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Magdalena's life is a constant escape.
This Tsotsil woman born in a small town in Chiapas has been fighting against all types of violence since she was five years old.
Ever since her stepmother started hitting her and her father wanted to marry her to her much older cousin.
Since she became pregnant at 16 years old and the father of her daughters hit her so much that she lost the mobility of half of her body.
And since she decided to report her and the Prosecutor's Office, after endless obstacles, she told him that she did not have enough injuries.
Family, gender and institutional violence.
The case of Magdalena, a fictitious name for safety reasons, is a precise portrait of the structural helplessness suffered by indigenous women in Mexico.
Magdalena in San Andrés Larráinzar, Chiapas.
Monica Gonzalez Islas
The spiral began with the death of his mother.
Magdalena was five years old and her father's new partner, a farmer, began to mistreat her and her sister.
That triggered her first escape to live with her aunt, where she was able to continue primary school until fourth grade.
But at that time, her father wanted to marry her to a much older relative of hers and Magdalena sought refuge with a woman who took her in for a time.
Meanwhile, she was able to finish primary school in her community, part of the municipality of San Juan Larráinzar.
Once outside her village, at the age of 12, her father once again wants to marry her to a man 25 years older than her.
For the second time, Magdalena flees to the house of one of her sisters in San Cristóbal de las Casas, one of the main cities of Chiapas and a common destination for indigenous migration from the surrounding communities.
Chipas is one of the Mexican states with the largest indigenous population and highest rates of poverty and marginalization for this population.
At that time, Magdalena did not know how to speak Spanish.
Together with her sister, she resumes her high school studies and at school she meets her daughters' father.
At 14 she has a teenage pregnancy and the couple decide to move in together.
She starts working cleaning houses.
She remembers that the first three months of pregnancy the couple's relationship was not bad but, due to economic pressure, the relationship deteriorated and became violent.
“She started telling me that I was to blame, that the children were my responsibility.
The blows came, the ugly insults, she told me that I was of no use.
I thought that over time it could change, but it got worse,” says Magdalena.
After more than a decade of enduring abuse, in 2019, already overcome by acts of violence against her and threats, she decided to leave her home and flee for the third time in search of protection.
Her first recourse was to request help from the emergency number 911. With that call she began an entire odyssey of irregularities and institutional helplessness.
Magdalena then decides to go to the Prosecutor's Office, specifically to the Indigenous Justice department, to file the corresponding complaint.
The answer is that the police did not have enough personnel and the necessary equipment for preventive and permanent patrols.
Another response, according to Magdalena, was: “Family violence is not serious, there are not enough wounds.”
As a result of the attacks, in September 2020 Magdalena's body had suffered paralysis in the right half: her arm, her leg and her face remained immobile, she was paralyzed.
She then decided to run away again and leave her house.
But due to lack of money, she and her daughters had to return.
Her ex-partner came to the home and threatened to kill them.
This time, Magadalena refused to flee and replaced the fences with walls.
All without any help from the authorities.
At that moment she began to be accompanied by lawyer Teresa Camacho, who managed to reactivate the case in the Indigenous Prosecutor's Office by adding a complaint for violation of human rights due to the lack of investigation and protection measures by the authorities.
“Reporting is important, but many women like me do not report, they leave it like that because there is no progress while you do not have enough evidence and they tell you that it is not appropriate,” says Magdalena.
Indigenous women and girls face the worst forms of exclusion from the Justice system due to geographical, linguistic, financial inaccessibility and discrimination.
In San Cristóbal de Las Casas there are fourteen colonies in this situation.
The majority of indigenous women do not report, and those who do suffer another mountain of violations of their rights: lack of translators, lack of protocols in the police and the constant turnover of personnel.
For Magdalena's lawyer, the State is responsible for omission by not intervening in solving these obstacles based on international standards, of which Mexico is a part.
According to UN Women: “Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately affected by gender-based violence, as well as inequality and discrimination, and continue to have limited access to justice, education, decent employment and healthcare simply by being who they are.”
A recent report by the organization Melel
In the case of girls and adolescent women, the weight of gender violence is added.”
In addition, it accounts for the growing dispute between criminal groups in the area, which only worsens the situation.
“Family violence is the most common crime in Chiapas and gender violence is reflected in the 61,000 married teenagers,” he adds.
The criminal bias against women and girls is also observed by analyzing the data on femicides in Chiapas.
From 2015 to 2022, 23.5% were against adolescent girls and women, with 16 years being the most common age.
San Cristobal de las Casas represents the first place with 15 cases throughout said period, 13 of them corresponding to the Tsotsil and Tseltal population.
In addition, 16 of the 17 municipalities of Los Altos, the area of the town of Magdalena, are on Alert for Gender Violence.
Despite the countless grievances, Magdalena resists: “Women like me are not listened to, but after everything I have been through, now I want to study and fight.
I want to translate from Tsotsil to Spanish for women who are abused by their partners, I want to be a translator and have them listen to us.
"It's not fair to live like this."
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