In Santiago, Chile, women walked to the seat of the nation’s presidency with some hurling plastic bottles and sticks at police guarding it. Monday’s strike gained widespread support following the homicide and torture of Fatima Aldriguett, a seven-12 months-old girl, whose body was found wrapped in a plastic bag subsequent to a development site last month.

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The strike sent a clear message to Mexican society, said Sandra Reyes, 33, a biologist on the National Cancer Institute, who was certainly one of no less than 80,000 people who joined the country’s largest ever women’s march on Sunday. The streets of Mexico City were unusually quiet and lacking traffic, whereas shops reported mild gross sales. A woman cleans the glass door of a Mexico City restaurant with an indication studying ‘We stand with those that make us giants’ during Monday’s ‘A Day Without Us’ protest. The strike is aimed at highlighting the number of women who’re murdered in Mexico — approximately 10 per day, in accordance with government figures.

On Sunday, a protester threw a Molotov cocktail, injuring members of the press and cops, including women. Some women’s rights teams and feminist collectives have urged the federal government to create a special prosecutor’s workplace for femicides and circumstances of disappearance. Many of the women who took to the streets on Sunday were frustrated with the government’s lack of ability to guard women. In the main plaza of Mexico City’s historical center, feminist activists spray-painted the names of ladies who had been killed or who disappeared in recent times.

In mid-February, a seven-12 months-old girl named Fatima was taken from her faculty in the southern part of Mexico City after her mother was operating late to pick her up. A demonstrator holds an altered version of the Mexican flag throughout a rally in Mexico City on International Women’s Day on Sunday, March eight. The strike, and a march that drew tens of hundreds of women to the streets on Sunday, had been a watershed second for Mexico, a nation that has long failed to grapple with entrenched machismo and gender-based mostly violence.

Mexico: Thousands stay in to protest violence towards women

Rita Hernández, 61, said she had taken her granddaughters to the march on Sunday with out their father’s permission, figuring out he would have not allowed it. Early Monday, many subway ticket booths, which largely operated by women, were closed. “Every day we’ve more evidence that they’re killing us specifically for being women,” said Maria de la Luz Estrada, the executive coordinator of the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide. Women’s strikes have been held beforehand in Argentina and Chile, as well as Poland and Spain. But Amneris Chaparro, a researcher at the gender studies middle at the National Autonomous University, mentioned Mexico had by no means before had a serious women’s strike – despite its lengthy tradition of labor and scholar activism.

About 10 women a day are killed

“We want real rights, a finances, that take into account the state of affairs of ladies on this country, which is really terrible,” stated 20-year-previous activist Belén Gutiérrez. Mexico’s President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has faced heavy criticism from activists for blaming the femicide downside on the neoliberal policies of previous governments. Days later, when reporters again questioned him on the murders as a substitute of a planned raffle to raise money for the country’s well being services, he responded he did not want “femicides to overshadow the lottery”. If women take part in giant numbers as anticipated, the strike, largely leaderless, may affect the country’s economy, some economists say.

“There isn’t a single woman in Mexico who has not skilled some type of sexist violence,” mentioned Sofia Weidner, an illustrator and artist in Mexico City. “In Mexico, the violence keeps spreading, at present there isn’t a state in the country that is safe for a woman to reside,” Nunez said. “In a country that has accomplished little to resolve the femicides that afflict us, the disappearances, and the violence that affects us every day, we want society to resent our absence,” Nunez stated. Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is predicated in Mexico City. Across social media, pictures were posted of newsrooms, government offices, and faculties emptied of girls and girls.

He has been fiercely criticized for his response to the recent protests, together with for his comment that conservative rivals are behind the protests. “Parents, be informed that female personnel are becoming a member of this nationwide strike by women,” learn a sign posted outdoors one school in Mexico City. Asked about his government’s strategy for combatting violence towards women and impunity for such crimes, López Obrador said Monday that his administration is engaged on the issue daily. Echoing his policy for addressing broader violence, the president stressed the significance of tackling social ills corresponding to poverty and inequality. Women in Argentina and Chile have staged strikes in previous years and thousands took to the streets once more Monday.

Authorities seem incapable of preventing or correctly investigating the crimes, very few of which lead to convictions. Advocacy groups have asked women across Mexico to remain at house for the day, to show against surprising ranges mexicon women of gender-based violence within the Latin American nation. The strike comes amid increasing outrage against the prevalence of violence against women and what feminist groups say is inaction by the government and authorities.

Widespread protests

Of these numbers, only 25.6 p.c had been investigated as hate crimes; the rest were registered as homicides. MEXICO CITY — Tens of 1000’s of ladies vanished from streets, workplaces and school rooms across Mexico on Monday, a part of a nationwide strike to protest the violence they undergo and to demand government action in opposition to it.