Women's death in Mexico
Of the 46.5 million women older than 15 years in Mexico, more than 66% (more than 30 million) have faced violence of any kind and by any aggressor, in their lives, according to the latest survey of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. El País also tells that Mexico has a rate of 4.5 feminicides per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in Latin America.
In Mexico there are more than seven women dead every day. More than 23,800 murdered in just one decade. And that macabre account does nothing but get worse. Despite the figures and commitments of the authorities, murdering a woman in Mexico is practically free: only 10% of cases have received a conviction, according to the latest UN report Women, reported by El País.
"The data show that women are killed with greater violence and brutality, they use means that produce more pain, they prolong their suffering before they die," explains also the latest report on gender violence by the National Institute of Statistics. This a tale of terror. But it is more than a tale. The thirty-six percent of women killed in 2016 in Mexico were strangled, hanged, drowned, burned, beaten with an object or stabbed. Three times more than in the case of men, mostly murdered by a bullet, almost a 70%.
While the rates of general homicides in Mexico have increased and declined over the past 20 years, women continue to be killed at the same rate. Brutal reality. In the years in which the murders of men fell to historical lows -until 2007, to then be triggered from 2008 by the war against drugs- the figures of murdered women remained with few variations. That is why the increase in violence in the country cannot be directly related to gender crimes. They are not just another figure of violence; it is an epidemic that has not given half of the population a break. They have not had peace.
The last year registered, 2016, presents, nevertheless, the highest feminicide figures of the last 27 years: 2,813. The limit seemed to have arrived with seven women a day in 2011. Mexico presumed to have overcome the bloodiest years of Ciudad Juarez. But the list kept growing. They keep killing them. How much more can the country bear? This Thursday, March 8th, International Women's Day, many will march throughout the country for their strangled daughters, burned, disemboweled, beheaded, stoned ones. Because that is how death is presented to them in Mexico. Because there is not a single woman in this country who can say that she has never smelled fear.
