978 women were killed in the first four months of 2020 and 308 of these cases were feminicides. While quarantine, 21.722 calls were received concerning violence against women. This is the problem Mexico – and women – are facing.
- The goverment
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The Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is doing nothing to prevent these numbers. While addressing his daily morning speech, on May 15, he dismissed the numbers, saying that “90 percent of those calls that serve as your base, are false”. Months before, the murder of Ingrid Escamilla, by her boyfriend, shocked the country after photos of her mutilated body were published in a local newspaper, and a protest was held on International Women Day, on March 8, before the measures against the coronavirus were imposed.
- Start of protests
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Rape and missing people also are on the list of violence against women. On September 2, Marcela Aléman tied herself to a chair on the National Human Rights Commission, after she was told to fill documents, again, to start a process against those she claimed sexually assaulted her. Women kept showing up until the building was taken completely by those the government kept showing their backs. Women with claims of rape, murder, and disappearances.
The building is accepting victims of gender violence, now occupied by feminist groups using balaclavas covering her faces to not be identified. The president continues to tell these groups are manipulated by a partisan agenda and criticized the modifications on paintings of historical figures inside the commission.
These are not the first and not the last of protests like this. In 2019, after an alleged rape, protestors set fire to a police station and a bus terminal in Mexico City, and started what they called the “Glitter Revolution” (“Revolución Diamantina”), composed of throwing pink glitter on public monuments.
- Current situation
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But the claims are the same. End of violence against women, justice for their cases, gender-sensitive police training, expansion of the law about abortion, and recognition of the feminist movement from López Obrador. For now, women on the National Human Rights Commission say they will only leave the building if measures are taken to diminish rape, murder and forced disappearance.
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The article above was edited by Carolina Rodrigues.
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