Reportage • Dawn Marie Paley • March 14, 2024 • Leer en castellano

There’s an old saying that one cannot step into the same river twice. This is the first thing that comes to mind when I try to describe what it felt like to take part in the massive outpouring of feminists, women, transgender and non-binary folks on March 8 in Mexico City.

The first groups began arriving at Reforma Avenue and the Monument to the Revolution just after noon. Though the march was slated to begin at four, by 2:30 a stream of thousands had already started advancing toward the city’s Zócalo.

I started the afternoon with friends, but each of us ended up in different parts of the march, and saw completely different things. A river, a tidal wave, a tsunami of women and dissidents turned the city’s core purple, and the experience was different across time and space.

Later in the afternoon, the Zócalo, which can hold around 200,000 people, was nearly full and the march still stretched to the Angel of Independence monument, four kilometers to the west. Mexico City’s Public Security Secretariat said that there were 180,000 participants, which is surely an undercount. Last year, the same secretariat pegged the number of people at 90,000.

Our emotions were enormous and diverse, just like the march: some were militant, yelling and chanting (“rapist dick, in the blender,” “we’re bad, we can be worse”); others tearful and anguished for the lives stolen by violence; while others marched joyously singing, dancing and playing instruments; and yet others held tight and serious in their affinity groups.

“You have to prepare yourself psychologically beforehand because you really feel it all,” said Brenda Hernández, a mother and activist pushing to regulate cannabis. “There's so much love among everyone here but, at the same, time there’s a lot of vulnerability and anger.”

We spoke around two o’clock, as Hernández and a friend looked for their affinity group of pachecas [women who smoke cannabis]. As we spoke, women entered Reforma Avenue from side streets and alleys. Some had already begun to march downtown, hoping to make it to the Zócalo before nightfall.

Most of those marching on March 8 do so with their collectives or affinity groups and often bind themselves together with ribbon or string so as to avoid getting separated or lost in the crush. As in years past, the march snaked comfortably along Reforma Avenue and then grew progressively compressed as it pushed through downtown’s narrow streets just before it spilled out into the Zócalo.

Against all violence

One of the groups that caught my eye was made up of friends and family of Jannine Estibali Alcántara Ramírez, who played music as DJ Janny Vice until she was disappeared in Mexico State on October 27, 2023. Two of Jannine’s friends with megaphones led chants demanding justice for Jannine, who was missing for more than two weeks before authorities published search posters. Jannine’s body was found in November and kept at the morgue for over a week before her family was notified. 

“We’re going to continue demanding justice and we’re going to make a huge scandal on behalf of all the mothers who have suffered from femicide,” said Yolanda Ramírez, Jannine’s mother. She spoke through tears, her face contorted with pain as she held a banner for her daughter. 

Ramírez was surrounded by friends and relatives of her daughter, all of them solemn and wearing white t-shirts bearing a silk-screened print of an image of Janinne. “We hope our small actions make a difference and that there will be justice in this country.”

Over the course of the afternoon, I saw numerous affinity groups of friends and family of women who had recently been disappeared or killed, many of them from Mexico State. Their pain and rage was so raw that it ached and impacted everyone around. As Ramírez spoke, members of her group, held together by a thin rope, reached out to comfort her. Others streamed past, reading the signs and chanting, “You are not alone! Justice for Janinne.”

The massive turnout for 8M, not just in Mexico City but in cities throughout the country, is even more remarkable given that Mexico remains at war. Over the past 17 years, over half a million Mexicans have been killed or disappeared and countless more have been displaced by violence. Most victims are men, but it is women and gender and sexual dissidents who have done the most to fight back and speak out.

The most recent statistics available show that between January and July of last year, 1,627 women were killed in Mexico, more than nine per day. In addition, according to the National Registry of Disappeared and Missing People, 11,580 women were reported disappeared or missing last year, of which 3,128 have yet to be found. Nearly half were from Mexico City and Mexico State. 

As noted in the official communiqué released by the march coordinators, Mexico has the second highest rate of hate crimes against trans people in the hemisphere: five transgendered women were killed in the first weeks of the year. This year's march was explicitly trans-inclusive.

This year, the struggle against all forms of violence, which is a constant on March 8, was reflected in the presence of posters and signs for Palestine. A sizeable group held Palestinian flags and signs demanding a ceasefire, an end to genocide and freedom for Palestine. The war on the people of Gaza was present throughout the march.

“The struggle in Palestine isn’t something distant for me; the genocide that is taking place is extremely painful,” said Fernanda, a 25-year-old college student. “We need to link the battle against violence against women with Palestine, because women there… 70 percent of those killed are women [and children].”

Fernanda spoke about what she felt while navigating International Women’s Day. “It’s a clash of feelings, whenever I’m in the March 8 protest. It’s an incredible vibe, I feel so safe here with everyone and it’s so nice to know we’re all here together, but it’s also so painful because we’re here because of rape and murder.”

From abuse to action

Many of those marching held signs denouncing the sexual abuse and harrassment that they face in schools, at home and in workplaces. 

Paola, who is 12, attended the march with her mother. She held a sign that read, “My English teacher is an abuser.” “I’m here because in my school, Guadalupe Nuñez y Parra elementary, there is a teacher who is trying to rape us, so I’m here because I want us to be seen, because they won’t listen to us” [at the school], she said. 

Paola, who was the only student from her school at the March 8 protest, attended with her mother, Alejandra, who told me school officials are ignoring students’ complaints and accusing them of “bullying” their teacher. Their presence at the march, like that of so many others, is motivated by a direct experience of violence, a desire to hold perpetrators accountable and the hope to create safer spaces for living and learning.

At various points in the march, I saw women walking with signs that read: “I’m here to break my mother’s silence.” 

This appeal to memory and recognition of the increasing refusal of women and dissidents to cower in the face of abuse, discrimination or bullying struck me as particularly powerful. It reveals an intergenerational understanding of violence against women in Mexico and makes it clear that it is not new. What is new is the rejection of silence and the ability to come together and refuse complicity in the abuse of others.

I saw thousands marching during the afternoon of March 8 in Mexico City and, at some point, realized that I hadn’t seen a single political sign or group related to a candidate. Electoral campaigns kicked off the week before, with two women competing to become President later this year. Neither of the candidates were there and there was no open support for either.

The Mexican government’s failure, at the federal, state, and local levels, to respond to violence against women and communities is well documented. A lot of the graffiti and signs on March 8 denounced impunity and collusion between the state and abusers. 

Part of the power and joy of March 8 is the mix of feelings and emotions when hundreds of thousands of women, transgendered and non-binary folks gather to protest and to celebrate our capacity to resist together. 

On March 8, this river of women is, upon closer examination, made up of thousands of different, autonomous ways of being in struggle: one group strumming Son Jarocho, another denouncing a disappearance, one group shaking their booties as part of a trans-inclusive twerking collective, another marching as a collective of “cats for abortion.” 

On March 8, these molecules of resistance come together to create a collective energy that goes far beyond the confines of institutional feminism and the well-worn demands for equality and parity. Instead, it disputes time, justice and the very meaning of social struggle, and it is prepared to tear it all down in order to build something new.