Mexico reaches the International Day Against Gender Violence in the midst of a security crisis caused by sexist violence. Every day 11 women are murdered in the country. While thousands of women march in the streets every month to demand justice, the impunity rate in the country exceeds 95% and only 2% of cases end in sentencing. Only one in 10 victims dares to denounce their aggressor in a spiral of violence from which there is no way out.
The government’s message, however, focuses on demonstrating that progress has been made in combating crimes against women and insists on the feminist vocation of the president, who has even insinuated that the women’s movement has become an opposition movement. to your Administration. “He is a deeply feminist man. If not, half of his Cabinet would not be women, ”the head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, assured in an interview with EL PAÍS Semanal. “Femicide fell 14.8% in October compared to the same month of 2020, and it is the October with the fewest femicides so far in this Government. We will continue to reinforce the actions ”, pointed out Rosa Icela Rodríguez, head of Federal Security. Rodríguez made the same reference a month before: “It is the September with the least femicides so far in this government.”
The figures cited by the authorities refer to specific reductions in crimes such as femicide and rape. In contrast, civil society organizations that work with victims on a day-to-day basis point out that in a broader context, feminicidal violence in the country is far from over and far from improving. “Every time younger and more cruel women are murdered”, points out the director of the National Femicide Observatory, María de la Luz Estrada and adds another piece of information: “Femicides of girls and adolescents from 0 to 17 years of age have increased every year with a year from 2015 to 542 in September 2021 ″, points out Estrada, citing figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2020, 58.2% of murders of women were perpetrated with firearms, followed by strangulation, 15%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). “In the last three years, we are talking about more than 3,000 murdered women and 50% have characteristics of femicides,” says Estrada.
Sexist violence in Mexico was aggravated by the pandemic and confinement. Calls for help to 911 grew 32% and stays in shelters for abused women increased. “In Mexico there are 25 declarations for gender violence in 22 states,” says gender expert lawyer Andrea Medina. “There are States that have two, like the State of Mexico, one for femicidal violence and another for the disappearance of girls and women.”
So far this year, 809 investigation folders for femicide have been opened in the country, compared to the 344 that were opened in the same period of 2015, 135% more. In the past five years, feminicidal violence has been on the rise. While 412 femicides were registered in 2015, by 2018 the cases were double, 895. In 2019 the number of total investigations was around 950, a figure similar to the new victims registered in 2020.
Estrada explains that there is “a lot of resistance” on the part of state prosecutors to classify the murders of women as femicides. “There is a lot of pressure from the political power and the authorities so that femicide does not rise in the States,” he denounces. The specialist puts the State of Tamaulipas, one of the most violent in the country, as an example. There, only three femicides have been recorded so far this year out of a total of 1,053 homicides, according to official data. “All states have criminalized femicide, but they do not want committees to evaluate the results. Here pressures from crime, politics, the Army and the police intersect … the cases go unpunished, ”says Estrada. “Governments have pretended to invest in programs and policies in favor of women, but in reality it has not been the case. We once again have that simulation policy that has done so much damage to Mexican women, ”says journalist and sociologist Lucía Lagunes.
Three years after the end of the presidential term of President López Obrador, the Government has not yet published the Comprehensive Program to Prevent, Attend, Punish and Eradicate violence against women. The master strategy to address the problem has been left in administrative limbo. The Ministry of the Interior assures that the Treasury has not endorsed the document and that they are still waiting for the president’s signature to publish it in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
Hundreds of women will take to the streets again this Thursday to demand justice and an end to murders, rapes, disappearances, harassment and impunity. They will march for their daughters, for their mothers, for their friends, for those who come and for those who are gone.
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