Heart of Darkness: The Growing Danger to Women and Girls in Central Mexico Agence France-Presse
go to original July 8, 2015

The Site of a Femicide - Extra Scene from ‘The Murdered Women of the State of Mexico’ (VICE News)

In the 1990s, Ciudad Juarez became infamous as the bodies of hundreds of murdered women turned up around the desert border city.

But the State of Mexico, a region known as Edomex that surrounds Mexico City, at the heart of the country, has eclipsed Juarez.

Mutilated, burned or half-naked bodies have turned up in fields, abandoned lots or sewage waters in the state of 15 million people.

According to the national statistics institute, 14 of every 100 murders of women took place in Edomex between 2008 and 2013, compared to 13.5 in Chihuahua, the state where Juarez is located.

The Edomex prosecutor for gender crimes, Dylcia Garcia, said the murders are due to domestic violence or sexual assaults.

But the president of the Justice, Human Rights and Gender organization, Rodolfo Dominguez, said the homicides come in the context of a brutal drug war in which 80,000 people have died and another 22,000 have gone missing.

"Mexico lives a generalized violence which is the product of a militarized strategy against organized crime and this worsens the violence against women," he said.

Read the rest at Channel NewsAsia

Photo: AFP/Omar Torres

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