Demonstrations in Mexico City Bring Attention to Femicide

A series of performance demonstrations in Mexico City are bringing attention to the growing gender-based violence rates throughout the country.

Activists placed hundreds of painted-red women’s shoes on the main square in Zocalo, Mexico City’s cultural and religious hub, on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. Demonstrators also placed five pairs of shoes in front of the National Palace.

“Not one more killed!” they chanted, according to the AP.

Women’s rights advocates say Mexico needs to address the legal impunity given to perpetrators of gender-based violence to stop them from committing these crimes. Fewer than 5% of crimes in Mexico are punished.

The performance protest on Saturday was led by 60-year-old artist Elina Chauvet. Chauvet created the demonstration concept in 2009 after her sister was killed by her husband in a domestic violence case in the city of Jaurez. The red shoes simultaneously symbolize blood and love and “represent absence,” Chauvet said.

There were 3,662 femicides — the murder of a woman because of her gender— in 2018, and the rate only increased in 2019. On average, 10 women and girls are murdered each day in Mexico, and less than 10% of the cases are ever solved.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and allied authorities have promised to prioritize femicide and other gender-related crimes. Mexico City’s Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum declared a gender violence alert for the city in November, according to the AP, and 20 of Mexico’s federal entities have followed.

Despite these efforts, the rates at which women are being killed are not declining, and demonstrators on Saturday are not satisfied with Mexico’s commitment to ending gender-based violence.