MEXICO | The Mexican government on Wednesday pledged to end the “machismo that kills” some 3,800 women each year in Mexico, on the occasion of an international UN day against violence against women, which has seen thousands of women. ‘between them manifest.
“Male chauvinism kills and destroys the lives of women and limits the development of our country,” Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said on Wednesday on the occasion of this UN International Day against violence against women. women.
At the same time, thousands of women took to the streets in Mexico City to express their outrage at this endemic violence in Mexico.
The demonstrators concentrated around the Monument to the Revolution before marching towards the Zocalo, the main square in central Mexico City, where the Presidential Palace and Cathedral are located.
“Let us not forget that if this violence unites us, it also turns into something even stronger, worthy feminist anger,” said one of them, Luky Coutino, a 27-year-old student.
Insisting on the need “to no longer reproduce the macho and patriarchal cultural system” deeply rooted in Mexico, the Minister of the Interior considered that this country has a “historic debt” to women.
“We have a historic debt to women, especially to victims of violence, and we cannot allow impunity,” she insisted.
Wide impunity
According to figures from the National Institute of Statistics cited by the minister, around 3,800 women are murdered each year in Mexico. In the past decade, six in ten women have been assaulted.
Statistics also show that an average of 32 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 become mothers every day as a result of sexual abuse, and that one in four has experienced violence in school.
The impunity enjoyed by attackers in Mexico is particularly problematic, since on average only half of murders classified as feminicides are convicted.
In some Mexican states, impunity has even reached 98%, according to a report presented Wednesday at the daily morning conference of President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
On this occasion, the Mexican president underlined that the phenomenon of aggression against women comes from “conditions of poverty and economic inequality”.
On November 9, police from the Cancún (east) tourist resort fired shots in the air as demonstrators, mostly women, protested outside City Hall after the brutal murder of a young woman. This incident – unprecedented in Mexico – had generated much criticism in the country as well as abroad.
The demonstration Wednesday in Mexico City took place peacefully, but also in tension with the police when some demonstrators, more radical and dressed in black, tried to attack public buildings.