The Day of the Dead is a Mexican celebration where many women paint their faces in skeletal face paint and walk the streets dressed up as the iconic figure of the festivity, " La Catrina .”
Yet on November 1, dozens of women donned the costume and marched the streets of the city, yet this time to protest against the femicides being committed in the country and to urge the government to put an end to impunity .
Close to 200 protesters held candles and photos of the victims as they marched, chanting “Ni una más” (Not one more), in a procession which was a somber contrast to the otherwise cheerful events taking place in the capital city on the eve of the Day of the Dead.
“As women, we face a lot of danger,” said Claudia Correa, mother of a 21 year-old woman who was found dead near her home in Veracruz last month with stab wounds in the chest and neck, following a conversation with her ex-boyfriend.
Correa said the ex-boyfriend has since disappeared and an investigation is underway to find him.
“The authorities don't do anything to find these killers and the killers realize they are taking so long that they have a chance to get away. And they are going ty continue doing so if we allow them to,” said Correa.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography ( INEGI ), in the first four years of Peña Nieto's administration , Mexico registered 2,543 homicides of women, compared to the 2,051 which took place during the term of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón.
Ana Elena Contreras, organizer of the march, said that as long as the perpetrators aren't brought to justice, women will continue facing gave risks in Mexico – which scored worse than the most violent countries of Central America in the 2017 Global Impunity Index , published in August.
“There's a part of society that still doesn't consider this issue as something serious; they minimize it,” said Francisco Rivas, general director of the National Citizen Observatory (ONC), a civil group monitoring justice and security in Mexico.
The 2,735 femicides of women last year are the second-highest figure since 1990.
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