Violence Against Women in Mexico

The report “Violence Against Women in Mexico” focuses on recent trends in three regions of the country (Baja California, Sinaloa and Veracruz). There are several accounts of the atrocities throughout the paper going into detail about the victim, the incident and similar cases. It will allow for a personal connection and accounts from real events depicting the larger scale of how severe these cases are. Most of them contain brutal force and violence.  Some were related to organized crime, relatives, significant others or random perpetuators. One specific event that really was alarming was about Maria de Jesús Reyes Pérez. Near Angostura, Sinaloa, a seventy year old woman was beaten to death by her son for allegedly taking part in witchcraft. Her child has mental health issues and attacked his father as well, who only suffered minor injuries. The man was never convicted due to him being mentally ill. There were 8 other cases similar to this where women were attacked by their sons. It all  relates to machismo considering all abusers felt disrespected and felt they had to take action. When looking at the three states, there was in increase in domestic and sexual violence and femicide. It has increased more than ever especially in 2017. Sexual violence in Veracruz can be deemed as an “epidemic” with a staggering 12% of casing having assault and mutilation involved. There are graphs included showing the age distribution, cases from 2016-2017 and a labelled map revealing where cases took place. Victims around the age of 20-29 were most common followed by 15-19 and 35-39. I think this source can be very useful for our video project because it shares details on modern day data and information that can showcase what it looks like today and how serious it has gotten. Moving on, the paper spends some time talking about one of the main policies put in place called Gender Violence Alert Mechanism. States with alarming rates of femicide and crimes against women will take action right away to deal with the issue. The motives for this policy were to bring the incidents to light and create a “political will” to produce more rules that will decrease femicides. For example, Sinaloa has been providing programs to teach common people, military and police about femicide. They have also been reviewing budget plans concerning women’s institutions. The report does touch upon how this hasn’t created much difference and only does the bare minimum. There is more action needed that will really ignite change including “improving investigations, provide sufficient attention to victims, ensure swift processing of perpetrators, and the implementation of exemplary punishments.” This specific part is crucial for the project due to the fact it can inform people about existing regulations, the issues with it and how it can improve.

Source:

https://sites.sandiego.edu/tbi-femicide/files/2017/12/2016-2017-Femicide-Report-Final.pdf