Latin America is a dangerous place for many, but women often feel like fair game between Tierra del Fuego and Rio Bravo. Two particularly brutal murders have now triggered a storm of indignation in Mexico.
Mexico City (dpa) - Fatima was beaten and raped. The seven-year-old girl's naked body finally reappeared in a plastic bag between garbage and garbage.
Ingrid Escamilla was stabbed, gutted and skinned by her partner - photos of the cruelly disfigured body of the 25-year-olds appeared in the tabloid press and triggered a storm of indignation in Mexico.
"We raise our voices against the fact that this continues to happen: that they murder us, rape us, harass us," said 16-year-old student Frida Contreras at a demonstration in Mexico City. "It happens every day, but it's not normal. It shouldn't be."
Young people gathered in a park in the Santa María la Ribera district in the center of the Mexican capital to protest the rampant violence against women in the Latin American country. They perform "Un violador en tu camino" (a rapist on your way) - a performance by the Chilean group Las Tesis, which has become the global anthem of feminists in recent months.
"I think our generation is developing awareness of the problem," says Michelle Palomino. "There are a lot of abused women. With these protests, they may understand what is going on in their lives."
Violence against women is widespread
From Argentina to Mexico, violence against women has been widespread for decades. Now, however, more and more women in Latin America are raising their voices and demanding their rights. With their faces covered and their fists raised, hundreds of women in Mexico City recently protested the murders of Fátima and Ingrid. The banners read: "Ya basta" (enough) and "Ni una menos" (not one less).
According to the United Nations, 14 of the 25 countries with the highest murder rates of women are in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the 1990s, hundreds of women were killed and buried in the desert in Ciudad Juárez. The city in northern Mexico has become a sad symbol of unleashed violence and impunity.
"Violence against women is one of the most hideous legacies in the region," said Amika Maneva's director of human rights, Erika Guevara-Rosas, the German press agency. With 6.8 femicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the Central American El Salvador led the cruel statistics in 2018, according to the Observatory for Gender Equality of the Economic Commission Cepal, followed by the neighboring country Honduras. In absolute numbers, Brazil and Mexico are in front. The region's two most populous countries generally suffer from a wave of violence.
Given the brutal murders of Ingrid and Fátima, Mexican parliamentarians this week increased the maximum sentences for female murder and sexual abuse by five years to 65 and 18 years in prison, respectively.
However, around 90 percent of the offenses in the country go unpunished.
Last year, the number of murders in Mexico reached a new record with more than 35,000 homicides. The vast majority of victims are men, but the number of targeted women murders increased by ten percent last year. Over 1000 of the approximately 3800 murders of women were classified as feminicides: the victims were killed because of their gender.
There are also tens of thousands of other acts of violence against women such as rape, domestic violence, forced prostitution and sexual harassment. "I'm very scared. On the street and on the bus and train," says the student Palomino.
Cultural factors, the influence of the church, impunity and the inefficiency of the authorities contribute to violence against women according to Amnesty regional leader Guevara-Rosas. Mexico's left-wing Nationalist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has identified a completely different culprit for the woman murders: The neoliberal policies of his predecessors had destroyed social cohesion and the value system, he said last, while demonstrators protested outside the National Palace and the walls of the historic building Sprayed graffiti.
"With all due respect, I ask the feminists not to smear the gates and walls," said the head of state. For women, further proof that López Obrador, who likes to portray himself as an advocate for the poor and oppressed, does not take the problem seriously enough. "He cares more about monuments than about us," cried the demonstrators.