The State of Mexico was marked in 2020 by gender violence, where femicides increased 18% compared to the previous year, announced Alejandro Gómez Sánchez, Mexico’s Attorney General of Justice.
In just 11 months, the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) registered 133 femicides against 122 in all of 2019; while victims’ testimonies accuse an alleged underreporting of fatal attacks against housewives, students, young workers and girls.
Confinement from the Covid-19 pandemic did not discourage violence against women; In 11 months, the number of gender homicides registered the previous year in the State of Mexico was exceeded.
Process linked to 77
Gómez Sánchez reported that in 2020 77 probable feminicides were linked to the process, and the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM) obtained convictions against 40 of them.
In 2020, femicide had an 18% increase, and in turn intentional homicides of women experienced a 22% decrease, he added.
The most lethal in the country: deputy
In the country, at the SESNSP data cutoff, as of December 25, 888 alleged femicides had been registered, 133 of them in the State of Mexico, an entity that ranked first in this crime, followed by Veracruz, with 82, and Mexico City, with 67.
The State of Mexico is the most lethal of the country’s entities, said deputy Mariana Uribe Bernal, president of the Commission for Gender Equality of the Mexican Legislature, who affirmed that the increase in femicides and intentional homicides make it necessary to rethink the actions to eliminate gender violence and prevent it across the board.
He explained that from 2015 to October 2020, 541 femicides were registered in the entity. Those cases, he said, translate into an equal number of broken families, orphaned girls and boys, school dropouts, pain and despair.
Official figures indicate that cases of femicide have been on the rise, from 59 reported in 2015 to 119 from January to October 2020, which “should concern us with focusing efforts, knowledge and being sensitive to this problem; apply protocols of action for this crime, put aside the habitus of the public servant who does not allow to see beyond the stereotypes ”.
It has 25 of the 100 most violent municipalities
Of the 100 municipalities with the highest femicidal violence in the country, between 16 and 25 of them are in the State of Mexico, especially those located in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, according to the list published each month by the National Public Security System.
Chimalhuacán, Ecatepec and Atizapán, until November, added 21 femicides; Tecámac six; Nezahualcóyotl, Toluca, Tultitlán and Valle de Chalco, five each; Naucalpan, Teoloyucan and Zumpango, four; Almoloya de Juárez, Ixtapaluca, Chalco, Nextlalpan and Teotihuacán, three.
In October, the list of municipalities with the highest number of femicides included 25 in the State of Mexico, where the analysis of violence against women also included, in addition to those mentioned above, Huehuetoca and La Paz, with four cases; Chiautla, with three; Chicoloapan, Coacalco, Cocotitlán, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Hueypoxtla, Ixtlahuaca, Nicolás Romero and Ocuilan, with two each.
Toluca stood out in the final stretch of the year. From November 7 to 9, it registered the femicides of Karla, Karen and a woman of unknown identity who appeared wrapped in a vacant lot.
It is striking that among the most violent territories due to femicides in 2020, there are municipalities that do not have a gender alert: Atizapán, Tecámac, Huehuetoca and Zumpango.
For this reason, the Governor of the State of Mexico, Alfredo del Mazo Maza, determined in November to establish the same measures that should be applied in the 11 municipalities with gender alert for femicide and disappearance, for the entire Mexican territory, such as having a police force of gender, specialized centers and personnel for the attention of crimes against women, treatment for violent men, as well as shelters for mothers and their children who are at risk.
Under-registration?
Last year Tlalnepantla registered at least three violent deaths against women, among them that of a victim whose body appeared on February 2 in a suitcase in the center of the municipality; the murder of a policewoman in October in the Lázaro Cárdenas neighborhood and a day later that of her 9-year-old daughter; as well as that of Fer Sabalza, a 19-year-old Pedagogy student, who was murdered on June 20 in Los Reyes Ixtacala, a case investigated as a femicide, said Mauricio, the young woman’s father.
However, Tlalnepantla does not appear on the list of the 100 municipalities in the country with the highest femicidal violence.