Standing Up to Machismo

“Just being a woman in politics has not necessarily meant supporting policies in favor of other women. For example, a deputy in Veracruz proposed establishing a 10pm curfew for women to avoid more femicides in her state.”

Women all over Mexico are afraid in their everyday lives. We are afraid to take the metro and be taken or assaulted, but we must work and study. We are afraid of partying because someone might just rape us, but why must we stay hidden? We are afraid of walking down the streets on our own because we might get killed. The reality is that we are afraid of living in a country where the powerful and influential have chosen to ignore us. I understand from my experience studying abroad that women are afraid all over the world because rape, sexual assault, and gender violence have no nationality. However, upon my return to Mexico I realized the situation is far worse than what I ever imagined.

Yet no matter how hopeful I am, I cannot help but wonder if having more women representatives will actually translate into a decrease in gender-related crimes such as rape, femicide, statutory rape, and sexual assault.

The 2018 elections were ground-breaking for gender equality in Mexico. For the first time in history, the country had elected fifty percent of women in Congress and named a gender-equal cabinet, with the first woman as Secretary of State. For girls and women all over, having a more female political body sounded hopeful. Yet no matter how hopeful I am, I cannot help but wonder if having more women representatives will actually translate into a decrease in gender-related crimes such as rape, femicide, statutory rape, and sexual assault. Could it be that no matter how many women enter the political scene, we will still be disenfranchised and unable to see past Mexico’s internalized machismo?

I decided to review plenty of government databases and reports on gender violence, and the results were frightening, especially because available data only shows the number of reported crimes to government agencies and the real number must nearly double, having at least 1019 femicides between 2015 – 2018. Not only was there an asymmetry in the information presented officially by different governmental agencies, but, in fact, it seemed as if the government is knowingly hiding facts and figures. Additionally, I searched for the number of female political representatives as well as their proposals, and any glimmer of hope I had just vanished. In this article, I present both the most horrifying and optimistic numbers I found.

A couple of weeks ago, three girls were taken just six minutes away from where I live. They were hanging out in the local coffee shop when some men took them away in a van. One of the girls managed to escape and plead for help. This is an everyday story in the State of Mexico. Families being dismembered and young girls losing their dreams forever. Historically, the state where I live has had some of the worst rates of gender-related crimes; just between 2015 and 2018, they increased by eighty-two percent. In these years there have been 18,615 reported crimes that include sexual abuse, sexual harassment, femicide, sexual assault, rape, and gender violence outside the household.