by ANDREA REINDL
Last week, Mexican feminist activists took over the National Human Rights Commissions federal building in a move to bring greater awareness to the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide that has racked Mexico for decades.
According to the federal Interior Secretariat, the statistics in Mexico have recently taken a turn for the worse.
Domestic violence against women has became an even more acute problem
since the pandemic has forced women to stay insider with their abusers.
Emergency distress calls reporting domestic violence have risen by 50%.
The occupation of the Human Rights building is just another chapter in the saga of the “Ni Una Menos” (Not One More Woman) movement, an anti-femicide collective born in Argentina that has steadily been gaining steam in Mexico since 2019.
In recent years, anti-femicide demonstrations have been sparked by
various heinous crimes against women or girls that have been largely overlooked by law enforcement officials.
Unfortunately, the government of Mexico has appeared to be apathetic to the wave of femicide that is overwhelming the women of their country.
Recently, when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was asked to address Mexico’s gender violence epidemic, he demurred, stating that he didn’t “want femicide to detract” from the raffle his administration was holding for the sale of the presidential airplane.
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