Breathe
By Edith Olivares, Executive Director of Amnesty International Mexico.
It is a cause of great pain and impotence to witness that in the State of Mexico a woman is murdered every 24 hours without any effective measures to prevent and eradicate femicides in that state. Gender violence, which is rampant throughout the state, should clearly be at the center of the agenda of the governor-elect Delfina Gomez Alvarez.
In the year 2022, 409 murders of women were registered in the State of Mexico. In the same period, the 911 emergency service registered 55,301 emergency calls related to incidents of violence against women. This is based on official data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In our report Trial to Justice. Deficiencies in criminal investigations of femicides preceded by disappearances in the State of Mexico, published in September 2021, we also warned of "an increase in the number of disappearances of women that could be hiding a greater magnitude of the problem of femicides" in the state. We also pointed out that in some of its municipalities there have been "a series of brutal femicides that have led them to be compared to the emblematic murders of women in the 90s in Ciudad Juarez".
In this context, and with the aim of ensuring that the demands for justice of the families of the victims of femicide are heard, since April of this year Amnesty International deployed the campaign #HastaSerEscuchadas, with the aim that the then candidates for the governorship of the State of Mexico made clear commitments on femicides and institutional violence suffered by the families of the victims.
From this space I cordially invite readers to visit the landing page to learn about the campaign and sign the petition included in it.
As part of the campaign, we proposed to the candidates to hold a forum, on May 25, with the families of the victims so that through dialogue they could build a path to prevent, investigate and punish femicides in the state. Although both candidates showed their intention to meet with the families of the victims, the meeting did not materialize.
New call to Delfina Gómez
But the #HastaSerEscuchadas campaign continues and now that Delfina Gómez is the governor-elect, from Amnesty International we reiterate the call for her to listen to the voices of the mothers of the victims, who have much to say about the serious complications they face in their search for truth, justice and comprehensive reparations for the damage.
The new governor has a historic opportunity to listen to the families of the victims and promote the structural changes required to prevent and eradicate femicides. Dialogue is fundamental to build public policies that allow access to full justice.
It is historic that Delfina Gómez has been elected as the first female governor of the State of Mexico, and it is to be hoped that she has the sensitivity to take concrete - and urgent actions given the magnitude of the problem - to properly address the femicides and violence suffered by women in that state on a daily basis.
We are talking about a phenomenon of great dimensions in which, first, the State is not capable of guaranteeing the right to life of women; second, it does not carry out prompt and expeditious investigations that would allow the families of the victims to have access to truth, justice, comprehensive reparation of damages and guarantees of non-repetition; third, it has not been able to provide due attention to the hundreds of children who have been orphaned, much less to provide the comprehensive care required by the families of the victims.
In our report Trial to Justice, we also report on the serious deficiencies in the investigation of femicides by the Attorney General's Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM), whether due to inaction, negligence and/or lack of resources. This situation is the cause, among other things, of the failure to properly inspect the scene of the crime, the loss of evidence, the failure to examine all lines of investigation, and the failure to correctly apply the gender perspective.
In addition, the lack of action by the authorities leads the families of the victims to intervene in the investigations at the cost of their own resources and safety, as they have even received threats from the alleged perpetrators of the femicides and even from the authorities themselves so that they do not draw the attention of their superiors.
The report also shows that the authorities of the FGJEM do not have the necessary conditions to carry out the investigations, due to an overload of work and lack of material inputs to carry out some tasks.
This set of deficiencies are the cause of the lack of effective justice, as can be seen in the four specific cases of femicide preceded by disappearance that we documented and that can be consulted in our Report on the Trial of Justice. In the case of Nadia Muciño Márquez, the family has been demanding justice for 19 years and in those of Julia Sosa Conde and Diana Velázquez Florencio for 6 years, respectively. In the case of Daniela Sánchez Curiel, her mother has been searching for her for 8 years and the State has been unable to find her whereabouts.
Background work
The structural changes that are required imply a decisive action by the new governor to address the issue with a comprehensive vision and to bring about the intervention of other institutions and branches of government, such as the legislature, which has the fundamental responsibility to approve the necessary resources to allow the FGJEM to invest in infrastructure, training and equipment for personnel investigating femicides.
The work does not start from scratch, Mexico already has a legal and institutional framework forged over more than two decades, thanks to the struggle of dozens of families of victims of femicide, accompanied in solidarity by various CSOs. It is necessary to take action so that this framework is applied and works.
I do not omit to mention that the government structure to be headed by Delfina Gómez -as part of the Mexican State-, should contribute to the compliance with the conventions signed by Mexico, among them the Belem do Pará or CEDAW, which establish a set of norms, standards and principles to guarantee women's rights, as well as to comply with the judgments issued on the matter against the Mexican State by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
Thus, in keeping with our campaign #HastaSerEscuchadas we reiterate our support for the call of the families of the victims of femicide in the State of Mexico so that Delfina Gómez assumes in her work agenda concrete, clear and in-depth positions and actions to prevent and eradicate femicides in the state, and in the face of the institutional violence suffered by the families of the victims in their search for truth, justice, comprehensive reparation of damages and guarantees of non-repetition.
This call is for the women who are no longer here and for the right we women have to travel safely and without fear and to guarantee our right to life and all our human rights in the State of Mexico and anywhere in the country. We invite citizens to join this demand in which we will not stop #HastaSerEscuchadas!
*Edith Olivares Ferreto has a degree in Sociology from the University of Costa Rica and a Master's degree in Urban Studies from the Colegio de México. She was a consultant for the United Nations Development Program and UN Women, as well as for the National Commission to Combat and Eradicate Violence against Women, among others.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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