64 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2020
“On the way here, I passed a guy on
the sidewalk, and he goes, ‘Move it,’
like, ‘move that ass.’ ”
“Whenever we complain, the first
question they ask us is, ‘Did you re-
port him?’ ” Aura said. “It’s always
the same thing.”
“The police are just going to
revictimize you,” said Sujaila.
“They’ll ask, ‘Why were you wearing
those clothes? Why were you walk-
ing by yourself?’ ”
“They would never ask a robbery
victim, ‘Why were you carrying valu-
ables?’ ” Aura interjected.
“Their attitude is that if you
weren’t killed, don’t worry, take it
easy,” said Irasema. “The reality is
that the ones who are supposed to
protect us are the first to attack us. It’s
well known—the violence of the po-
lice, the army, the marines, the state.”
In the case of the rape that pro-
voked the August 12 march, the four
accused police officers were initially
put on leave but were ulti mately al-
lowed to return to the force. “The
law is totally patriarchal,” Aura said.
“The institutions are permeated by
machismo.” That may be why, when
asked to articulate their specific de-
mands on society and the govern-
ment, they fell uncharacteristically
quiet. “Recognizing the problem is
the first thing,” Irasema said. “They
must no longer disguise the number
of femicides. They must properly
classify them. Just this first step will
require a great deal.”
Mexico remains socially conserva-
tive, in the grim Iberian tradition.
The most elaborate social rituals in-
clude the quinceañera, the wedding,
and the beauty pageant. Women
with tattoos and dyed hair marching
in the street are seen as importing a
global culture that is alien to tradi-
tional values. On the first day of one
of her classes, Sujaila recalled, the
professor asked those students who
identified as feminists to raise their
hands. Only two did, including her.
“And it was a course on feminist lit-
erature,” she said.
Attitudes toward feminism are
even more hostile outside Mexico
City. But the mothers I interviewed
who had lost a daughter to femicide
all had good things to say about the
chicas feministas who had been set-ting off smoke bombs and lighting
trash cans on fire to draw attention
to the killings. “Of course they are
helping,” Lorena said when I asked
her opinion. “Ni una más,” she ad-
ded, echoing their rallying cry: not
one more.L
orena has not given up trying
to hold Hernández de Cruceño
accountable for her daughter’s
murder. Over the past three years, she
has made frequent, grueling bus trips
to and from Mexico City. She has
attended marches and protests, con-
tacted journalists, and given inter-
views. Articles about Fátima have
proliferated online. In November
2017, the Observatory on Femicide,
the organization led by María de la
Luz Estrada, agreed to take up the
case. Lawyers associated with the Ob-
servatory filed a petition in federal
court to force the State of Mexico to
reopen criminal proceedings against
Hernández de Cruceño. After more
than a year of litigation, they suc-
ceeded in having the charge of femi-
cide reinstated. On July 10, 2019, he
was jailed pending the outcome of
the case, which is now on appeal in
Mexico City.
In late September, I arranged to
meet Lorena and Jesús during their
trip to the capital to attend the hear-
ing. At their request, we chose a
crowded public place, the grand plaza
beside the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
There were fountains flowing, kids
screaming, and hurdy- gurdy men
cranking barrel organs. On Avenida
Juárez, sanitation workers were
scrubbing graffiti from the latest
green- bandanna rally, which had ta-
ken place the week before. Lorena
and Jesús arrived on time, looking
like an ordinary, tired-out, middle-
aged couple, wheeling a pair of suit-
cases. We settled on a concrete
bench. They had three hours before
the eighteen-hour bus trip back
north, followed by a taxi ride and a
long walk to the place where they live
as inconspicuously as possible, telling
no one their real names. “We don’t
live, we survive,” Lorena said. “We
are the walking dead. We are prison-
ers in our own country.”
They were not trying to reach the
United States. They had no moneyrapist state. It took the city weeks to
clean up.
Aleida Salazar, a thirty-year-old di-
rector of content at a software com-
pany, said it was the first time she
had ever seen a group of men move
out of her way with fear in their eyes.
“Normally, it’s the reverse,” she said,
to the laughter of her friends. “Hon-
estly, I enjoyed it.”
I asked if they could rightly com-
pare the dangers and annoyances
they face here in the city to the hor-
rors stalking poor working women in
the surrounding state. “The situation
of women in La Condesa is not the
same as in Ecatepec, but in general
the situation of women in Mexico is
terrible,” said Aura García- Junco, a
thirty-one-year-old writer. The rest of
the group chimed in. Even rich
women are at risk in their mansions,
they told me. “The so-called sui-
cides,” said Irasema Fernández, a
twenty-nine-year-old artist. The oth-
ers murmured knowingly. “It mostly
affects the most vulnerable women,
but it’s also something that can hap-
pen to you at any time,” Aleida said.
“Your husband, someone in your
family.” In November, a woman was
gunned down not far from my hotel
in Coyoacán; her abusive ex-
husband, formerly the CEO of Ama-
zon Mex ico, is accused of ordering
the hit.
Femicide is distinct from the car-
tel violence that constitutes the bulk
of homicides in Mexico, according to
Sujaila Miranda Moreno, who was
twenty-three and had recently com-
pleted a degree in literature. “Men
don’t suffer this kind of triple death,”
she said. “One, they violate and de-
stroy your sexuality. Second, they
annul you completely as a person, by
murdering you. Third, they mutilate
your body, as a final objectification.”
They believe that femicide is only
the most extreme manifestation of
Mexican machismo, an attitude of ex-
aggerated masculinity, virility, and
dominance over women. At its most
quotidian, machismo manifests as
street harassment, which is pervasive
in Mexico City. “I can’t go one day
without being accosted in public,”
Irasema said. I interrupted, slightly
skeptical, and asked what had hap-
pened today, for example. She replied: