Mexico Steps Up #ViolenceAgainstWomen Awareness During #16Days of Activism Nicole Rothwell - CIP Americas Program
go to original December 6, 2015

Mexican women have consistently organized against gender violence. Women whose children have been disappeared, whose daughters have been murdered, or who have been attacked themselves have used this rage and heartbreak to organize collectively to create a Mexico where this violence does not exist, or at least is brought to justice. These women human right defenders work in a country where violence against women is pandemic, and by dedicating their lives to defending human rights, their own lives are often endangered.

In 1993, Ciudad Juarez was booming thanks to the maquiladora industry that drew tens of thousands of women to the city for work with transnational companies such as General Electric, Alcoa and Dupont. By 2009 the Chihuahua border city was christened as the “murder capital of the world” when it set a record of homicides per capita. Capitalism and free trade agreements like NAFTA inspired the creation of maquiladoras, or sweatshops which appealed to low-income women seeking employment. Between 1993 and 2014 in Ciudad Juarez’s state of Chihuahua there were 1,530 femicides - the term used to describe the murder of women for being women.

This violence against women goes beyond Ciudad Juarez’s borders and has become a horrific phenomenon across the country. Between 2012 and 2013 there were 3,892 femicides in the country, according to the National Citizen Femicide Observatory (OCNF). Only 24 percent were investigated, and merely 1.6 percent sentenced. Under the cover of massive impunity, violence has risen to where now six women are murdered a day in Mexico.

With such daunting statistics it is easy to forget that each number represents a woman’s name, voice, life and dignity. Neyra Cervantes, Beatriz Alejandra Hernández Trejo, Lilia Alejandra García, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Claudia Ivette González, and Nadia Vera, are just a few of the women whose futures were stolen from them by a patriarchal culture and society of violence. These thousands of women are not merely numbers, but human beings with dreams, purpose, family, and so much more.

Violence Against Women Human Rights Defenders

The defensoras, or women human rights defenders, embody courage every moment as systematic violence has broadened its target toward them as a way to disempower women activists, weaken movements for social change, and maintain the patriarchal, militarized Mexican State. Between 2010 and 2014 the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders documented 615 attacks against women human rights defenders. In the last five years, 36 women human rights defenders have been assassinated.

The statistics, while horrifying, shouldn’t only lead to indignation and action if enough women are killed for being women. One woman is enough; one woman is too many.

Read the rest at CIP Americas Program

Related: The 'Decimos No Más (We Say No More)' Campaign Against Domestic Violence (AL DÍA News)

Related: Breaking the Silence: Sexual Violence Against Women as Form of Torture Has Increased (Mexico Voices)

Related: 7 Women Killed Per Day: Mexican Activists Protest Femicides, Disappearances (teleSUR)

Related: Who Erased Ciudad Juarez's Murals Dedicated to Missing Women? (teleSUR)

This article is the first in a series by the Americas Program honoring Mexico’s women human rights defenders, to be published during the 16 days of activism Against Gender-Based Violence between the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Nov. 25), and the International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10).

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