Current Event I
Disappearance of Women and Girls
First current event that I would like to bring attention to is the case of Debanhi Escobar, a Mexican 18-year-old girl that disappeared on April 9 in Monterrey and was found 13 days later in an abandoned underground water tank on the grounds of a motel in northern Mexico. The case of Debanhi has started numerous protests and outrage due to a phenomenon that has been lately scaringly common all over Mexico – the disappearance of women and girls (Lopez, 2022).
26-year-old Yolanda Martínez went missing on March 31 and according to her brother, authorities visited their home two! weeks after (Lopez, 2022).
Three days after the disappearance of Ms. Martínez, 27-year-old María Fernanda Conteraz went missing. Through a family contact, her father obtained data showing the location of her phone the last time it was switched on. He searched the location and passed the information to the state prosecutor’s office. It took the authorities three days to close off and search the location. By then, Ms. Conteraz had been dead for days (Lopez, 2022).
In just the last month, at least nine other women and girls have gone missing in Monterrey, surprisingly one of the wealthiest cities in the country. All over Mexico, more then 24,000 women are missing. Last year, 2,800 women were reported missing, which is an increase of 40 percent in comparison with 2017 (Lopez, 2022).
According to security experts, the rising rate of disappearances is related to the overall rise in violence and organized crime, like sex trafficking, or domestic violence across Mexico in recent years. However, security analysts, human rights groups and academics say that the issue is a broader failure of state authorities who fail to carry out proper investigations, turning their backs on their responsibility. This environment also fuels an environment of deep-seated impunity. In addition, the cases of disappeared women and girls are often downplayed or ignored by the media and local authorities, with officials frequently “implicating women in their own disappearances or treating them as isolated incidents, not a systemic issue” (Lopez, 2022).
By this event I want to point to a broader issue of a frequent ignorance of the media regarding this issue. Domestic violence, disappearance of women, sex trafficking is so little talked about and mentioned in the media. The primary problem in some societies is that women are often treated unfairly, unequally, without respect, and in the media are portrayed as submissive vulnerable objects. This could be a huge problem particularly in these countries like Mexico, where crime and violence are serious problems overall.
Reference of the article and picture:
Lopez, O., & A. (2022). A Woman’s Disappearance Sparks Outrage in Mexico Over Gender Violence. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/world/americas/debanhi-escobar-mexico.html?searchResultPosition=1
This article is very terrifying for me. I did not know about this issue before, so I am very glad, that you wrote this issue and informed others about that. Media should definitely used its power in those cases, and try to help as much as it is possible. More than 24,000 women are missing across Mexico. And media are silent in this case? Everyone should know about that, so there can be a pressure on institutions to deal with this issue. And hopefully, the more, it will be shown in media, the less it will be happening. Because if the whole world would know about this issue, then other countries can help as well, for example with with the search for criminals or with punishment. In general, media should talk more about the domestic violence, disappearance of women, and sex trafficking exactly as you mentioned in the conclusion, because those issues are still very underestimated, although, as we can see from your post, there are very huge problems.
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