Rape and murder of 16-year-old girl has fuelled a movement across Latin America demanding end to violence against women.
Perez’s murder in Mar del Plata ignited widespread anger in Argentina, becoming a symbol of the Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) movement to demand action on femicide.
The movement began in Argentina in 2015 and has spread through Latin America, where at least 4,473 women were murdered in 2021, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Matias Farias was convicted on Thursday to life in prison for sexual abuse, supplying narcotics, and femicide. The court determined Juan Pablo Offidani was an accessory to the crime and sentenced him to eight years.
In November 2018, the two men were convicted for drug dealing but the rape and femicide charges were thrown out because judges determined that it could not be established whether or not there had been consent.
The ruling caused outrage, and it was annulled in 2020 by an appeals court for “lack of gender perspective” and “incompatibility” with international human rights law.
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez visited Perez’s family on International Women’s Day this year. On Twitter, he called for justice in the case and criticised the country’s justice system for what he called a lack of gender perspective in the previous trial.
“In the name of all of the other girls who we are also missing, we are not going to permit impunity,” Fernandez said in a tweet.
Marta Montero, Perez’s mother, told Al Jazeera last year that her daughter’s absence was still painful. “Your soul hurts. You feel it in your body. Your body hurts. It is just terrible,” she said.
But Montero vowed to keep fighting for justice, and she and her husband, Guillermo Perez, had started an NGO that tracks femicides and advocates for the victims.
“We have had incredible support, not just in Mar del Plata but across the country. And we never stopped fighting,” Montero said in 2022. “That’s very important. Not just that the family doesn’t stop fighting but that they believe in what they’re fighting for.”