Section:GDN 1N PaGe:20 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone:S Sent at 26/8/2019 17:48 cYanmaGentaYellow
- The Guardian Tuesday 27 August 2019
(^20) World
▲ Women throw pink glitter at a rally
in Mexico City earlier this month
PHOTOGRAPH: MARCO UGARTE/AP
‘Glitter revolution’
Mexican women unite
against gender violence
Tom Phillips
Mexico City
S
andra Aguilar-G ómez
remembers the
camaraderie and
celebration when
thousands of Mexican
women took part in
the “ violet spring ” protests of- Three years later and the
demonstrators are back to demand
an end to violence against women ,
but this time the mood has soured.
“What I saw on the streets was
rage and desperation because things
haven’t changed a bit,” said Aguilar-
G ómez, a postgraduate student, of
recent rallies in Mexico City.
She is one of thousands of women
who have joined the “ revolución
diamantina” ( glitter revolution) , so
called after protesters showered the
city’s security chief with pink glitter
during their inaugural rally.
That protest on 12 August was
a reaction to the alleged rape of a
teenage girl by four police offi cers
in Azcapotzalco , to the north of
Mexico City , 10 days earlier. The
demonstrators are also demanding
broader changes in a country where
an average of 10 women a day are
murdered and virtually all such
crimes go unpunished.
“It is an unsustainable, femicidal
situation,” said Yndira Sandoval,
a campaigner whose group has
joined the movement and who says
she was sexually assaulted in 2017.
“Every day girls go missing, women
go missing, women are violated and
raped ... we want a political response
that refl ects the scale of this national
emergency ,” she said.
When Mexico’s left-leaning
president, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, took offi ce last December
promising a new era of social justice ,
many activists , Sandoval included ,
hoped change was on the horizon.have condemned swingeing budget
cuts, included for women’s shelters.
Sheinbaum also infuriated the
protesters by branding their fi rst
mobili sation , during which the glass
entrance to the attorney general’s
offi ce was smashed , a provocation.
By doing so, Aguilar-Gómez
said Mexico City’s government had
legitimi sed a wave of online abuse
and threats against feminists.
Sheinbaum’s attack sparked
outrage and a second protest on
16 August also turned violent. One of
Mexico’s best-known monuments,
the Angel of Independence , was
scrawled with graffi ti denouncing
violence against women.
Aguilar- Gómez said much media
focus since then had been on the
defaced statue. “It’s unbelievable ...
they can’t see the pain in the faces of
the mothers and sisters of murdered
women, the raped women, the
harassed women at the protest.
But they are very, very empathetic
toward a woman made of stone .”
Sheinbaum met representatives
of the movement on Sunday and
promised discussions about how
to eradicate gender violence ,
but Sandoval said she feared an
attempt to “contain and co-opt”
the movement. Aguilar-Gómez said
the protests would continue if that
were the case. “They won’t stop. I’m
certain they won’t stop. They have
had enough ,” she said.Expectations were particularly
high in Mexico City , which elected
López Obrador’s ally Claudia
Sheinbaum as its fi rst female
governor. “It’s hard to change this
mess in less than a year ... but we
were very hopeful that having a
wom an from that political group
would bring policy change ,” said
Aguilar- Gómez. Many glitter
revolution protest ers had backed the
pair in last year’s vote , she added.
Nine months on, much of that
hope has evaporated. Women’s
rights activists are mistrustful
of López Obrador’s alliance with
hard line evangelical politicians and‘It’s an unsustainable,
femicidal situation.
Every day girls and
women go missing’Yndira Sandoval
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