‘They Know We Are Not Scared’: The Unshakeable Resolve of Mexico’s 8M March

MEXICO CITY—More than 75,000 poured into the center of Mexico City this year for the annual International Women’s Day protest, marching down Reforma Avenue in the shadow of a figure of a young girl with her fist in the air — a guerrilla monument occupying the pedestal where once stood the statue of Christopher Columbus.

“We march because in our country women are murdered every day,” Yanderi Sánchez, a member of Artivistas — a feminist activist and artist collective from Mexico State — told Women Under Siege. The group comprises women musicians, painters, illustrators, photographers, and social scientists who use their creativity, skills, and political passions to support and advocate for women experiencing violence of all forms.

With shockingly high rates of violence against women combined with an extraordinary rate of impunity for reported crime, Mexican women and other targets of heteropatriarchal violence (such as gay men, transgender and non-binary people) know that they are on their own when it comes to self-defense and social and political resistance.

According to government figures, in 2021, the country recorded 969 femicides, that is, murders of women related to their gender. This was a two-percent increase from the previous year, and more than double the 2015 figure of 412 femicides.

“Based on our experience as a collective with people we have accompanied and supported, violence against women starts from the age of 6 months and goes to 106 years old”, Sánchez told Women Under Siege. “We march for the babies, infants, adolescents, adults and elderly women who have been raped, and for those murdered by those who sexually assaulted them.”

On March 8, the Artivistas collective made the journey from outside Mexico City into the city center to join the thousands marching through the city chanting, dancing, spray painting and hammering on walls to protest what many refer to as "the patriarchal pact": the culturally pervasive, socially consented, and politically enforced norms that ensure continued gender discrimination and gendered violence in Mexico.

As feminist movements have exploded across Mexico, as elsewhere in Latin America, few social issues intersecting with gendered violence are left untouched — messages visible in the march also advocating for migrant rights, Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and ending war and police violence.

Mexican women have a particularly notable presence in protesting and world-making against resource “megaprojects,” like open-cut mining in various parts of the country, the original Lake Texcoco location for Mexico City’s new airport (which opened last month on a different site), and the Tren Maya tourist project heavily favored by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known by his initials as AMLO). For example, the women of Cherán, in the state of Michoacán, have become world famous for their success in barring organized crime groups from conducting illegal logging and spreading corruption and violence in their Indigneous Purépecha territory.

Sánchez of Artivistas told Women Under Siege that there is an undeniable connection between the fight against urban overdevelopment and over-extraction of resources, and the fight for gender equality and freedom from gendered violence.

Cultural and linguistic heritage is being lost through these processes, said Sánchez, adding that women tend to be the ones who pass down language and guard traditions associated with the land. “The challenge is to rescue what is being lost due to increasing urbanization and deforestation and construction by large corporations,” she said. “This is a natural part of our struggle as feminists, as human rights defenders.”

The growth of the International Women’s Day marches throughout Latin America has largely been fueled by young women, as high rates of gendered violence (according to a 2017 report from the UN Development Program, the region has the highest level of sexualized violence in the world) have refused to budge.

That growth has not gone unnoticed. In 2021, President AMLO used his lengthy daily morning press conference to forewarn that feminist activists were planning acts of vandalism and other violence, while the Mexico City government set up steel barricades around the National Palace and city center and sent in hundreds of women police armed with riot shields and other defensive equipment. Much of the mainstream media followed suit, with headlines like “AMLO warns about violence at the 8M [March 8] march in Mexico” and “Women prepare molotov cocktails for the 8M march.” Instead, activists détourned the barricades, painting them with the names of victims of femicide and placing flowers and candles to their memory, while footage of 28-year-old Hellen G throwing a tear gas canister back over a police barricade went viral (the young woman was quickly dubbed “La Reinota” — “the epic queen” — for protecting her comrades from police violence).

This year, the names of femicide victims appeared again on the barricades erected ostensibly to prevent violence from feminist protesters, along with slogans and demands for justice. The walls of the city center were also plastered with the names and images of missing and murdered girls and women.

“They are scared of us,” said Sánchez, gesturing to the steel walls. “They know we are not scared.”

There’s no doubt the region is making progress due to the size, moral force, and political creativity of this kind of activism. Reproductive rights, for example, are improving in Mexico, with seven states now permitting abortion up to 13 weeks, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that abortion was not a crime, with Court president Arturo Zaldívar recently avowing that “the patriarchy must and will fall” in Mexico. Termination up to 14 and 24 weeks is permitted in Argentina and Colombia respectively, wins made in the past 18 months.

For 17-year-old Abigail de Los Angeles Encarnación, the march was her first, traveling a few stops from their homes in the center of Mexico City with her friends Diana, Allison, Evelyn and Kenia into the Zócalo (central plaza).

“It was nothing like the news or the tabloids portray,” de Los Angeles told Women Under Siege by phone after the march. “They make it look as if we are the bad guys, saying feminists are this and that. But it’s a really peaceful environment and it feels amazing. All are united. It is really nice to see.”