Five women die each day in Mexico victims of violence

"His wrists and legs were tied, the eyes had blindfolded… She was naked, all full of blows… Two shot in the head ended up with his life". Lenin Vázquez clings just to recall the smile of Xochitl, murdered at the age of 17, but cannot. The image of the final hours of his sister is heartbreaking. "No one knows who killed him… a neighbor found her dead". The girl lived with her boyfriend a few streets away from the Palacio Municipal de Chalco - one of the 125 municipalities of the State of Mexico (in the center of the country) -, with 350.00 inhabitants. "El Chavo says that she knows nothing about. Went Out at six in the morning to work and just after they came to kill her". The case of Xochitl has been left in limbo. "So far no one has been summoned to testify, the case was reported as a theft and ended up. But in his room had jewelry, a diamond ring, a very expensive clock and money. Nobody was nothing".

The State of Mexico, birthplace of president Enrique Peña Nieto, has been a clear example of this rout of attacks on women: Lucero, who was murdered after denounce their rapists; Diana, wound up and thrown into a canal, Alejandra, raped by three policemen… "have been thousands of women have died. Their bodies are dismembered; others kidnap and never more is known about them," says Maria de la Luz Estrada, Executive Coordinator of the National Observatory citizen against Femicide. The rate of femicides in the country - up to three per 100,000 women - is the height of nations as Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, according to the Small Arms Survey organization, a non-governmental group with headquarters in Switzerland. In Spain, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom, according to the latest report of the agency, presents up to a crime of gender per 100,000 women.

The streets of this village, of more than three million inhabitants, have potholes, the trash teeming in each corner, in the evening, the lighting is poor, and in the local news speaks only of robberies, killings, kidnappings and disappearances. "Women are the weakest link in this society," argues Manuel Amador Velázquez, co-author of the anthology Interdisciplinary Dialogs on Sexual Violence. A low educational level (100 women, 5.7 do not know how to read or write in the State of Mexico), the lack of access to justice and poverty (15 million inhabitants, 43% of lives in this condition) are the factors that have driven violence, argues the sociologist.

"In the State of Mexico, there is a systematic pattern similar to that of Ciudad Juárez" -north of Mexico, where in his worst year (2010) died a woman every 20 hours- ", says Guadalupe Ramos, representative of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Women (CLADEM). The red dots on this violence discriminated against, he explains, are the municipalities of Ecatepec, Netzahualcóyotl, Chalco and seven others, the majority located in the northwest of the entity.

"There is omission," says Estrada. Since 2010, when still ruled the State Enrique Peña Nieto, this organization has insisted that it must be activated the Alert of Gender, a mechanism for emergency that cast walk the machinery of government to tackle violence against women. "The previous government and the current, both with the PRI, the president's party, have refused to recognize that there is a problem of femicides", highlights. "Uncovering this culvert would imply a political blow to the two Governments, state and federal," says Yvonne Acuña from the Universidad Iberoamericana.