Mexico City.– Survivors and mothers and daughters of femicide victims in Mexico accused the government and the justice system on Tuesday of perpetuating institutional violence, amid the reform of the judicial branch promoted by the ruling party in Congress.
Lorena Gutiérrez Rangel, mother of Fátima Varinia Quintana Gutiérrez, who was murdered in 2015, denounced that one of the perpetrators received a minimum sentence for being a minor and was released in 2022, now threatening another of her children.
Gutiérrez called on the government to reform the justice system to eliminate the «privileges» for underage criminals and, especially, «listen to the victims.»
Paz Rodríguez García, daughter of Melesia García, who was murdered in 2021 in Milpa Alta, Mexico City, said that to date there have been no arrests over the death of her mother, who was tortured and sexually assaulted.
«We demand that the laws be reformed so that minors who commit femicides are tried as adults and that the concealing relatives are also punished. It is not fair that a minor receives only five years in prison while our lives are destroyed,» she said.
Collateral victims of femicide
Gutiérrez accused the Mexican State of the 2020 death of her son Daniel, who died due to negligence in a psychiatric hospital in Monterrey while under protective measures.
«My son was murdered by the State through omission and indolence, because the victims do not have access to the health system in this country (…) They displace you and tell you that it is for your safety, they send you to another state, but they tell you that you cannot access the health system to safeguard your integrity,» she said.
She warned that displacement, mainly of collateral victims of femicide, such as her son Daniel, «is a crime against humanity, a State crime.»
On the anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women on Sep. 3, Gutiérrez regretted that President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who assumes power on Oct. 1, denied the responsibility of the Mexican State in the death of her son, and urged her to recognize the collateral victims of femicide and to guarantee «non-repetition.»
«One of my demands is to stop pretending and apply all the resources to the (victims’) commissions as they should be, but above all, to our children,» she said, and denounced that since January of last year, the Victims’ Commission of the State of Mexico withdrew support to avoid electoral «proselytism.»
Survivors and vicarious violence
Fabiola Posadas, survivor of an attempted femicide in 2019, denounced the lack of will of the authorities to prevent and eradicate gender-based violence in which she said survivors are invisible.
«Survivors do not know about Victims’ Commissions (…) We do not have support, we are not seen, we do not exist. We survived and that’s it, we must continue,» she said.
She also pointed out that no one mentions the possibility of corruption in the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection or in the prosecutor’s offices, and expressed concern that reform could worsen the situation for victims, if justice ends up in the hands of organized crime.
Meanwhile, Ana María López Pérez, mother of Julianne Zoé Sánchez López, who disappeared more than four years ago during a visit with her father, expressed desperation and fear for her daughter, a victim of vicarious violence.
«I have expressed this both in the seventh family court and in the Prosecutor’s Office, however, they answer: it is her father, there is no crime to pursue,» denounced the mother who has custody of the girl due to the violence exercised by the father.
«The fact that they told me that she is with her father does not give me peace of mind. The authorities must fulfill their duty and look for my daughter,» she declared, while showing a portrait of Julianne Zoé, who would now be 8 years old and who her mother hopes is still alive.
Mexico will have its first female president next month, while the country faces a wave of gender-based violence with an average of 10 women murdered a day.
