel Zambrano Observatory. By June, 102 hate crimes—based on sexual orientation or gender identity—had been documented. No updated data has been released from the 144 hotline on sex trafficking since 2023. The administration also partially dismantled the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, as well as the trans employment quota.
Through sweeping austerity, Milei and allied governors have deepened poverty and social marginalization—feeding organized crime.
Through sweeping austerity, Milei and allied governors have deepened poverty and social marginalization—feeding organized crime. Javier Milei has declared war on everything “woke,” feminist, or rights-based, branding it as “communist indoctrination.”
Patricia Bullrich, the Minister of Security, went even further. In an interview on October 17 with libertarian streamer Gordo Dan, she claimed that the surge in murders and assaults against women was the result of “the excesses of feminism.” “The imbalance caused by extreme feminism leads to situations where violence becomes so strong that it ends up destroying the very person who created that logic,” she said.
Just a week earlier, on Saturday, October 11, in Córdoba, Pablo Laurta, a 39-year-old Uruguayan man living in Argentina, shot dead his 26-year-old ex-partner, Luna Giardina, and her mother, Mariel Zamudio. Laurta is the founder of Varones Unidos, a website devoted to defending “men’s rights,” known for its support of Donald Trump and Javier Milei.
At the time of the crime, Laurta already had a complaint filed against him at Córdoba’s Judicial Unit for physical and psychological violence toward Giardina. The court had issued a restraining order, which he violated on January 8, 2024, by hiding on the roof of a house next to his ex-partner’s. He was detained and released a month later.
Fear as Social Control
According to Carolina Dome, a psychologist and professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Javier Milei’s neoliberal agenda has deepened the precarity young women already face. With cuts to gender-based violence programs, weakened labor protections, and fewer public resources, fear dominates daily life: taking the bus at night, harassment in informal jobs, the lack of shelters when a partner or ex threatens them, or the impossibility of reporting abuse in a justice system that revictimizes survivors.
“The anti-feminist rhetoric of Milei is meant to frighten us. Fear paralyzes, and it becomes a tool of social control: to make women self-censor, avoid the streets, and stay silent about abuse for fear of being labeled ‘crazy.’ In areas abandoned by the state, narco-patriarchal forces fill the void, turning women’s bodies into trophies or instruments of torture. Violent men act with impunity,” Dome says.
In low-income neighborhoods, fear becomes part of everyday life as violence and neglect are normalized. Without access to comprehensive sex education or protection from the state, many girls are left vulnerable to trafficking and drug networks. Meanwhile, mothers bear the burden of unpaid care work, and austerity measures deepen what economists call the “feminization of poverty”—the growing concentration of poverty among women.
Argentina has witnessed the power of collective organizing in the pursuit of justice for victims. Neighborhood assemblies and local networks—such as Juntas y a la Izquierda, Pan y Rosas, Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal, Seguro y Gratuito, and Marabunta—help women rebuild the social bonds shattered by violence. Feminist movements channel pain into collective anger, transforming it into grassroots power that demands the public policies women urgently need.
Patriarchal violence thrives on hunger, precarity, fear, and a state that has chosen to withdraw, to be complicit in the violence. In Milei’s Argentina, women’s bodies are the battlefield of a war the authorities refuse to name.
“Long live freedom, damnit!” the president shouts. But in this country, freedom is a privilege reserved for those who do not fear being killed because of their gender.
Daniella “Ella” Fernández (La Habana, Cuba, 1995) is a journalist, photographer, and filmmaker based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores feminism, migration, environment, and social movements across Latin America and the Caribbean.