AISU Editorial
- 25 mrt. 2021
- 9 minuten om te lezen

"Living in fear": Conversations on being a woman in Mexico City

by Rosa van den Berg

Let the State, the skies and the streets tremble

Let the judges and judiciary tremble

Today we women have been robbed of our calmness

They have sown fear, but we grew wings

Every minute, every week

Our friends are stolen, our sisters killed

Their bodies destroyed, disappeared

Don’t forget their names, Mister President

We sing without fear, we demand justice

We scream for every missing

Let it resonate loudly: We want us alive!

Vivir Quintana

This is a part of the hymn of Mexico’s feminist movement, of which we could witness its strength on last 8-M, International Women's Day, with thousands of protesters marching through the streets in Mexico City and many more protesting at home and throughout the country, demanding for a just response to the rise in gender based violence. Our attention should not be focused on these issues for just one day a year, since insecurity and violence continue all year round. Especially in Mexico, which is after Brazil, the country where most crimes against women are committed, with shocking impunity. As the outrage is mounting up, the feminist movement is getting more feet on the ground in Mexican society, despite being stigmatized by the government, which has resulted in dangerous situations for its protesters. For this article, I have spoken with three young women in Mexico City: Danitza, Nora and Mariana, for whom the feminist struggle lies close to their hearts.

Danitza: “We are opening our eyes, society is showing it is fed up with machismo and its consequent violence against women.”

Image Source: CC Steeve Hise.

Mexico has a femicide problem of epidemic proportions, and it has only been growing in the past years. In the period from 2017 to 2021, the number of murdered women went up from 7 to almost 11 every day. In 2020 that meant a staggering total of 3.752 women were found murdered, of which 939 were officially investigated as femicide (the hate crime of killing a woman because she is a woman; not every state in Mexico is applying the term), according to the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide. This is the tip of the iceberg of the systematic violence against women, that often is suffered in silence. Adriana Quiñones, advisor to UN Women, explains:

“Gender-related killings are the last act - a culmination - in a series of violent acts. People often fail to recognize the deadly chain of events that lead to femicide. An abusive relationship doesn’t start with murder, but the abuse escalates and without timely intervention and support, the women may end up murdered. In Latin America, we have a culture of high tolerance towards violence against women and girls. You see it in the media all the time - crimes against women are exhibited with very crude images and nobody seems to care about it. Violence becomes normalized; it is seen as a part of life for women.”

Activist Frida Guerrera has been tracking femicide victims since 2016 and gives them a memorial place on her blog.

Violence is occurring both in homes, as for the almost 1 in every 2 women who experience(d) domestic violence, and in public spaces, with 58% of women in Mexico City saying they have been groped while using public transport, and reports of attempted kidnappings in the metro augmenting. In general, 66% of Mexican women have suffered violence at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The consequences the insecurity has for the daily lives of every woman in Mexico run deep, as explained by Nora:

“We live in fear of going out one day, and never returning home. My life and that of other women is not easy. Opportunities to get an education, receiving sexual education, access to health services and a job with equal pay, among other things, are privileges that not all of us get. But worst of all, there is no security. An aggressor can be at home or at school or close by, you can simply have the ‘bad luck’ to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This demands from us that our lifestyle, our day to day, is a trial. The insecurity begs us to adjust our way of speaking, the clothes we wear, the places we go to, it even disrupts our dreams.”

Last year there were several cases that shook the nation, and resulted in widespread protests. On the 9th of February 2020 the body of Ingrid Escamilla, a 25 year old student, was found brutally tortured and murdered by her partner. Images of her mutilated body were leaked by government officials and circulated in newspapers and on social media, which led to criticism of the gruesome content and disrespect to victims in the media. A counter campaign was started to share art and other beautiful pictures in her name, so the gruesome ones would disappear. If you look her up now, you will see only drawings and pictures of nature and feminist icons.

The images shared in Ingrid Escamilla's name on Instagram.

Horrific cases like these have devastating implications for women’s feeling of safety and opportunities to live their lives in freedom, and are clearly taking a toll on their mental health. Mariana gives you an insight in what she goes through on a daily basis:

“You have ideas you shouldn’t have: changing sidewalks because you think ‘they might rape me’, or you get in an Uber and warn every one, because what if they are never going to see you again. It is not just that you stop doing certain things (going out at night, drinking, getting home late), but it will cross your mind quite often ‘what if… they kill me, they rape me, they kidnap me, they disappear me’. It is living in fear, I can’t explain it any other way, living in fear with everything you do, every hour. And in the end, you will know that no one in the corresponding instances is going to make an effort to find out what has happened to you. It’s fear. And frustration. Impotence.”

She touches upon the core of the problem: widespread impunity. Of all these murder cases, hardly 97% is solved. In the case of sexual assault, only 5% of the reports lead to a conviction. And these are the cases that made it to court. Since trust in the police is very low, due to police corruption and lost faith in the effectiveness of the justice system, most victims of crimes do not come forward.

For the ones who do, the system often fails them. Most femicides follow on earlier complaints of the victim about abuse, to which the police has had no proper response as

they fail to recognize the seriousness of what is going on. According to the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide, the structural obstacles to getting justice are often to do with revictimization, victim blaming, serious negligence, even losing evidence. Some femicide cases are dismissed as suicides, and it is not uncommon to find that police officials themselves are the aggressors, in which case, getting justice is even more improbable.

Protest

The untenable situation took women once again to the streets on international women's day.

Danitza: “Getting out [protesting] in the streets is the result of something failing. There are no words or resources left to achieve substantive equality. Referring to many aspects: from equality in the workplace to salary to housework and to violence, either economic, verbal, domestic, or the worst: femicide.”

Nora adds: “The harsh facts force us. Having to live in fear, changing our lifestyles, just because we live in a system that does nothing, until it breaks. It obligates us to not sit idly by. Feminism helps us to survive.”

Image source: Mexico News Daily.

So they marched. With purple and green bandanas, slogans and signs, paint and songs, to protest gender violence, inequality and impunity. Some joined the protest in virtual ways, others sent letters to the president or infiltrated his morning briefing and left comments to ask for his attention to the issue. Festivals with music, lectures and poems were held, cacerolazos (pan-banging protests) were loud, candles were lit, streets got new street signs to commemorate important women.

But this year, the societal tensions became very visible when, the day before the march,

president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) put a wall around the National Palace where he lives, and other monuments in the city.

The wall around the National Palace. Image source: Diego Prado, El Universal.

The wall was exemplary for the political state of the movement, symbolizing the division between the feminist movement and AMLO, who gets amounting criticism for his perceived indifference on the femicide situation. Feminists accused him of being more outraged and defensive about painted buildings than brutally murdered women. The president who once was viewed as the promised progressive candidate, now finds himself confronted with disapproval, since 62% of the Mexicans considered his behaviour towards the feminist movements inadequate (SIMO survey, El País). He has claimed that the feminist movement has been ‘manipulated’ by his critics and neoliberal influences. The situation has not progressed since he kept supporting the candidature for Governor of Guerrero of someone who has been accused of rape several times.

Activists turned the wall into a collective memorial for all femicide victims. Image source: Erika Lozano, desInformémonos.

Thereupon, this 8-M protest focused on calls to AMLO to address the state negligence and stop the Governors candidature. In some places, anger and frustrations turned into violence, as some radical activists clashed with the police.

Image source: Theresa de Miguel, El País.

Police made use of tear gas to hold the crowds back and at one point what appeared to be armed men stood on the roof of the Palace, they turned out to carry anti-drone devices, but the message of intimidation was clear. Some activists and journalists alike were arrested or surrounded in the metros and nearby streets, preventing them from exercising their right to (cover the) protest.

A few days before the March, Amnesty International had released a disstressing report on police behavior during last year’s women’s march, accusing them of using excessive violence and threats of sexual violence to diminish the protestors. The stigmatization of the feminst groups as hysteric and violent by the authorities has created a dangerous environment for the women, in which the use of (sexual) violence against them by both police and bystanders seems to be legitimized, and used as a way to teach women ‘to stay home and not make trouble’.

Change

Despite this concerning situation, some progress has been made, thanks to the pressure of these massive protests. Various institutions to eradicate violence against women have been strengthened, Mexico City has created a Prosecutor’s Office for Femicide, and the use of the label ‘femicide’ has increased to recognize situations and make risk assessments. Danitza mentions the creation of the ‘Purple police’: female officers who are specialized in gender based violence and will attend to reports thereof. Besides, she tells us there is more attention for the psychological support that women get in case of domestic abuse.

Purple police. Image source: Reforma.

Furthermore, some legal successes have been booked after protests last year, worth mentioning are the creation of ‘Law Olimpia’, which punishes digital violence and the online distribution of explicit images without one’s consent, and ‘Law Ingrid’, which seeks to protect the rights of victims by sanctioning public servants that disclose sensitive information or images about a victim of a crime.

The Secretariat of Women of Mexico City has been working on campaigns to increase willingness to denounce harassment and abuse, and to improve the public space, with street lighting, surveillance cameras, emergency buttons and female only public transport units, as part of the ‘Safe paths’ project.

Safe paths: Walk freely, walk safely. Image source: CDMX Portal Ciudadano.

But changes come slow, and the femicide rate has augmented and not dropped. Nora remains skeptical:

“After growing protest, the authorities have ‘worked’ to form laws and more laws, however they are of no use, when there does not exist a culture of prevention to begin with, and that is very serious, but even more serious, despite all these laws, the institutions and all who work for them have not been sensitized. Most of them become judge and executioner, impunity is part of the machinery of insecurity. In addition, the lack of credibility in the institutions leads to one not approaching them, since of the majority of us who do denounce a crime, we are revictimized. Which leads to thinking it is best to avoid denouncing and find ‘solutions’ by ourselves.”

What is needed is prevention and a change in the structural causes that drive gender based violence, such as the pervasive gender norms in Mexican society. All women agree that this is were the feminist movement comes in, these are their closing comments as to where they think change should come from.

Danitza: “We need a complete change in the way we understand what it means to be a woman, like this we can change the social thinking. In the police forces, but also inside every home.”

For Mariana, it starts with education in families:

“A lot is being done in universities, but I feel like there is a huge gap when you leave these sensitized places… and what’s more, not all of us can go to school, where they explain that what you might think is normal actually derived from a strong patriarchy, and that there are other ways to think about it. The feminist movement gives us space to uncover bad situations that are viewed as normal, to expose problems.”

Nora agrees:“This can change with a revolution of awareness, namely through education at home, at work, in schools, in every possible place. We need to sensitize everyone, talk about empathy together with political change and activism to demand that laws and institutions work. Political will and education are key pieces to accelerate change.”

Mariana:“It is really important for me to state that feminism does not cause fear and is not a synonym for fanaticism. I feel like if we fall into this trap, this would be like throwing away the best and only weapon we have to change society and our way of thinking.”