Shocking femicide statistics have prompted a furious reaction from women’s rights groups in Mexico. Anger over the violence is a key part of a one-day national women’s strike in the country.
In the hours before she was murdered, Abigail Guerrero Mondragon had been enjoying her nephew’s sixth birthday. At the low-key family gathering, the 20-year-old law student had been happily playing with the boy and chatting to guests at her mother’s house.
The next morning, her lifeless body was found near some football pitches where the last man she had been seen with worked. Her new boyfriend’s buddy, Juan Velazquez, was detained along with the boyfriend, Ivan, and his cousin, all of whom had been with Abigail in her final moments.
Yet within a day, all three were released without charge. Key pieces of evidence, including used condoms taken from the scene, were lost or never properly recorded.
“(Velazquez) was caked with mud and there was blood on his clothes,” recounts Abigail’s mother, Araceli Mondragon, between deep sobs.
“I went into shock. And because the authorities here in Mexico are so heartless, they forced me to make a statement when I still didn’t even understand what had happened to my daughter, when I couldn’t make sense of anything.”
Abigail’s killing on 11 December 2016 was just one of 10 murders of women and girls that day – crimes which take place every single day in Mexico. It is a statistic which has prompted anger in the capital in recent weeks, especially from Mexico’s feminist and women’s rights groups.
“There have been 8,000 murders of women in the last two years alone, around half of which show the traits of gender-based violence against women,” explains Maria de la Luz Estrada, President of the National Citizens’ Observatory on Femicide which provides legal support to victims’ families.
Two cases sparked the latest protests.
The first was the gruesome killing of a young woman, Ingrid Escamilla, by a man she lived with. He stabbed her, then skinned her body and removed her organs in an attempt to hide the evidence. Days later, in the Xochimilco district of the city, seven-year-old Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett was abducted from the school gates, sexually abused and murdered.
