RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In Mexico, 632 women and girls have been killed in January and February this year. Some 166 cases have been classified as femicides, that is, the murder of women solely based on their gender. This makes the first two months of 2020 the most tragic since records began — in the first two months of the previous year, the total number was 579.
On average, ten women and girls died every day, two of them for the sole reason of being women, according to official government figures. The states recording the most femicides are Mexico with 21, Puebla and Veracruz with 17, and Nuevo León with 15. In Puebla, this represents an increase of 111 percent over the previous year.
Mónica, a student in Puebla, told the amerika21 news site: “Like all of Mexico, we live dangerously in Puebla. Every day there is harassment, disappearances or murders of women. If the woman is famous or rich, there is a greater chance that investigations will be initiated. But if you have no resources or if you are not very active on social media, you will be forgotten by the government.”
According to Prosecutor General Alejandro Gertz, femicides have increased 137 percent in Mexico over the past five years.
Across the country, there have been increased protests against gender-based violence following the murders of Ingrid Escamilla and Fatima Cecilia. In at least twelve states, thousands of women took to the streets on February 14th to demand security in public and private areas. Feminist protest movements also sprang up in universities.
On February 9th, 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla was brutally killed by her 46-year-old partner. Additional indignation was triggered by the publication of photos of her body in tabloids, one of them titled: “Love was to Blame”.
Two days later, on February 11th, seven-year-old Fatima Cecilia was tortured and murdered by a married couple. Both became the symbol of the protests that ensued.