If the people who organized Sunday’s ceremony marking International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women needed a reminder of the tricky road ahead, they only had to glance at newspaper headlines on Monday morning.
“Guadalupe: a victim of her ex-partner’s rage” ran one head in Guadalajara daily Milenio. “A 28-year-old murdered by her ex, from whom she separated four months earlier after suffering abuse” the story continued.
Guadalupe Plasencia Rico became the 112th women to die in violent circumstances this year in Jalisco – half from gunshot wounds.
Plasencia’s ex turned up at her house in Tlajomulco demanding that the couple get back together. When she refused, he grabbed a rope and strangled her to death.After years of inaction by successive administrations, the current Jalisco state government is trying to grab the initiative on domestic violence. Governor Aristoteles Sandoval used Sunday’s occasion to hold a ground-breaking ceremony for a new Women’s Justice Center (Centro de Justicia para las Mujeres del Estado de Jalisco), that will go up on Álvaro Alcázar, between avenidas Circunvalación and Normalistas.
The aim of the center is to have representatives of government agencies and civil society under one roof so that women who have suffered abuse can find it easier to take the necessary legal steps and get the emotional support they require.
The multi-disciplinary facility will house offices of the Fiscalía General del Estado (Attorney General’s Office or FGE), the Secretaría de Salud (the Jalisco Health Department or SSJ), the Instituto Jalisciense de Ciencias Forenses (the Jalisco Forensic Sciences Institute or IJCF), the Sistema Desarrollo Integral de la Familia de Jalisco (the Jalisco Family Development Agency or DIF) and several civil and human rights organizations.
Sandoval said his administration is committed to constructing a society in which everyone understands that women have “an unalienable right to a life without violence.”
However, the governor said it is unrealistic to expect such a social transformation to happen overnight, which is why the immediate attention that the new center will provide to women is so important.
The government has earmarked around 30 million pesos for the center.
On the same day, state authorities revealed statistics about the scale of rape in Jalisco – an issue that is rarely talked about or covered by the mainstream media. According to the Attorney General’s Office, 434 reports of rape were received in the first nine months of 2013. Authorities, however, admit that the majority of rape cases go unreported, as many women are reluctant to file denuncias against their attackers.
The United Nations General Assembly designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women to raise awareness of the fact that women around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence. Another aim of the day is to highlight that the scale and true nature of the issue is often hidden.