MEXICO CITY — An World Ladies’s Day rally in Mexico on Tuesday drew hundreds of protesters, with throngs marching towards violence and streaming previous the presidential palace and nationwide monuments within the capital that have been cordoned off with large steel fences amid fears of unrest.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has been accused of now not doing sufficient to stem the upward push in femicides, steered calm whilst caution that the protests may flip violent.
The Mexico Town police mentioned they’d seized Molotov cocktails, guns corresponding to bats and hammers and fireworks from protesters within the afternoon. Native information media reported that two protesters have been injured after swinging at a pitcher bus prevent, which got here crashing down on most sensible of them.
The government had erected a protecting steel barrier across the Nationwide Palace, the seat of presidency the place the presidential circle of relatives lives, and different historical constructions forward of the protests.
Later Tuesday night time, video photos shared on-line confirmed a blaze on the door of the federal government palace in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León state, after marchers entered the construction, in step with native information reviews. There was once no fast respectable affirmation of any harm. Anti-riot law enforcement officials and firefighters have been deployed to the website.
Protesters wrote, “MEXICO FEMICIDE” in towering white letters at the black steel cordon in entrance of the Nationwide Palace, which faces the Zocalo major sq., the degree for lots of primary demonstrations.
Closing yr, girls marching on World Ladies’s Day additionally clashed with the police at barricades surrounding the Nationwide Palace. Protesters tried to rip down a steel wall put in to give protection to executive assets from vandalism, prompting officials to fireside pepper spray.
Mexico recorded 969 femicides remaining yr, up rather from 949 in 2020, in step with executive figures. Activists say the actual figures are possibly a lot upper, and a few estimate that 10 girls an afternoon are killed on account of their gender.
A bunch of protesters chanted, “Ladies united, won’t ever be defeated,” as they arrived close to the Nationwide Palace on Tuesday, waving white flags. Others, dressed in crimson bandanas for the area’s feminist motion or inexperienced in make stronger of abortion rights, marched down one in all Mexico Town’s major avenues protecting banners and posters with feminist slogans.
Frida Moreno, 21, a scholar who mentioned that abusive academics had scarred her upbringing, mentioned she believed she had an obligation to march in order that different younger women can be spared an identical studies.
“Despite the fact that I think privileged as a result of I are living in a secure space, nobody can be sure that at some point I can now not disappear,” mentioned Ms. Moreno, at the verge of tears.
Mr. López Obrador, who appointed girls to part his cupboard posts, has rejected claims via activists that he’s now not fascinated about tackling femicides, pronouncing that growth has been made to protect girls’s rights.
Requested on Tuesday morning if the protests may grow to be violent, as one executive respectable had predicted, the president nodded.
“There may be infiltration of the feminist motion on the whole via conservative teams,” he mentioned, noting that it was once unsuitable “to make use of violence for political functions.”
The Mexico Town executive had mentioned it might deploy dozens of paramedics in addition to an all-female police power.
