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In Protest Against Police Raping Spree, Women Burn Their Station in Mexico City.

Hazard, Johnny
http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/21/in-protestagainst-police-raping-spree-women-burn-their-station-in-mexico-city/

Publisher:  CounterPunch
Date Written:  21/08/2019
Year Published:  2019  
Resource Type:  Article

A first person account of protests in Mexico City in response to reports of rape by police officers which have been dismissed by the administration.

Abstract: 

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Excerpt:

About two thousand people, mostly young women (many of whom identify themselves as anarcofeministas), marched and rampaged through the Zona Rosa area of Mexico City on Friday, August 16. This was the second such action in less than a week. The first, on Monday, was in direct reaction to a young woman’s accusation against four police officers whom she says raped her and to the new López Obrador-linked city administration’s inaction....

On this first occasion, the women committed minor vandalism at a police headquarters and doused the police chief with pink glitter. The shocked, hysterical reactions of the local establishment, including (and perhaps especially) "progressive" government leaders, the notion that throwing glitter on somebody, especially on a cop, was more violent than the rape and murder of women, inspired Friday’s actions, where there was also glitter everywhere, along with graffiti, the destruction of at least two stations of the Metrobús (a bus system with exclusive lanes and platforms where one pays at a tourniquet as in a subway system to permit rapid boarding), and the blocking of main arteries for several hours during rush hour....

While it's true that a catharsis does not a revolution make, it is certainly preferable to the apathy, resignation, and obsession with electoral politics that have been in fashion lately.

After Monday's protest, the mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, had said that this was an affront to the honorable and democratic police and that it surely had been the work of infiltrators. On Friday I saw no evidence of anybody who disagreed in general with the actions that were being taken, no pleas for pacifism, and in fact spokespeople for the Monday action defended everything that had happened and did not disavow anyone.

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