Valeria Marquez, a good looks influencer, was once shot lifeless through a person on Would possibly 14 whilst are living streaming on TikTok at her good looks salon within the Mexican town of Guadalajara. The government are investigating the case as a suspected femicide, the place girls or ladies are killed as a result of their gender.
The killing of Marquez is a part of a gender-based violence epidemic that has gripped Latin The united states for many years. The specter of such violence there’s so critical that during 2020, as the arena battled COVID, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, referred to as it a “shadow pandemic”.
The location in Mexico is particularly alarming. A 2021 record through Amnesty World discovered that a minimum of ten girls or ladies are murdered within the nation each day. The record added that the government have in large part proved unwilling to do so to forestall the killing.
At the floor, Mexico has made vital strides in bettering gender equality. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo turned into the primary girl to be elected as Mexico’s president in 2024. There also are a number of feminine governors heading tough Mexican provinces, and feminine political management will also be present in nice numbers in regional and municipal our bodies.
However in spite of the visual presence of girls in public existence, portions of Mexican society stay deeply sexist. Researchers see the superiority of machismo, a tradition that encourages an excessive sense of masculine satisfaction, as having facilitated male dominance over girls.
Claudia Sheinbaum speaks all over a press convention on the Nationwide Palace in Mexico Town on Would possibly 13.
Isaac Esquivel / EPA
Femicide in Mexico turned into specifically rife within the Nineteen Nineties. The creation of the North American loose business settlement noticed many factories generating items for export arrange close to Mexico’s border with america. Those factories are referred to as maquiladoras.
The emergence of maquiladoras created low-skilled process alternatives. And a era of girls sought financial freedom through operating within the factories. Via 2006, greater than part of the employees at maquiladoras have been girls, in large part the results of their relatively low salary calls for.
Whilst this tradition shift allowed girls larger financial autonomy, it additionally created deep resentment from some males. A spate of murders have been performed within the Mexican border town Ciudad Juárez within the Nineteen Nineties, which claimed the lives of kind of 400 girls.
Analysis has established a connection between feminine employment within the maquiladoras and the ensuing upward thrust in femicide in Mexican border cities. Lots of the girls killed in Ciudad Juárez labored within the maquiladoras.
Some folks additionally level to the truth that the tradition of male chauvinism in Mexico – and all over Latin The united states extra extensively – is pervasive.
When the Mexican executive in 2020 established a hotline to record problems with home abuse and violence towards girls within the nation, it was once flooded through tens of 1000’s of news. But if reporters requested the then president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, about this determine he brushed it apart: “90% of those calls that you’re referring to are fake.”
Tradition of impunity
Gender-based violence in Mexico and in massive portions of Latin The united states does no longer exist only on account of the tradition of maximum masculinity. It additionally prospers on account of institutional failure to carry the perpetrators to justice.
There are tough regulations and laws to give protection to girls towards abuse in Latin The united states. The inter-American conference at the prevention, punishment and eradication of violence towards girls, signed within the Brazilian town of Belém in 1994, is a superb instance.
It was once followed through all international locations in Latin The united states and the Caribbean, formalising violence towards girls as a contravention in their human rights. Alternatively, in spite of the presence of this criminal framework, there has no longer been a corresponding decline in charges of femicide.
Felony impunity is among the largest stumbling blocks to addressing the problem of femicide all over the area. In Mexico, for instance, greater than 90% of all crimes move unsolved. And in Brazil, many circumstances of violence towards girls move unreported.
When they’re reported, the sufferers and their households continuously face hindrances within the judicial gadget. In spite of a 39% building up within the choice of femicide circumstances in Brazil from 2019 to 2020, the sentencing for this crime handiest higher through 24%.
In keeping with a International Financial institution record from 2023, there’s an institutional complicity in perpetrating violence towards girls in Honduras. The record alleges that the rustic’s nationwide police power “turn a blind eye to the soaring number of femicides”.
In a similar way, consistent with Diana Portal, of the ombudsman’s place of business in Peru, femicide within the nation is spiralling out of keep an eye on for the reason that negligent state equipment is incapable of addressing the problem. As a result, criminals really feel they are able to “rape, disappear or kill a woman without consequence”.
Other people collaborating in a march towards gender-based violence in Lima, Peru, in 2021.
Stringer / EPA
Latin The united states and the Caribbean hasn’t ever had a dearth of feminine public figures. The area has had greater than a dozen feminine leaders as of 2025. Argentina, Brazil and Chile have lately had feminine heads of state, whilst Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico these days have feminine presidents. Mexico’s patron saint, Virgen de Guadalupe, could also be a lady.
Alternatively, the presence of those high-profile figures in public existence has no longer deterred sections of society from concentrated on girls with violence.
Incensed through the tradition of impunity and male chauvinism that perpetuates femicide in Latin The united states, the overdue Pope Francis denounced the follow. In a discuss with to Peru in 2018, he stated violence towards girls can’t be handled as “normal”. “It is not right for us to look the other way and let the dignity of so many women, especially young women, be trampled upon.”
Sadly, in spite of the ethical homily contained in his message, Latin The united states has been totally incapable of addressing this subculture of gender violence.
