Sat, Mar 07, 2020 page7

• Venezuela’s Ratgirls riding against sexism

  • AFP, CARACAS
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  When she rides alone around the streets of Caracas astride a Suzuki GS500, Ana Julia Mosquera tucks her long hair inside her helmet and wears baggy clothes.

  “Sometimes I prefer to ride looking like a man, for safety,” she said.

  Not just for safety, but also to avoid comments she and her fellow members of the Venezuelan all-female Ratgirls biker group suffer on a regular basis.

  

  A member of the Ratgirls bike club sits on her motorcycle outside a bar in Caracas, Venezuela, on Feb. 24.

  Photo: AFP

  Mosquera has become immune to sexist quips like: “That’s a lot of bike for you.”

  The 23 members of the Ratgirls are not looking to start a fight between the sexes, but they want respect from a biker world dominated by men.

  “Crazy things always happen to us in the street,” said Mosquera, a 32-year-old audiovisual producer and Ratgirls president.

  The Ratgirls, who were formed in 2014 after the mixed Rats biker club banned women, are identified by a black leather jacket with orange stripes, embroidered with the words: “Long life.”

  Safety in numbers is crucial in a city such as Caracas, one of the most violent in the world.

  Three times someone has tried to steal Mosquera’s bike. She even keeps its battery locked inside a cage.

  Venezuela’s murder rate last year was 21 per 100,000 inhabitants, government data showed, but the Venezuelan Observatory non-governmental organization said the figure was actually 60: 10 times the global average.

  The Ratgirls ride in groups to reduce the chance of being the victims of crime.

  Several times they have been mistaken for notorious colectivos — civilians armed by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime who also ride bikes.

  Oil-rich, but cash-strapped Venezuela is in the grip of five years of recession, and a chronic economic crisis that has left millions in poverty and shortfalls in basic necessities, such as food and medicine.

  However, Maduro’s regime has maintained price controls on fuel — a great advantage for the Ratgirls, Mosquera said.

  The Ratgirls are not just trying to show off, though, theirs is the kind of passion that leaves hands dirty.

  Some, like Jennifer Rodriguez, are learning to fix their bikes themselves. She thinks nothing of tackling her Keeway Superlight 200 to mend a problem.

  Half Spanish and half Venezuelan, Rodriguez joined the club just over a year ago.

  “I started riding around with them and I stayed, now they’re my family,” said the single mother with a 10-year-old daughter.

  Although the Rats biker club barred women from its club, the two groups still take part in events together, said Jose Gonzalez, vice president of the men’s club.

  The 47-year-old, a professional photographer, acknowledges there is a “macho culture” in Venezuela that opposes women bikers.

  “The Ratgirls have done better than other [male clubs], they ride more and have more activities than many [male] clubs,” Gonzalez said.

  The Ratgirls “have a motto: no one is more than anyone if they don’t work harder than the other,” Mosquera said.

  Maryelitza Sanchez, a 48-year-old mother of two, learned to ride a motorcycle out of necessity to get around town.

  “The only thing I’d ridden before in my life was a bicycle,” the personal trainer said.

  She had always been attracted to motorbikes, but her parents prevented her from riding one out of fear.

  After Sanchez got married, her husband was also against the idea.

  “We went around in a car,” she said.

  Everything changed two years ago when she got divorced and needed to use the collapsed metro system in Caracas.

  “Every day I went through a different issue in the metro. There was always a problem, I arrived late or not at all,” she said.

  After falling twice from her Bera 150, she overcame her initial fears.

  “It’s a unique feeling of freedom, of dominion, of control, of power. I feel powerful when I’m on the motorbike,” she said.
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