Femicide and victim blaming in Mexico; Mexico's largest state rocked by slayings of women

Posted by DD Materials from Council on Hemispheric Affairs,   ABC News

  It seemed like any other day in the life of a 19-year old girl. On September 8, Mara Fernanda Castilla, a political science student had just been enjoying a night out with friends in the college town of Cholula, in the central state of Puebla. At around 5 am, she decided to use a Cabify car, a ride-sharing platform popular in Latin America, to get home safely. However, she never made it home and was reported missing by her sister a few hours later^[i]. Following a week of investigations, the local Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that Castilla’s body had been found wrapped in a sheet at the bottom of a ravine, in the border between Puebla and Tlaxcala.

The inquiries revealed that Cabify’s driver Ricardo Alexis had allegedly subdued her and took her to a motel, just blocks from Castilla’s home, where he later raped and strangled her.^[ii] Security video footage shows that Alexis parked in front of Castilla’s home for several minutes without her exiting the car before heading to the motel.^[iii] Her cellphone and clothes were also found at Alexis’ home in a small town in Tlaxcala^[iv]. Alexis will now go to trial and if found guilty, he may face up to 85 years in prison; 60 of them for the crime of femicide.^[v]

Earlier this year, Castilla had protested the murder of Lesvy Osorio, another university student whose body was found on the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) campus in Mexico City. Castilla used the trending hashtag #SiMeMatan (if they kill me) on a May 5 tweet that read “#SiMeMatan it’s because I liked to go out at night and drink a lot of beer….”^[vi]. Following Lesvy Osorio’s murder the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Mexico City shared through social media, even before the investigations were disclosed, that Osorio was an alcoholic and a drug user who was no longer studying at UNAM, and had been living out of wedlock with her boyfriend.^[vii] It was precisely these kind of sexist comments that led #SiMeMatan to become a trending topic on Twitter to protest the use of the victim’s personal life as a way to justify their murder.

The terms femicide refers to a crime involving the violent and deliberate killing of a woman.^[viii] Both crimes have caused wide national outrage in a country where over 17,000 women were murdered between 2007 and 2014.^[ix] In the state of Puebla alone, 82 femicides have been documented by NGOs so far this year, but only 58 of those crimes have been officially recognized by the state Public Prosecutor’s Office.^[x] Feminist groups and other human rights organizations have also denounced that the state of Tlaxcala is home to powerful sex trafficking groups that operate at both national and international levels, which could be involved in this crime.^[xi] This is the reason why, on September 17, thousands of women protested all across Mexico to request justice for Mara Castilla, as well as to demand an end to the growing number of gender-related crimes and the apparent indifference at all government levels.

Victim blaming has been a constant in gender-related crimes in Mexico, as the initial response of Mexico City’s authorities after Lesvy Osorio’s murder show. It is not different this time. In an interview following Castilla’s homicide, the president of Madero University in Puebla, Job César Romero said that gender-related crimes were caused by “social decomposition and the current liberties that girls have to go out until very late…because they now have more autonomy to travel alone in their cars or in any other means of transport”.^[xii] Social media has been a useful instrument in mobilizing against these crimes; however, it has also served to reveal the misogyny that permeates an important sector of Mexican society where men and women continue to blame the victims for the crimes that befall them.

A relevant question that still remains is whether femicides are a cultural phenomenon or if they are related to a variety of structural aspects such as high levels of impunity and the inability to include a gender-perspective in the killing of women. It can be argued that the normalization of violence against women is still a prevalent characteristic within Mexican society. However, it also seems likely that other factors related to the administration of justice or the lack of gender-inclusive policies are responsible for the increasing number of gender-related crimes in Mexico.

While Mara Castilla’s murder may become an emblematic case in the struggle against femicides, there are still hundreds of female homicides that remain invisible and unpunished. Additionally, the difference in the number of femicides that are reported by civil society organizations and the media, and the ones that are officially recognized by the local and national authorities, reveal at least two issues: the limited communication between the government and society, as well as the inadequacy and reluctance to apply a gender analysis into the investigation of women’s deaths.^[xiii]

For example, a significant number of murders of women are initially ruled as homicides.^[xiv] Additionally, the indifference and sexist responses from the authorities, who respond that women probably ran away when the families bring their cases to their attention, represent important obstacles for the administration of justice in these cases. Even though Mexico has adopted innovative legislation that punishes gender-related crimes, the fact that several femicides are not considered as such does not help reduce the levels of impunity, nor to reduce the occurrence of these crimes.^[xv]

Although the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Puebla is asking for Ricardo Alexis to be charged with femicide, there are still important issues regarding this case that call into question the responsibility of other actors in the continuation of these crimes. It has been revealed that before joining the ride-sharing company Cabify, Alexis had been dismissed from Uber for violating security rules.^[xvi] In addition, despite having been detained for gas pipeline theft, Alexis was able to prove that he lacked a criminal record, which he presented to Cabify to fulfil the eligibility requirements.^[xvii] Cabify’s operating license has been revoked and there is an increasing distrust of the safety of ride-sharing services, as well as of the companies’ responsibility in the prevention of these horrendous crimes.^[xviii]

Facing the overwhelming increase in the number of femicides, civil society groups are demanding specific measures from the government. For instance, in addition to prioritizing the gender perspective and determining where Cabify’s responsibility lies, there is also the request to investigate whether this case can be linked to the human trafficking groups that operate in both Puebla and Tlaxcala.^[xix] Moreover, there is a growing demand for the government to declare a gender alert– a mechanism that obliges authorities to implement measures that protect women’s’ rights and carry out in-depth investigations to solve acts of violence against women– at the national level and not only in the city of Puebla. 

The prevalent victim blaming and the number of femicide cases that remain unresolved may not present a very positive panorama for women in Mexico. Gender alerts have been labelled as unhelpful and criticized for not solving the gender-violence problem. However, despite the shortcomings of this legal mechanism, the importance of analysing female homicides from a gender perspective should not be overlooked. It is a way to make authorities more accountable as well as to raise awareness within different societal sectors that a femicide crisis is taking place.

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The following material was taken from an AP story published by ABC.

A Femicide Crisis is taking place and The Stare of Mexico is Ground Zero 

The State of Mexico officially ranks second to the nation's capital with 346 killings classified as femicides since 2011, according to government statistics.  

Before Mexico State, it was Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, that was notorious for killings of women, with nearly 400 slain there since 1993 and only a handful of cases resulting in convictions. Common to both places are marginalized, peripheral communities with high levels of violent crime, corruption and impunity.

 Deputy state prosecutor for gender violence crimes, Dilcya Garcia Espinoza de los Monteros,  said

"This problem is difficult to eradicate because it is rooted in ideas that assume that we as women are worth less than men, that we as women can be treated like trash."

In this Aug. 18, 2017 photo, relatives of murdered doctor and mother, Jessica Sevilla Pedraza, carry a framed portrait of her, a cross, and a box of mementos to be buried alongside her grave, as they arrive for Mass in Villa Cuauhtemoc, Mexico state. Pedraza had been shot in the head and decapitated, and the skin had been flayed from her skull. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

 Just like any other day, Dr. Jessica Sevilla Pedraza went to work at the hospital that morning, came home for a quick lunch and then left again. The plan was to see more patients, hit the gym and be back in time for her usual dinner with dad before he went to his night-shift job.

Instead a hospital co-worker showed up at the family's door in the evening. She said a man had come in with a bullet wound in his leg and told doctors he had been with Sevilla when gunmen intercepted them, shot him and took off with the doctor in her own car.

"Ma'am," the woman told Sevilla's mother, Juana Pedraza, "it's my duty to tell you that we cannot locate your daughter."

Two days later Pedraza identified 29-year-old Jessica's body at the morgue. She had been shot in the head and decapitated, and the skin had been flayed from her skull.

"I can't understand why," Pedraza said. "Why so much fury? Why so much hate?"

 Sevilla's gruesome death was part of a wave of killings of women plaguing the sprawling State of Mexico, which is the country's most populous with 16 million residents and surrounds the capital on three sides. The crisis of femicides — murders of women where the motive is directly related to gender — prompted the federal government to issue a gender violence alert in 2015, the first for any Mexican state, and has recently prompted outcry and protests.

 The government's classification of "femicide" allows significant room for interpretation, and many say the official figures are understated and unreliable. Violent crimes such as disappearances often go unreported and unpunished.

 Jessica Sevilla lived in Villa Cuauhtemoc, a small town surrounded by corn fields and empty lots outside the state capital, Toluca, with her parents, her four younger sisters and her 1-year-old son, Leon. The daughter of a truck driver and a shop owner, she went to college and became a doctor, cementing her place as the pride of the family. Her mother said whenever Jessica wasn't working or working out, she spent her time with Leon.

Jessica's disappearance, on a Friday in August, set off a frantic 48 hours of searching by the family. Under the gender violence alert issued two years earlier, authorities are supposed to investigate any woman's disappearance urgently. But Pedraza said authorities told her to wait until Sunday afternoon.

"And if she didn't come back (by then), I would have to come on Monday so they could start searching for my daughter," Pedraza said. "It was negligent, because otherwise we might be talking about my daughter being alive."

Ana Yeli Perez, an attorney with the National Citizens' Observatory Against Femicide, said that sort of response is all too common.

"Despite there already being tools that force public prosecutors to issue the gender violence alert, they refuse to launch investigations under the gender violence guidelines," Perez said.

Femicides have been getting increasing attention elsewhere in Latin America as well. In Argentina, a coalition of activists, artists and journalists started a movement known as Ni Una Menos, or Not One Less, after a spate of killings. The name came from a poem about the killings in Ciudad Juarez by Mexican writer Susana Chavez, who herself was slain in 2011.

 "Ni Una Menos" has become a widely used hashtag on social media in many places as more women turn up dead — as in the case of 19-year-old Mara Castilla, who disappeared after using a ride-hailing service in the central Mexican state of Puebla. The driver was arrested after it was determined that he never dropped her off at her house. Thousands of people gathered in Mexico City to protest her murder.

In Nezahualcoyotl, a group called Nos Queremos Vivas, or We Want to Stay Alive, sprung up after Valeria Gutierrez's murder. It has organized marches and a self-defense workshop at a high school where 70 percent of the students are girls.

At one class, students threw punches and kicks on an indoor soccer court — and talked about learning to be afraid from a young age.

 "I don't feel safe. ... A woman cannot walk down the street freely because there are always people, men, who start harassing you, who try to touch you just because you're wearing shorts or tight jeans," said Monica Giselle Rodriguez, 15.

"We want to help them prepare in case they have to defend themselves," martial arts instructor Cristofer Fuentes said.

Jessica Sevilla's mutilated body was found on a highway about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from where she was last seen alive at a gas station in her red, brand-new Mazda. A week after the burial, Pedraza marched across town with family members carrying a stone cross to mark her grave. The murder remains unsolved.

Pedraza raised her five daughters to be confident that they are equal to men and that nobody can hold them back. Now tasked with raising her grandson, Leon, she said she's focusing on the other side of the equation: Schools teach kids to read and write, but other values are instilled at home.

"With little Leon, we have the idea that we are going to teach him how to be a man," Pedraza said. "You don't hit women. You don't insult them. If she can clear your plate, you can do it too. ... Equality and respect, above all."

DD note:  NOW THAT IS HOW YOU CHANGE A CULTURE IF ALL PARENTS WOULD FOLLOW THE SAME PATH.