2022 Year in Review

A 2022 study released by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and
United Nations Women reports that
globally, 81,000 women and girls were
intentionally killed this year. 56% (or
45,000) of women met with death as a
result of their intimate partner or family
members.
But it is Latin American countries that
present the largest exacerbator, taking out
8 of the top 10 spots of countries with the
highest femicide rate of the year. Mexico
trailed in at number 11.
Political science professor Alejandro Hope,
when asked why, following Ingrid
Escamilla’s death, remarked ‘a violent and
machismo culture killed Ingrid, our
indifference killed her, our failure to
demand that things changed killed her’.
This indifference is ever-present in Latin
American justice systems. Police remiss
adequate investigations into reports and
the follow-through of the judiciary in
prosecuting offenders are slim. A lack of
peremptory action by crime enforcement
in addressing gendered violence facilitates
an inconsequential attitude to human
rights, with women and girls at the bottom
of the pecking order.
Politically, there is reluctance to address
the issue. Shockingly, Mexico’s current
President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,
blamed ‘femicide’ as a provocation of
media sensationalism.
When questioned on Mexico’s influx of
emergency calls reporting violence against
women in 2021, the middle of the COVID-19
lockdown, López Obrador supposed that
‘90% of those calls that you’re referring to
are fake’.
López Obrador well and truly placed salt in
the wounds of women, dishonouring such
reports as ‘pranks’ analogous to ‘calls the
metro gets about sabotage or bombs’.
The liberty to feel safe is not
afforded to women and girls in
Latin America. Home does not
pledge safety. Neither can a
public street, being at school,
or catching a taxi ride home.
This has not gone unchallenged. Women
across the region were mobilised again after
the shocking circumstances surrounding
Dehbani Escobar’s disappearance and death
early this year, as the world saw huge
human rights protests and marches.
‘I’m marching today so that I
don’t die tomorrow’ was the
message plastered amongst
the crowds.
To mark the loss of blood of the victims of
femicide in Mexico City, protesters tinted
the water red of the fountain to the Roman
goddess Diana. The same was done to the
fountain of the Roman goddess of wisdom
in Minerva, Guadalajara.
P A G E 1 3 3