Two weeks after the Network of Feminists of the State of Mexico met in the State of Mexico and drafted a list of demands for the Mexican and state government, and the National Citizens’ Observatory on Femicide (OCNF) requested a meeting with him, state Governor Eruviel Ávila responded by saying, “There are more urgent matters to deal with” than femicide in Mexico.
According to RevolucionTresPuntoCero, OCNF travelled to Toluca to claim justice for women who have been murdered in their state, in an action as part of the campaign, No More Femicides in the State of Mexico, Gender Red Alert.
The governor replied that he could not receive the activists in his office but that he already received the message and has forwarded their request on to “the responsible department.”
The government has been hesitant to investigate femicides in Mexico. The National System for the Prevention, Attention, Sanctioning and Eradication of Violence against Women — a government agency under the Mexican Secretariat of the Interior, which has 50 members — told a commission of civil society organizations in August 2013 that before investigating the killings as gender-specific, it is “necessary to prove that the attacks are systematic,” said a report in Siempre88.9.
Over the last 21 years, the State of Mexico has proven to be the most dangerous state for women. While much of the media attention has been on the City of Juarez, 10 times more women have been murdered in the State of Mexico, as pointed out in Humberto Padgett’s newly published book The Murdered Women of the State of Mexico.
In other words, while the State of Mexico makes up 13.5 percent of the total Mexican population, a disproportionate fourth of all femicides in the country occurred in that state. The OCNF found that from 2005 to the present, 1,500 women were assassinated in the State of Mexico alone. The Mexican statistical institute INEGI reported that the total femicides in 2011 nationwide surpassed 2,693. In some Mexican states, femicides are as much as 15 times higher than the global average. That means 6.4 women are killed in Mexico per day.
