Mexican women's patience snaps at Amlo's inaction on femicide

Feminists seize human rights office to force President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to tackle grim toll of rape and murder

Madeleine Wattenbarger in Mexico City
Wed 16 Sep 2020 16.22 BST

As Mexicans prepared to mark Independence Day celebrations on 15 September, a different kind of commemoration was held at the headquarters of the country’s human rights commission (CNDH).

Under a fluttering purple anarchy flag, women in black balaclavas lined the upstairs balconies of the 19th-century building – and speaker after speaker expressed their fury at the country’s crisis of violence against women.

One middle-aged woman whose niece and sister have both disappeared brandished a fistful of documents from their CNDH case files. “I did this correctly. I sat here for hours and nothing happened,” she shouted, before shredding the papers and tossing them from the balcony.

“The institutions can go to hell, because they don’t respect people’s human rights.”

The masked protesters stormed the building a week ago, and they have vowed to occupy it until the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador takes decisive action to stop the relentless toll of rape, murder and forced disappearance.

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