A Man’s Perspective on Fixing the Femicide Issue in Mexico City
When I left for boarding school four years ago as my much younger and naïve self, I had the perception that Mexico City was an oasis of safety in the middle of a dangerous country. And it was, but I came back to see all of that changed. I began reading about the rising cases of gender violence, increasingly violent protests for protection and justice, and with my sister telling me how she would never go out alone again as she didn’t feel safe anymore. I realized how the city’s situation regarding gender violence had quickly deteriorated. These events made me realize that femicide, the deprivation of a woman’s life on the basis of her gender according to Mexico City law (CNDH, n.d.), had become one most serious problems in my city even though a decade ago it almost exclusively happened in the north of the country. According to an opinion article by Forbes Staff, Mexico City became the third state with most femicides in 2019, reporting 68 (Forbes Staff, 2020). Additionally, an article in Infobae argued that in the first three months of 2020, femicide cases increased by 40.3% compared to the same period in 2019, while Navarrete and Hernandez in Expansion showed that they had increased by 60% in 2019 compared to 2018 (Crimen en la Ciudad de Mexico, 2020; Navarrete & Hernandez, 2020) So, what accounts for this increase in gender violence in recent years?
From my research, I realized that this surge can be attributed to two main issues: a poor state of law that leads to impunity in most cases and a patriarchal and sexist society that fosters gender violence. A 2020 article by Agencia EFE argues that 46 out of 100 murders of women on a national level that should be classified as femicides are only catalogued as homicides, leading to impunity in 97% of the real femicide cases. It adds that for the over 3000 cases of femicide registered in the country from 2012 to 2018, an investigation was carried for merely 2444, with only 1732 finding a suspect, and just 739 of them receiving a conviction while 105 were pardoned due to errors in the process of judging or investigations by the public ministries. Even though the law establishes several characteristics to classify a homicide as femicide, judges often disregard them and arbitrarily follow their own criteria, even reverting cases of femicide to homicide. It argues that judges having the power to choose how to classify a case further increases impunity on femicide, a claim that Forbes Staff supported and that I agree with (Agencia EFE, 2020; 2020). As a femicide protestor argues; “femicide in Mexico is hidden by authorities,” a claim that the evidence from other articles supports and that I do not refute after synthesizing this data and observing the arbitrary judgement on cases and mediocre investigations (About 200 people march, 2019).
Impunity prevails before femicides, a newspaper article in CE Noticias Financieras, supported Agencia EFE’s claims but on a local level, showing how impunity remains widespread in the city. It outlined that out of the 161 cases of femicide registered by the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office from 2016 to 2019, only 20 ended with the conviction of a culprit. Furthermore, it confirms that the public ministries that register the cases mismanage or don’t collect the evidence for femicide. As a result, there is not enough evidence to sentence or even detain a suspect, so they often go free (Impunity Prevails, 2020). Moreover, the article by Forbes Staff explained that Caballero Sierra, a female rights activist, found that most femicide culprits receive the lower end of the sentence when actually found guilty of the crime. The staff argues that from a psychological perspective, impunity accounts for a rise in femicides as perpetrators rarely encounter justice, creating a sense that they will never get punished (Forbes Staff, 2020). After understanding the poor rule of law in Mexico City, I agree with Forbes Staff’s claim that this environment of impunity fosters gender violence as perpetrators aren’t afraid of being punished for this crime and thus not discouraged from committing it. Additionally, this high level of impunity fuels a feeling among women that claim “this government doesn’t care about us” as Yesenia Zamudio, mother of a femicide victim argues, which I concur seems plausible due to the inadequate efforts to bring such cases to justice. While these sources are great at noticing the failures of the justice system, they fail to address how the sexist Mexico City society also fosters gender violence and further deepen the issue.
As Ramos explains on his New York Times Op-Ed, sexism and misogyny — which are widely present in Mexico City society — may be the deeper root of the issue of femicide. He shows his argument by explaining how on March 8th, women organized a march against gender-based violence in Mexico City, followed by a strike the following day in which no women left their home to show men how society would be if all women disappeared. However, men and the government didn’t react in supporting manners (Ramos, 2020). As outlined by Sefchovich in her scholarly article La Violencia de genero: propuesta para combatirla, these protests turned violent and ended up in the destruction of public transport and vandalizing of stores and monuments. As a result, the Mexico City governor, who is a woman, claimed “they’re just provocations,” the president disqualified the movement arguing “feminists are being manipulated by the right wing” to “put the population against this government,” and men complained about feminists vandalizing the city rather than supporting their demands (Sefchovich, 2020). Ramos further argues that the president also undermined the strike’s purpose by allowing men to take the day of if they wanted to as well (Ramos, 2020). Protesters fired back saying “walls can be cleaned, the murdered won’t return” and “it’s not a provocation, it’s being fed up with a system that … doesn’t protect us,” nevertheless, these negative reactions show that sexism and misogyny is the deeper root of the issue, a claim that Forbes Staff, Fenley, Ramos, and Sefchovich all outline in their articles (2020; 2014; 2020; 2020). Both Sefchovich and Ramos also concur that the government has no idea how to address societal values, since it is a more difficult issue to address as it deals with embedded societal ideology (Sefchovich, 2020; Ramos, 2020). These authors are surely right about sexism being the deeper root of femicide because these misogynist values foster gender violence as men feel superior and unchallengeable, but I would further emphasize Sefchovich’s and Ramos’ argument that these conceptions are much harder to challenge as they are deeply engrained in societal ideology, making their dismantling a long-term project.
So, how could the government take action to decrease the rising number of femicides in Mexico City? While both Fenley and Sefchovich argue that it is first necessary to re-educate men, the police, and teachers on their gender conceptions to eradicate misogynist values that fuel femicide, I believe that this goal can only be accomplished throughout generations and therefore the best place to start is by correcting the high level of impunity (2014; 2020). World Justice Project researcher Vianney Fernandez argues that femicides could be prevented if investigations turned into convictions (Impunity Prevails, 2020). I agree with Fernandez’s claim, as it would show men that they wouldn’t walk free and therefore discourage them from committing the crime that would set them behind bars. Therefore, I argue that the best way to combat the rising cases of femicide in the short-term is by taking all cases to justice and preventing perpetrators from walking free.
In their article in Expansion, Navarrete and Hernandez offer a solution to the impunity that reigns over femicide cases in the justice system. They show that in 2018, a congresswoman proposed to automatically investigate all cases of homicide on women as femicide. They argue that this proposal could prevent evidence for femicide from being lost as this usually occurs when initially declared a homicide (Navarrete & Hernandez, 2020). While I agree that this would prevent cases from being arbitrarily judged as homicides and prevent evidence loss, it could also lead to inefficiency if all cases are investigated as such because some can’t be classified as femicides and others don’t have enough evidence to be judged as such. As a result, this proposal might make it harder for authorities to revert the case to homicide if there isn’t enough evidence for femicide and thus lead to failures in the courts when automatically judged as femicide. Instead, I’d offer a solution no article talked about. I argue that all cases with at least one instance or characteristic that points to a femicide as outlined in the law should be judged as such and that the government should take the power away from judges to arbitrarily judge a femicide case as homicide if one of these signs is present.
Zerega offered another solution in a 2019 article in El Pais, where she argues that all cases of femicide that didn’t reach justice could and should be reopened. I believe this idea could be valuable if the most recent cases with most evidence are reopened first in order to prevent dead-end cases from taking precious time away from prosecutors’ schedules. Furthermore, Zerega argues that investigations could be started at the moment a disappearance is reported rather than 48 hours later (Zerega, 2019). I think this proposal would be successful at preventing evidence from being lost during this period and increase the opportunity of investigators to detain a suspect. Along similar lines, in his article, Ramos explains that several nonprofits have proposed the creation of a prosecutor’s office specializing on gender violence, which would reduce the public ministry investigators’ inadequacy at dealing with femicide by providing officers with specialized knowledge and time allocated to these activities (2020). I believe that this strategy would help reduce the number of cases that don’t make it past a detective’s desk by tasking a specific office with investigating such cases. As a result, the high level of impunity would be decreased by bringing more of these cases to court with stronger evidence that was derived from more time and expertise allocated to such investigations.
While addressing misogynist social values would create the most long-lasting change to prevent femicides, targeting the high level of impunity will cause the strongest short-term impact on the rising cases of femicide as it will discourage men from becoming perpetrators that would increasingly face justice. As seen from research and analysis, there are many ways that the Mexico City government can bring more cases to justice. The next step must be for women (and hopefully men) in the capital to demand action from their governors, highlighting their negative reactions in the past as a basis to make them act better in the future. Nevertheless, I believe it would still be valuable to consider how globalization relates to this issue by analyzing other regions where femicide is a major issue. It seems like this problem is greatly present in Latin and South American countries, so I wonder to what extent impunity and sexist ideology fuel this issue in these countries in comparison to Mexico. Furthermore, to what extent is this issue a result of westernization and the propagation and adoption of American ideology — which was deeply patriarchal during the 1960s and 70s and engrained in a concept of male breadwinners as the sole providers for the family — in developing Latin countries?
Reference List
About 200 people march silently against femicides in Mexico City. (2019, September 9). CE Noticias Financieras. Translated by ContentEngine, L. L. C. http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/2287883744?accountid=14749
Agencia EFE. (2020, March 5). ONG revela impunidad de 97% y subregistro de 46% en feminicidios en Mexico. EFE. https://www.efe.com/efe/america/sociedad/ong-revela-impunidad-de-97-y-subregistro-46-en-feminicidios-mexico/20000013-4189275
Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH). (n.d.). Legislación penal de las entidades federativas que tipifican el feminicidio como delito. CNDH Mexico. https://www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/doc/programas/mujer/6_MonitoreoLegislacion/6.0/19_DelitoFeminicidio_2015dic.pdf
Crimen en la Ciudad de México: bajaron los robos y asesinatos, pero crecieron los feminicidios. (2020, April 28). Infobae. https://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2020/04/28/crimen-en-la-ciudad-de-mexico-bajaron-los-robos-y-asesinatos-pero-crecieron-los-feminicidios/
Fenley, L. (2014, March 5). Femicide rooted in patriarchal culture. SourceMex Economic News & Analysis on Mexico, 6. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A364331962/GPS?u=usocal_main&sid=GPS&xid=5796fd08
Forbes Staff. (2020, February 17). Feminicidio: ¿Qué es, según el Código Penal en México y cuáles son las cifras de este delito? Forbes Mexico. https://www.forbes.com.mx/que-es-feminicidio-codigo-penal-mexico/
Impunity prevails before femicides. (2020, March 07). CE Noticias Financieras. Translated by ContentEngine, L. L. C. http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/2374039251?accountid=14749
Navarrete, S., & Hernandez, A. (2020, February 18). Los feminicidios crecen en las alcaldías de la CDMX consideradas focos rojos. Expansion Politica. https://politica.expansion.mx/cdmx/2020/02/18/los-feminicidios-crecen-en-las-alcaldias-de-la-cdmx-consideradas-focos-rojos
Ramos, J. (2020, March 7). Mexico’s Femicide Crisis: [Op-Ed]. New York Times http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/2372589253?accountid=14749
Sefchovich, S. (2020). La violencia de género: propuesta para combatirla. Revista Mexicana De Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 65(240), 527–533. http://dx.doi.org.libproxy2.usc.edu/10.22201/fcpys.2448492xe.2020.240.76633
Zerega, G. (2019, March 9). México lanza un plan para frenar los feminicidios tras limitar la ayuda a los refugios para víctimas de maltrato. El Pais. https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/03/06/mexico/1551892445_750886.html
