Mexico seals off presidential palace ahead of women’s march against gender violence

Barriers were also installed around other monuments in downtown Mexico City where a year ago thousands marched on International Women’s Day

A Mexican activist said violence against women goes unpunished too often, leading to a pattern of revictimisation

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People walk past fences placed outside the National Palace in Mexico City. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:10pm, 6 Mar 2021Updated: 2:10pm, 6 Mar 2021

Mexico’s government has walled off the presidential palace with a metallic barrier ahead of a planned women’s march on Monday to protest rampant violence against women and the president’s support for a gubernatorial candidate accused of rape.

Barriers were also installed around other emblematic buildings and monuments in downtown Mexico City where a year ago tens of thousands of people marched on International Women’s Day, the vast majority peacefully.

“It is outrageous, few people support us in the cry for justice,” said Becky Bios, who survived an attempted femicide – a term for gender-driven killing – in 2015 and will participate in the march.

Last year’s march, however, was punctuated by clashes between participants and apparent Nazi sympathisers that left dozens injured, with activists tossing Molotov cocktails at the National Palace and some buildings and cars vandalised.

“The fact that they’re barricading the city shows they’re aware that women have been listening to them, we have been watching them and apparently now they’re the ones who are scared,” said Arussi Unda, spokeswoman for the feminist collective Las Brujas del Mar, or Witches of the Sea.

Arussi said violence against women goes unpunished too often, leading to a pattern of revictimisation. She believed the gubernatorial candidacy of Felix Salgado, who has been accused of rape, for the southern state of Guerrero is one example of that impunity.