“Women will not leave the streets as long as we continue to suffer from sexist violence, as has happened from generation to generation. Nor will we accept being re-victimized by continuing to demand justice before a Judiciary that has failed us again and again.”
More than 200,000 women took to the streets on March 8, International Women’s Day (8M), with this message—the first 8M in the six-year term of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a woman. The figure released by the Mexico City government confirmed that this was the largest 8M march in recent years.
DEMANDING AN END TO VIOLENCE
Central rally at the Zócalo in Mexico City on March 8. Photo: FMT, CC BY 4.0
In a day of protests, marches and conviviality that lasted more than 15 hours, thousands of young people, girls, adults and older people joined together in defense of their rights, demanding that gender violence, inequalities and impunity cease.
Assembled since dawn in front of the National Palace, searching mothers, who in commemoration of this day founded the Luciérnagas Front (made up of families who have been fighting for justice for years for their missing and murdered daughters), denounced the judges who see their daughters as only investigation files. But for us, they insisted, they are loved ones whose absence destroys the entire family.
Hours later, in a document read at the Zócalo, the central plaza, the 8M organizer of the march criticized the fact that impunity is greater than 99%, since only 0.6% of crimes are resolved. For that reason, in cases of femicide and disappearances, the investigation is taken on by the families.
Why do we search for them? Because only we find them.
Around noon, on Paseo de la Reforma, which has been the center of feminist protests, groups carried out various activities, and in one of them the Judicial Branch was again singled out. Magistrates and judges were symbolically burned in the middle of the avenue, when cardboard representations of those supposedly dispensing justice were set on fire.
CALL OUT THE JUDGES FOR ABUSE OF POWER
Around the bonfire, protesters claimed that these judges helped their abusers and dismissed women’s complaints. On posters with photos and names of judges who violated rights was written: “The federal magistrates are guilty of taking away my protection and leaving me unprotected,” and “Guilty of dismissing the evidence of sexual abuse suffered by our companion.”
Shortly after, the first contingents began to march amid slogans, drumming, dancing and purple smoke flares. They denounced the risks involved in trusting romantic love and expressed solidarity with those who are no longer here and with those who will come. They demanded an end to glass ceilings and respect for all forms of whistleblowing or reporting crimes.
At the central rally, women affirmed that “to make the government’s phrases ‘It’s time for women’ and ‘We’re all here’ a reality, actions must go beyond words; otherwise, it will be a false dogma.”
At the end of the march, hundreds of women remained for hours, until nightfall, on the Zócalo, where they lit bonfires fueled by the signs they carried during the march. There they sang, danced, hugged each other and recognized that this struggle unites us.
(Information from La Jornada newspaper.)