For about two weeks now, numerous protests by women have been raging in Mexico. The trigger was the murder of a young woman who disappeared in Cancun at the beginning of November and whose dead body was found on the 9th of November.
Already on the 9th of November, numerous demonstrators, mainly women, gathered after the mother of the disappeared woman called for a demonstration. Even though she first wished that this march would peacefully demand justice for her daughter, she changed her mind in the course of the demonstration and said "Burn it all down, Alexis would have done that for you". Some of the demonstrators then began to destroy the windows of the local prosecutor's office and spray graffiti on them before doing the same to the town hall. As they approached the town hall, the police opened fire on the demonstrators. They also watched the National Guard show up after the shooting. The shooting was allegedly an arbitrary decision by the local police chief.
Since then, women have repeatedly taken to the streets. In response, the Mexican government again unleashed its police hordes on the women. On the 13th of November, the clashes took on militant forms again:
Dozens of women held a demonstration that led to the office of the Minister of Justice in Mexico City against the murders of women and police violence. Some 30 women, facing some 320 police officers, invaded the building, where they broke doors and windows and finally erected barricades with materials from the office, denouncing the old Mexican state's inaction on feminicides.
On their retreat, the demonstration was attacked by the police with tear gas and physical violence. The women's rage was only heightened by this and they unceremoniously tore apart the train station to which they were about to retreat.
Even though the old Mexican state tries to intimidate the women, it does not succeed remotely. Again and again, there are militant protests by feminists in Mexico, denouncing the numerous feminicides in the country. The women's anger is only growing, and has recently erupted again and again in protests in which the women repeatedly break windows, light fires and paint public buildings with graffiti.
A video of the protests can be found here.
