Fifteen police officers and four civilians have been injured during International Women’s Day demonstrations in Mexico City, the Ministry of Public Security says, as thousands of women protested against gender violence across the country.
Feminist groups took to the streets of Mexico to demand a stop to murders of and abuses against women, in a country where about 10 women are murdered every day.
Protesters carried photos of murdered women and posters with phrases such as “Mexico murderer of women” and “They have not murdered me, but I live in fear.”
In Mexico City, demonstrators marched to the National Palace, the seat of the federal executive, which had previously been fenced off, as were some 30 historical monuments around the capital.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador justified the fence as a way to avoid violence during the protests, while feminist groups described it as a “wall of shame.”
“We love life, we want peace,” said Lopez Obrador, a left-wing nationalist who accused “conservatives” opposing his government of infiltrating the marches.
Groups of activists tore down some of the fences around the National Palace. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters.
More than 2,000 unarmed female police officers were deployed to provide security during the demonstrations.
“There are many ways to protest peacefully, including using your voice and even insulting, but not throwing bombs, not using hammers, not setting things on fire,” the president said earlier in his morning press conference.
Similar protests were also reported from other countries in the region. There were reports of rioting and scuffles with police in several places.
In the Colombian capital Bogota, windows were broken and Molotov cocktails were thrown, according to video footage posted to social media.
There were particularly large demonstrations in Santiago de Chile and the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.
In addition to the nineteen people injured in Mexico City, four press photographers were detained, thrown to the floor and handcuffed by police officers in a station when they were on their way to cover the march, one of them reported on her Twitter account.
The Ministry of Public Security said that the officer who gave the order to arrest the women has been suspended, as were all the police seen in the videos circulating on social media.
More than 3,700 women were murdered in Mexico last year, including about 967 cases that were classified as gender-based killings, or femicide. Reports of domestic violence also increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
