At least 12 women injured in Women’s Day march in Mexico City
Mexico City, Mar 8 (EFE).- At least nine civilian women and three policewomen were injured Tuesday during the International Women’s Day march in Mexico City, a demonstration participated in by thousands of women which, despite several incidents, developed mostly peacefully.
Of the 12 injured women, three were taken to a local hospital – a policewoman who was injured with an ice pick in her right cheek and two civilians hurt when part of a glass structure fell on them, capital authorities said.
The undersecretary for Institutional Development with the capital’s Citizen’s Safety Secretariat (SSC), Marcela Figueroa, in a Twitter post, provided an initial report as of 4:30 pm Thousands of women, most of the wearing purple garments, took to the streets of the Mexican capital to demonstrate against gender violence directed against them.
At 2 pm, the first march got under way with about 3,000 people near the Monument to the Revolution, prior to the beginning of a much larger march, the start of which had been scheduled for 4 pm from the Angel of Independence on the central Paseo de la Reforma.
The first contingent of marchers, most of whom conducted themselves peacefully, included a group of masked women who climbed onto urban furniture and infrastructure to paint slogans, throw purple smoke bombs and even brandish blowtorches.
Later, some of the demonstrators began destroying urban infrastructure, including the glass structure at the entrance of a metro station, as well as painting slogans and banging on the barriers surrounding the National Palace.
Mexico City awoke on Tuesday with its main public and private buildings, as well as monuments in the downtown area blocked off by authorities to try and prevent serious vandalism.
The National Palace, which is not only the seat of government but also the official residence of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has been surrounded by fences and barricades since Monday.
A group of feminists sometime Monday night wrote the slogan “Femicide Mexico” on the barrier around the seat of government.
The city government on Monday declared that the International Women’s Day march was expected to be “very violent,” given that at least 15 groups were said to be planning acts of vandalism and confrontations with police, and local authorities reported that more than 3,000 policewomen would be deployed to provide security at the march.
The Mexican government in 2021 registered 1,004 femicides, meaning killings specifically committed because the victims were female, 2.66 percent more than during 2020.
Along with the 2,747 other women who were victims of intentional homicide in 2020 but not for gender-related reasons, this brings the total number of Mexican women murdered last year to 3,751, or more than 10 per day.
EFE jmrg/mqb/jrh/bp
