More than 1,000 women wearing purple marched in Tijuana on Wednesday to demand an end to femicide and other abuses that they frequently face.
The air filled with the smell of spray paint and burning palo santo as they chanted, jumped and memorialized their lost sisters in celebration of International Women’s Day.
“I don’t want future generations to experience what I experienced,” said Alondra, 21, in Spanish. “More than anything, it’s for the girls of the future.”
She and her friend from college gathered at the kickoff event in the Zona Rio neighborhood at Monumento México, a sculpture commonly known as “the Scissors” for its pair of spikes that stretch into the sky. They painted their hands purple and pressed them at the same time onto a sign as wide as the boulevard they were about to march down. Many others wrote and painted messages to share their reasons for marching.
“Hoy grito porque cuando era niña no pude,” wrote one woman. Today I yell because as a girl I couldn’t.
Soon the scissors monument was covered in spray-painted messages as well as an altar to women who had been killed and not had justice in their cases. Some women also brought signs bearing the names and faces of men accused of rape and assault and attached them to street signs and other fixtures.
Violence against women is a common occurrence in Mexico. According to the Mexican government, 70 percent of women older than 15 surveyed said they’d been victimized. About 10 women are killed every day in the country.
Among those arranging the crosses as part of the altar was Rosamide Cadeus, 26, originally from Haiti. She’s been in Mexico for about two years and Tijuana for roughly a year.
She said she wanted to speak up as both a woman and migrant about how her rights have been violated. She said many times she can’t get service at Mexican institutions because she is a foreigner. She is especially concerned about the ways in which pregnant migrants’ rights are violated in the local health care system, she said.
“I’m fighting for all that can’t be here and everyone that is afraid,” she said in Spanish.
She said she plans to stay in Tijuana, which made showing up for the demonstration even more important to her.
Also representing migrants in the march were several trans women who are seeking asylum from Mexico because of the violence they have experienced. They came with Yolanda Rocha, director of Jardin de las Mariposas, a migrant shelter that serves the LGBTQ community.
Rocha said it was important to be present with the women from her shelter to remind everyone that trans women also experience high levels of violence.
As the time to march neared, Tijuana police closed the roads around the traffic circle that surrounded the monument, and women filled the street.
Men were generally not allowed at the march, per instructions posted on social media.
However, Nayeli Sosa brought her 7-year-old son Luis Daniel Ramirez from Rosarito to march with her.
“For me as a mom, I would like that he not be what’s happening today, that he be better,” she said in Spanish.
He held a sign that read, “Soy el hermano de las mujeres que no vas a violar.” I am the brother of the women that you will not rape.
A little after 4 p.m., the march began moving along Paseo de los Héroes.
In their chants, they called for of the public to not be indifferent to the killings happening in front of them.
Some beat drums and others shook noise makers.
They soon turned around and headed to the municipal building.
On the way, some tagged the sidewalks and walls they ed.
“Ni una más,” one wrote, a longtime slogan for the movement. Not one more.
Lines of Tijuana police stood in front of the Palacio Municipal as they marched past.
“La policía no me cuida. Me cuidan mis amigas,” the women yelled. The police don’t take care of me. My friends take care of me.
