“She is not dead, the police killed her!” “, chanted, Monday, March 29 in several cities of Mexico, hundreds of demonstrators after the death of a 36-year-old Salvadoran at the hands of the police. The chilling video of his brutal arrest in the seaside resort of Tulum (South East) recalls the George Floyd affair in the United States. The drama reignites a wave of indignation in Mexico against feminicides, racism and police violence, in a country where more than ten women are murdered every day.
This Saturday, March 27, Victoria Salazar is arrested by four municipal police officers for disturbance on the public highway. This Salvadoran cleaning lady, a refugee in Mexico for five years, is immobilized on the ground, stomach on the ground, handcuffed behind her back. Despite the moans of the latter, who ends up losing consciousness, a policewoman keeps her knee on the back of her neck. The police do not call for an ambulance. They load his body into their vehicle. Frightened onlookers film the scene.
Disseminated on social networks, the images scandalize beyond the borders of Mexico. Outrage escalated two days later with the publication of the autopsy results: “Fracture of the first and second vertebrae, causing death” under pressure from the police to keep this mother of two teenage girls down. Internet users quickly draw a parallel with the African-American George Floyd, who died in the same circumstances, in May 2020, in the state of Minnesota. The trial of the police officer accused of his death opened Monday in Minneapolis.
On that day, across the border, hundreds of Mexican feminists demonstrate, under the slogan #JusticiaPorVictoria (justice for Victoria), in Tulum, three neighboring towns and Mexico City, denouncing an avalanche of gender crimes : 3,723 women were murdered in 2020 in Mexico, including 940 considered as feminicides, according to official figures. Over 90% of these crimes never go to trial. Eight in ten Mexican women have been victims of macho violence, once in their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INEGI).
“Double discrimination”
Victoria’s death reveals another scourge: “It is a case of double discrimination of the victim for being a woman and a migrant”, lamented Dana Graber, representative in Mexico of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency. And Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter: “It was not the Mexican people who committed this crime, but criminals within the Tulum police force. ” Police abuses denounced by human rights organizations who demand better professionalization of the police. In November 2020, the police in the city of Cancun, neighboring Tulum, dispersed with live ammunition protesting against gender violence, injuring several people.
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