’Why So Much Hate?’ Slayings of Young Women Surge in Mexico’s Largest State Gustavo Martinez - The Associated Press | |
go to original October 15, 2017 |
Mexico has the 16th highest world rate of femicide and one of the highest rates of domestic violence at 53%. But Mauro is trying to change this mentality. (ZoominTV)
Just like any other day, Dr. Jessica Sevilla Pedraza went to work at the hospital that morning, came home for a quick lunch and then left again. The plan was to see more patients, hit the gym and be back in time for her usual dinner with dad before he went to his night-shift job.
Instead a hospital co-worker showed up at the family’s door in the evening. She said a man had come in with a bullet wound in his leg and told doctors he had been with Sevilla when gunmen intercepted them, shot him and took off with the doctor in her own car.
Sevilla’s gruesome death was part of a wave of killings of women plaguing the sprawling State of Mexico, which is the country’s most populous with 16 million residents and surrounds the capital on three sides. The mounting crisis of femicides — murders of women where the motive is directly related to gender — prompted the federal government to issue a gender violence alert in 2015, the first for any Mexican state.
Sometimes the deaths are caused by domestic abuse. Other killings appear to be opportunistic, by strangers. Often the bodies are mutilated and dumped in a public place — which many read as a message to other women: There is no safe place, time of day or activity.
The week before Sevilla’s killing, 18-year-old Mariana Joselin Baltierra vanished when she walked to the corner store in Ecatepec, a hardscrabble suburb of Mexico City. Her body was found in a butcher shop next door; she had been sexually assaulted and disemboweled. The suspect, an employee at the butcher shop, allegedly took the money in the register and fled. He remains at large.
... The State of Mexico officially ranks second to the nation’s capital with 346 killings classified as femicides since 2011, according to government statistics. Dilcya Garcia Espinoza de los Monteros, deputy state prosecutor for gender violence crimes, said femicides fell by about a third between January and July this year compared with the same period in 2016, but that can hardly be read as an indicator of improvement. Read the rest at 680news
Related: To This Day, Women in Chiapas Cannot Choose Who to Marry; They Face Violence and Discrimination on a Daily Basis (El Universal)
Related: #MeToo: Viral Social Media Campaign Highlights Just How Many Women Have Endured Sexual Assault (Mic)
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