In Mexico, where between 97% and 99% of femicides and rapes reported to authorities go unpunished, the recent arrest of two men accused of being serial killers of women has caused a stir.
They are Arturo "N", 44, and Andrés Mendoza, a 72-year-old man detained in the Atizapán area and in whose home traces of up to 30 women have been found whose whereabouts were unknown.
Arturo "N" was arrested in December 2020 as a suspect in the murder of a woman who was 39 years old before her life was taken;
she was last seen in October boarding the detained man's taxi.
But authorities in the Mexican capital are now investigating him as a probable culprit in the murder of three other women.
And part of that investigation is due to the
work of a police agent nicknamed Fanny, a
member of the Special Prosecutor's Office for Attention in Femicide cases of Mexico City.
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She assures that she got into the taxi that Arturo "N" was driving posing as a typical user.
Mexico City Attorney General's Office
"We had to infiltrate some policemen [...] I took the taxi as a normal passenger in order to get him out of his comfort zone," Fanny told Televisa.
That was
how he managed to interrogate him
, according to the officer.
He claims that the taxi driver allegedly ended up confessing where he had left more bodies.
The bodies were found and studied;
With genetic analysis and revisions of the modus operandi of the deaths, it was confirmed that Arturo "N" would be behind three more murders of women, dating from 2016, 2018 and 2019.
They find a list with 29 names of women in the house of the alleged 72-year-old femicide in Mexico
May 21, 202102: 09
Femicide is the murder of a woman because of her gender;
It is usually committed by a partner or family member and is often preceded by other violence, such as sexual abuse or physical assault.
In Mexico, these crimes
have increased during the confinements due to the pandemic
;
During 2020 there was a record of 946 femicides and so far this year there have already been at least 234 cases of women murdered because of their gender.
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In addition, only in March, the last month for which there are official reports, there were 2,000 complaints of rape, 40% more than there were during the same month in 2020.
Historically in the country, only between 1% and 3% of femicides and sexual abuse that are reported to authorities go
unpunished, without punishment or without investigation
, according to analysis.
And that official statistics estimate that more than 90% of crimes, including those of violence against women, are not even reported to authorities or prosecutors because they believe that nothing will emerge from the complaint.
Portraits of women reported as missing to the authorities appear on a wall demanding justice outside a government building in Mexico City, in September 2020.
The arrests of both Arturo "N" and Andrés Mendoza follow years of demands from activists across the country, which have included organizing continuous protests and a total work stoppage on March 8, when the International Women's Day to recognize the achievements of women and the problems that should be preventable but continue to face women around the world.
["They raped me, they beat me and I felt like I was disappearing": in Mexico women suffer human rights abuses when they go out to protest]