From Femicide to Rape: The Atrocity Behind Why Thousands of Women are Protesting in the Streets Today

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from SinEmbargo

In Mexico every day, on average, ten women are killed, one is kidnapped and at least 34 girls are victims of rape. One of those, was a 7-year-old girl named Fátima Ceciliad, reported missing on February 11, whose body was found naked in a bag, in Tláhuac, she had been raped, tortured and murdered.

by Sugeyry Romina Gándara March 8, 2020

Mexico City, March 8 (SinEmbargo).- Mexico commemorates International Women's Day under protests and mobilizations of thousands of Mexicans throughout the country. They are fed up with the femicides and gender violence that has been persistent, with an upward trend, for three years. Today, again, women take to the streets with the same slogan: "We want each other alive, free and without fear."

The Mexico figures of violence are alarming. Last year on this day, March 8, the number was nine women killed a day. This year it is 10, according to official figures. At this time, 34 girls are raped everyday, according to data from the National System of Comprehensive Protection of Girls, Boys and Adolescents (SIPINNA), which estimates that every year 11 thousand girls become forced mothers as a result of rape in Mexico.

In the last five years, at least 16,000 women have been murdered in the country. Since January 2015 to January 31, 2020; 15,997 research folders were opened, of which only 30 percent are investigated as femicides.

At least 16 thousand women have been murderded in Mexico in the last five years. From January 2015 to January 31, 2020 there have been 15 thousand investigation files opened, of which 30 percent are being investigated as femicide.

The daily average of murders of women grew by 42.85 percent in the last three years, as Mexico went from seven cases a day, during 2017, to 10 cases on average in 2020. 

The number of 911 emergency calls for incidents of violence against women rose 113.40 percent in three years in 2019, if 2019 data is compared against 2016, the year when the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System began recording those figures. 

Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) published last November show that at least 66.1 percent of the 46.5 million women over 15 in the country have faced violence of any kind at some time in their lives.

Of these, 43.9 percent have faced attacks from their current husband or partner or throughout their relationship. This figure rises in women who are married or in a relationship before the age of 18. 

The crime of rape is one of the most impactful for this sector of the population and “is one of the most cruel and degrading forms of violence against women,” highlights the Femicidal Impunity, Radiography of Official Data on Violence Against Women report (2017-2019). According to this study, at least 33 thousand 136 rapes were recorded in the country's entities for a period of less than three years.

“In the same years there were 22 thousand 706 female victims of rape. However, it is necessary to add the information of the prosecutors of Aguascalientes, Nuevo León, Baja California Sur, Hidalgo, State of Mexico, Tabasco, Tlaxcala and Nayarit to the previous number” said the study.

SPIRAL OF VIOLENCE

Feminists, human rights organizations, and gender experts have warned, since previous administrations and during the new Government, that year after year there is an alarming number of episodes of violence against women and that the Mexican state has not faced the crisis sufficiently, because to date there are no real public policies aimed at reducing the problem.

Researchers of the TDT Network detailed, in their most recent report, that the resurgence of violence shows that misogyny in the country is not only systematic, but that it follows the trend of the entire Latin American region.

"More than four years after the adoption by 19 states in the Republic of the Gender Violence Alert, the figures for the different types of violence against women have not only not diminished, but on the contrary, they have increased." 

Another aspect, which alarms and draws attention to experts, is that violence not only grows quantitatively but qualitatively, that is, the atrocity with which it is committed.

Geru Aparicio Aviña, a clinical psychologist at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explained that femicidal violence, like any criminal phenomenon, is becoming more complex and that there are more and more victims in a condition of vulnerability, such as girls. 

In addition, she explained that, in the context of drug trafficking and organized crime, the cruelty with which women are killed is also exacerbated.

"This pedagogy of cruelty, as the anthropologist Rita Segato says, leads us to see how atrocious the phenomena is, such as the murders of Fatima and Ingrid," she explained.

                           
                          The increase in violence has led to multiple marches and protests. Photo: Andrea Murcia / Cuartoscuro

PUBLIC POLICIES ARE LACKING

The experts agree that violence isn't diminishing due to the absence of real public policies focused on eradicating it, and because the Mexican state has not prioritized the crisis of violence against women. 

Lucía Lagunes, Director of Communication and Information for Women (CIMAC), a media organization specializing in journalism with a gender perspective, expressed in recent days that the lack of clarity and unwillingness of the authorities is not a new issue. She affirms that for at least 14 years, safeguarding the life and integrity of women has not been a priority of governments.

"We have three different governments parties that unite over one thing: misogyny and their disinterest in safeguarding the life and integrity of women," said the expert in the presentation of the TDT Network report, where the organization also emphasized that the lack of political will of the authorities is evident in the lack of clarity in their statistics.

In the same vein, the researcher Olga Arnaiz denounced that there are no precise official figures that give a real dimension of violence against women, not even “the state itself has reliable data […] there is an institutional policy of hiding the levels of femicides and gender violence that drags down the country."

She explained that the importance of having reliable statistics is because public policies are made based on these statistics. If there are erroneous figures, “then, what kind of public policies are they making for the prevention of violence with data that are erroneous or contradictory?" she questioned.

Thousands of Mexican women are angry and fed up with violence. Their anger has been shown in several protests where they have stood up to their government for its inaction and inefficiency, as well as institutional violence, which adds to the list of grievances they have suffered.

The women protests began to intensify since August of last year, the demonstration provoked as a result of a media report that police officers from Mexico City raped a minor in the Azcapotzalco area of the city and leaked their personal data. In that month, women threw pink glitter in the face of the then Secretary of Citizen Security of the city, Jesus Orta, and others broke the door of the local Attorney General's Office and took over monuments, actions that were criticized in social media networks. Since then, the feminist denunciation and the reproach for violence against women has remained in the spotlight.

However, while the complaints and protests on the streets are increasing, there are also more sexist attacks in an attempt to silence the claims.

Gerú Aparicio explained that as women get stronger in the exercise of their rights and, without a public policy aimed at men - such as a comprehensive human rights policy - then, the other part of the population feels confronted and then more emboldened.

“Every aspect of women's autonomy is symbolized, many times, as a transgression to the patriarchal status quo; hence the importance of working on issues of masculinity and the human rights approach,” she said.

The Ministry of the Interior (Segob) should be held responsible for the increase in femicides in Mexico, the exponential violence against women, and even for insecurity in general; the “inefficiency” of state prosecutors when investigating, and the judicial powers of the states.

“The problem of Mexico is a problem of impunity. There is corruption because there is impunity; there are crimes and kidnappings because there is impunity; there is crime because there is impunity. There are femicides because there is impunity. There is a long way to go for prosecutors to serve and be effective and to fulfill their minimum duties,” said the Interior Ministry, Olga Sánchez Cordero, at a press conference this week.

In addition, the Segob sought to de-enlist the federal government from prosecutor malpractice by alluding that the government has no control over prosecutors and courts in the states, as a matter of jurisdiction.

“The issue of prosecutors who address this violence against women. [...] the prosecutors are already autonomous and independent and we could not intervene or interfere in a prosecutor's office precisely because of the respect for the powers of these [...] there is no type of control, not even political control or judicial control for these prosecutors. They are so autonomous and so independent that their only constituents, where appropriate, are the local congresses who are the ones who named their occupants,” she said.

From the March

HOW TO FIGHT IT 

“Although the causes of this violence are diverse and vary, it is imperative to investigate the transversal factors that cause them and make it difficult not only to exercise the right of women to a life free from violence, but also to the exercise of other rights such as access to justice, truth and redress,” reads the Femicide Impunity, Radiography of Official Data on Violence Against Women report (2017-2019).

Elena Azaola Garrido, an academic from the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) considered that to reduce the problem it is necessary to reduce impunity and develop positive public programs and policies to remedy the problem, but clarified that these actions to eradicate gender violence should be launched: "not only with good intentions."

For the specialist Geru Aparicio, actions, programs and main ideas that work on issues of masculinity are urgent: "as long as you avoid working with the other part of the population that are men, this will continue to increase."