Cancun video #NiUnaMas 2020 Protest Cancun police shoot down a feminist manifestation

The agents burst in with their weapons in hand and shouts of “Now the f****ing women are going to f**k off.” Two journalists are treated for gunshot wounds

Police officers advance firing during the protest. (PHOTO: ELIZABETH RUIZ/ AFP | VIDEO: EPV)

JACOBO GARCÍA

MÉXICO – 10 NOV 2020 – 01:36 GMT-6

On Monday, a group of about 50 municipal police officers from Cancun shot down a feminist demonstration in front of the Municipal Palace in the tourist city. A man in a hooded uniform wearing a bulletproof vest and a long weapon suddenly started shooting at close range in the central square a few meters from the protesters. At least two journalists covering the protests suffered gunshot wounds. Roberto Becerril from La Verdad was hit in the shoulder and Cecilia Solís from Radio Turquesa was hit in the foot by a bullet.

At that time, about 2,000 young people protested in front of public buildings in response to the three brutal killings of women registered in Quintana Roo this weekend. A group of protesters set fire to the woods in front of the passage to protect the building. In the past, young people broke some windows and burned the paper inside.

When the protesters were about to enter the building, the policemen appeared opening fire with a clean shot, which caused the stampede. However, they persecuted and continued to beat those who tried to record the brutal attack. The agents made several arrests, beat and tried to take phones and cameras from journalists covering the protest. Another two journalists had to be treated in a hospital due to the beatings of the police, their colleagues told EL PAÍS.

Alex Castro, from the newspaper Novedades, who was covering the protest for his newspaper, explained that there were about 50 agents in the plaza. Half of them started shooting. “When the bullets began, the police had blocked the two main entrances to the square to prevent us from leaving,” he said an hour after what happened.

The photographer of the newspaper Novedades, Paola Chiomante, told EL PAÍS that she saw agents firing from the roof of the Municipal Palace. According to the photojournalist, the police “were very angry and acted with disproportionate violence” and recalled how she heard the officers shouting “now if the fucking women are going to be worth mothers”, at the time when the uniformed men appeared in the square.

For its part, the official response only agrees on one thing: stand out from what happened. No one has so far assumed responsibility. The Secretary of Public Security of Quintana Roo, Alberto Capella, ordered an investigation into what happened. “What happened in the Municipal Palace of Benito Juárez is in every way unacceptable. I am ordering an internal investigation and making all the information available to the State Prosecutor’s Office to do the same, “he wrote on Twitter.

Feminist anger accumulated grievances throughout the weekend when two women were murdered in less than 24 hours in Cancun and another in José María Morelos, also in the state of Quintana Roo. After an intense search, the bodies of the Cancun women were found Saturday and Sunday night with signs of torture. The latest, the savage murder of Bianca Alejandrina, had a macabre ending this Sunday. The 20-year-old girl had disappeared on Saturday but her remains appeared a day later inside an abandoned plastic bag in a neighborhood of Cancun.

Today’s protest had been called by the Quintana Roo Feminist Network and had become a national trend through the hashtags #JusticiaParaAlexis and #QuintanaRooFeminicida, as a protest against the prosecutor Óscar Montes de Oca, the governor Carlos Joaquín González and the Mayor “Mara” Lezama, for dedicating efforts to “care for the image” of Cancun and not to the safety and protection of women.

For her part, the mayor of Cancun, Mara Lezama, of the ruling Morena party, also distanced herself from the aggression. “In my capacity as municipal president, I will never order any type of repression against the citizens. I have given precise instructions for the corresponding investigations to be carried out ”, she pointed out. Yet another authority that avoided her responsibility, the Ministry of the Interior, demanded an investigation via Twitter from the municipal and state authorities “to the end of the repression and armed aggression against a feminist demonstration,” she wrote on her social network.

So far this year there have been a dozen femicides in Quintana Roo, according to the EFE agency, citing sources from the Prosecutor’s Office. At the national level, Mexico registered 34,608 malicious homicides and 1,012 femicides last year, the highest figures since the murders of women have been counted.