Femicide is the murder of a woman

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at the hands of a man because of his gender.

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It is a hate crime

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with extreme violence that seeks to denigrate the victims even after their death.

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These pink crosses became the symbol of femicide

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after a wave of such crimes

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in the nineties hit the border city of Juarez, Mexico.

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But here's something chilling.

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The horrifying figures of violence against women in Ciudad Juárez

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are lower than the figures for violence against women in the centre of the country:

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in the State of Mexico or Edomex.

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Since 2005, hundreds of women have been murdered every year in this state.

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Their bodies were mutilated, hidden in cisterns,

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thrown into remote fields or sewage canals.

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However, the government refuses to accept the problem.

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And the media, for the most part, remains silent.

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VICE News spent a year investigating this unprecedented crisis

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in a country suffering from increasing drug-related violence.

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It is a very difficult problem to deal with because it unites the way women are seen

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within Mexican culture with impunity and corruption

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surrounding Mexican institutions.

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The concrete suburbs in the State of Mexico

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make up a large part of Mexico City's population of 20 million.

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Residents of these neighborhoods face high rates of crime and violence,

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as well as dangerous levels of pollution and indifference on the part of the authorities

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facing problems such as extortion, kidnapping and femicide.

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With 15 million inhabitants it is the most populated state in Mexico,

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a fact that the Edomex authorities use to dismiss the femicide crisis:

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"The more women live here, the more are killed."

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What no one can deny is that Edomex is the worst place in Mexico to be a woman.

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At this protest we met Irinea Buendía.

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His daughter Mariana died in 2010

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under suspicious circumstances.

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Authorities say he committed suicide,

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But as you can see, it is more likely that she was murdered.

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Authorities say Mariana committed suicide by hanging herself with this thin rope

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hanging from a nail the size of a chess piece.

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It is physically impossible for these tools to support the weight of an adult woman,

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But that was still the authorities' conclusion.

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And since then, Irinea Buendía has been fighting for justice for her daughter.

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Mariana Lima's case is by no means unique.

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Humberto Padgett is a journalist from Mexico City

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and co-author of a recent book on femicides in the State of Mexico.

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He wrote about the case of Mariana Buendía,

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and helped us understand femicides and the implications of their use of this term.

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In Ciudad Juarez, the violent murders of women,

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Many of those who worked in transnational maquiladoras on the border,

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caused an international movement.

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Several documentaries, books and films were made to highlight the importance of the problem.

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Between 1993 and 2014,

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At least 1,530 women were brutally murdered in Ciudad Juarez, according to investigators.

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But in just one-third of this period, between 2005 and 2011,

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Approximately 1,997 women were murdered in the State of Mexico.

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However, the feminicides in Edomex have not received the same attention as those in Juárez.

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Families here live with the unending horror of what happened to their loved ones.

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One group trying to help them is the National Citizen Observatory against Femicide.

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The organization collects data on violence against women

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and pressures the government to recognize the problem

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by establishing a state "gender alert"

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to give priority to investigations into possible femicides.

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Maria de la Luz Estrada is the director of the Observatory.

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The families of the victims tried to deliver a petition to him

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to the Governor of the State of Mexico, Eruviel Ávila.

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Every time they try, they find themselves facing a lower-ranking bureaucrat.

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and everything stays the same.

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The same thing happened with the former governor of Edomex,

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Enrique Peña Nieto, current president of Mexico.

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In fact, the problem worsened under the Peña Nieto government.

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However, despite his campaign focusing on women,

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the murders continued to occur

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and nothing really changed.

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The same can be said now that he is president.

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We tried to speak with local sources about the femicides in Edomex.

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Reporters, politicians, public servants, prosecutors...

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everyone slammed the door in our faces.

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People are very afraid to speak.

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or reveal that they have done nothing to change it.

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Ivan Montaño is a photojournalist

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which covers red note in the EdoMex.

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Every day he goes out into the streets to document the violence in the state.

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We are going to go with Ivan to some places where he has covered murders of women

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to try to understand the criminal situation in the State of Mexico.

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Ivan reported this case.

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The authorities confirmed their version of events.

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However, officials do not always cooperate.

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A major obstacle to addressing the murders of women

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It is the inability of public servants,

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who should collect the remains, examine them and investigate the causes of death.

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We are going to meet a forensic doctor who worked for the State of Mexico.

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Although he no longer works for the State, he insisted on remaining anonymous,

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so we will keep your identity secret so you can speak openly

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on the precarious conditions within the forensic services of Edomex.

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He himself investigated many of these terrible murders.

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There are two or three bodies on each level of the morgue refrigerator.

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This former forensic investigator gave us a clue.

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In Chalco, a family was looking for a missing young woman

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in a different section of the same canal that the photojournalist took us to.

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With all this epidemic of femicides in the State of Mexico,

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Families are using their own means to find their loved ones

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and that's just what we're seeing here.

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We approached the family that organized the operation on the canal,

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Despite our best intentions, they refused to be filmed,

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But what we understand is that they financed the use of this excavator.

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and there was also a rumor that the possible suspect

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Regarding the disappearance of the young woman, he indicated that he dumped her body here.

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So far they have found one human skull.

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Who does it belong to?

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Nobody knows.

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In order to conduct investigations, the authorities set conditions that families must follow,

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like they give them medical supplies to investigate the death of a woman.

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Or sometimes they ask for a bribe to speed up the judicial process.

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We are in the Public Prosecutor's Office responsible for the investigation of the case we saw,

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and we hope to find the person in charge.

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Let's go.

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In fact, it was he who confronted us on the channel.

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He said that we should go to the Social Communication department of the State Attorney General's Office,

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but that dependency in Toluca, the capital city,

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has refused to let us interview them for eight months.

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So we do not expect to make great progress in the problem of femicides in Edomex.

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As we have seen, no one takes responsibility for tax investigations in the State of Mexico,

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so the victims' families are almost always certain that the cases will never be solved.

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We visited Mrs. Irinea again,

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who says investigators manipulated the case of his deceased daughter, Mariana Lima Buendía.

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This is one of the documents that Mariana Lima's parents have collected

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and I can already see some contradictions in it.

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The man Irinea claims is responsible for her daughter's death

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He claimed to be the commander of a police force that does not even exist.

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And as you can see, Mariana Lima's parents have done their own research.

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The case of Mariana Lima is difficult to ignore.

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It is terrible to think that public servants said that he committed suicide

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Even though there is a lot of evidence that this was a homicide

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at the hands of her husband: a judge from the State of Mexico.

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This is the municipal pantheon of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl.

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We are going to visit the grave of his daughter Mariana,

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and remember this victim of the wave of femicides in the state.

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We are outside the

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Supreme Court of Justice,

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where, for the first time in history, there will be a hearing on a case of femicide.

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In fact, this will be the case of Mariana Lima Buendía.

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His parents and defenders are here to ask the judges to reopen the case.

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and it is investigated as a femicide and not a suicide.

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This was a turning point, although there is actually a long way to go.

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The Mexican government must recognize that this is a real problem.

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regarding violence against women and femicides in the State of Mexico.

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Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling,

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Julio Cesar Hernandez Ballinas, the man who probably murdered Mariana Lima,

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was suspended to reopen investigation.

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Before being suspended, he was still working as a judicial police officer in the State of Mexico.

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We wanted to ask the government how this was possible.

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In fact, we try to talk to everyone who should deal with the problem.

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State investigators, prosecutors investigating crimes against women,

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and the governor, Eruviel Ávila. They all refused to talk to us.

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I even tried to speak with President Enrique Peña Nieto

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on femicides in your state,

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but his aides said he did not have time.

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Last year Peña Nieto called for the creation of a “united front”

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to reduce violence against women.

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But like many initiatives of this government,

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The State of Mexico has the largest number of voters in the country.

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and a base for the PRI to maintain its political positions.

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Politicians here know how to control the media

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to convince the poorest to vote for them.

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This includes pampering women,

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even though they face many dangers in Edomex.

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In the consciousness of many, Juárez is still the epicenter of this crisis.

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Decades of unsolved crimes are like an episode experienced by everyone.

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But more and more people in Latin America see it as a local problem.

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Thousands of people have recently protested in the streets of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago,

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and other cities to demand tougher measures against those who commit these crimes.

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Still, silence prevails.

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This makes you wonder if other communities suffer the same type of violence.

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that in Chalco, Ciudad Neza, Ecatepec, Naucalpan and all those places

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in which women have been murdered in the saturated expanse of the State of Mexico.