‘The rapist is you’: semiotics and regional recontextualizations of the feminist protest ‘a rapist in your way’ in Latin America

The performance Un violador en tu camino [A rapist in your way] created by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis received global media attention during the 2019/2020 Chilean protests against inequality and human rights violations. Drawing on insights from Feminist Critical Discourse Studies, Corporeal Sociolinguistics and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies, we analyse three video recordings of Las Tesis’ performances in three capital cities in Latin America: Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. We study how sounds, lyrics, body movements, and accessories work together to defy institutional, material, and symbolic violence against women. We also analyse how intertextual strategies in the Santiago/Chilean performance and their recontextualization in Buenos Aires and Mexico City were employed to resist structural patriarchal norms. The analysis reveals that through an adaptation of the song lyrics and the performances, the following social actors are explicitly identified as the instigators of violence against women: the police and the President (Chile), judges opposed to the legalization of abortion (Argentina) and the Catholic Church (Mexico). This study advances understanding of feminist emancipatory and resistance discourses in Latin America.