MEXICO CITY — An Worldwide Ladies’s Day rally in Mexico on Tuesday drew hundreds of protesters, with throngs marching towards violence and streaming move the presidential palace and nationwide monuments within the capital that had been cordoned off with large metallic fences amid fears of unrest.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been accused of not doing sufficient to stem the rise in femicides, urged calm whereas warning that the protests might flip violent.
The Mexico Metropolis police mentioned that they had seized Molotov cocktails, weapons akin to bats and hammers and fireworks from protesters within the afternoon. Native information media reported that two protesters had been injured after swinging at a glass bus cease, which got here crashing down on high of them.
The authorities had erected a protecting metallic barrier across the Nationwide Palace, the seat of presidency the place the presidential household lives, and different historic buildings forward of the protests.
Later Tuesday evening, video footage shared on-line confirmed a blaze on the door of the federal government palace in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León state, after marchers entered the constructing, in accordance with native information stories. There was no fast official affirmation of any harm. Anti-riot law enforcement officials and firefighters have been deployed to the location.
Protesters wrote, “MEXICO FEMICIDE” in towering white letters on the black metallic cordon in entrance of the Nationwide Palace, which faces the Zocalo foremost sq., the stage for a lot of main demonstrations.
Final 12 months, girls marching on Worldwide Ladies’s Day additionally clashed with the police at barricades surrounding the Nationwide Palace. Protesters tried to tear down a metallic wall put in to guard authorities property from vandalism, prompting officers to fireside pepper spray.
Mexico recorded 969 femicides final 12 months, up barely from 949 in 2020, in accordance with authorities figures. Activists say the true figures are probably a lot greater, and a few estimate that 10 girls a day are killed due to their gender.
A bunch of protesters chanted, “Ladies united, won’t ever be defeated,” as they arrived close to the Nationwide Palace on Tuesday, waving white flags. Others, sporting purple bandanas for the area’s feminist motion or inexperienced in help of abortion rights, marched down one in every of Mexico Metropolis’s foremost avenues holding banners and posters with feminist slogans.
Frida Moreno, 21, a pupil who mentioned that abusive lecturers had scarred her upbringing, mentioned she believed she had an obligation to march in order that different younger women could be spared related experiences.
“Though I really feel privileged as a result of I stay in a protected space, nobody can assure that someday I cannot disappear,” mentioned Ms. Moreno, on the verge of tears.
Mr. López Obrador, who appointed girls to half his cupboard posts, has rejected claims by activists that he’s not fascinated by tackling femicides, saying that progress has been made to defend girls’s rights.
Requested on Tuesday morning if the protests might grow to be violent, as one authorities official had predicted, the president nodded.
“There may be infiltration of the feminist motion basically by conservative teams,” he mentioned, noting that it was fallacious “to make use of violence for political functions.”
The Mexico Metropolis authorities had mentioned it might deploy dozens of paramedics in addition to an all-female police power.
Supply: NY Times