Reportage • Chantal Flores • November 25, 2024 • Leer en castellano

We’re sharing this story about violence against feminists on March 8 this year and last year, as well as against victim-led organizing in the city of Monterrey, Mexico on April 10, 2022. Journalist Chantal Flores has documented how violence against organized women and girls in the northern city flows from state forces, and how feminists have been tortured inside the state congress. Today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and we think it’s important to keep these events on the radar as the feminist and victims movements continue to grow. —Eds.

Susan Contreras and her sisters Coco and Lili joined the March 8, 2023 demonstration in the Mexican city of Monterrey holding handmade signs and wearing purple bandanas. It would be the first time the sisters marched together, taking to the streets to protest the disappearances of women and girls and the 102 femicides registered in Nuevo León in 2022 alone. But they were also motivated to participate because of the violence one of the sisters suffered at the hands of her ex-husband.

“We were super happy,” said Susan Contreras.

But Susan and Lili would not return home until the early hours of March 10. Along with 13 other protesters, they were arbitrarily detained by the Fuerza Civil, Nuevo León’s state police, after being beaten and threatened. Their families were in anguish for more than 12 hours while their whereabouts were unknown.

Vanesa Carrillo, 21, marched alone that year, just as she had done on previous occasions. Like Susan, she was sure the march would be peaceful.

"In 2022, the governor came out and said there would be zero repression. One would take it for granted that while he remained in office, there would be no arrests. But then the police brutality began,” said Carrillo in an interview.

The 2023 march ended in front of the Government Palace of Nuevo León, where the governor’s office is located. Women shared heartbreaking testimonies of sexual violence and burned posters. Another group of demonstrators broke some windows of government buildings.

“Yes, this is how we fight! Yes, this is how we fight!” the protesters chanted. At the same time, the main door of the palace was lit on fire as the crowd shouted: “It was all of us! It was all of us!”

As the march dispersed, a group of predominantly male riot police clashed with protesters, who forced police to retreat to the back of the building.

In the midst of the chaos, Carrillo helped a young woman with a bloodied face get to an ambulance. She was returning to help someone else when she encountered a group of female riot police arbitrarily detaining demonstrators.

At least four officers surrounded her, knocked her to the ground, and beat her on her arms, back, and legs. Despite begging to be allowed to get up and walk, Carrillo was dragged inside the government palace through the back door, where two rows of female officers were waiting for her. There she was subjected to the humiliating practice known as “pamba loca.”

"They hit me with their hands open, no fists. Of the four who were restraining me, two of them turned around to hold me by the arm and pull me while others slapped me,” said Carrillo. "I was beaten and pulled by the hair.”

She was taken to the central courtyard inside the government palace, where it was completely dark. The officers threw her roughly to the ground, where stagnant water pooled on the ground. They used her shoelaces to bind her hands and feet, she was forbidden to speak or even look at other detainees. Carrillo heard the screams of other young women, and the verbal aggressions and death threats made against them.

"This is happening inside the government palace, what the actual fuck? There are so many enforced disappearances, not by drug traffickers, but by state forces, it’s not hard to imagine it happening again. When the death threats began, I believed them,” Carrillo said, her voice beginning to crack.

A total of 15 people, including teenagers and a disabled person, were detained “illegally and arbitrarily with an excessive use of force” that day, according to the Nuevo León State Human Rights Commission (CEDHNL).

My friends protect me

Susan Contreras and her sister Lili were among the last protesters detained on March 8, 2023. They were sitting and sharing some potato chips when they were surprised by the riot police.

Contreras was dragged across the ground by several police officers, who pulled her arms and legs, while she heard her sister screaming. In the midst of the violence, the officers yanked on her blouse, exposing her underwear.

“As I was screaming and calling for help they began to choke me, which cut off my breathing,” said Contreras. "They choked me with my kerchief. I was asking for help, and I saw several women try and  push past to help me."

Inside the building, the officers greeted the sisters with slaps and hair-pulling. They demanded their IDs and photographed them as they launched verbal threats against protesters.

The CEDHNL documented bruises, abrasions, runny eyes, scratches, bites, contusions, and traumatic swelling. Dr. Olga Susana Méndez Arellano, president of the CEDHNL, stated in an interview that there had been clear evidence of “violations of the right to freedom of assembly, of personal integrity due to the excessive use of force, and of the right of women to live without violence.”

CEDHNL was unable to obtain access to police recordings, despite the fact that agents were wearing body cameras.

A new manual for repression

During the March 8, 2023 march, the Fuerza Civil was supposed to have been implementing a new protocol established after repression that took place April 10, 2022, that was supposed to guarantee the right to peaceful protest.

On Sunday, April 10, 2022, protesters joined with searching mothers to demand the state search for the 1,811 women disappeared in Nuevo León at that time. The recent disappearance and femicide of Maria Fernanda Contreras, the disappearance of Yolanda Martinez on March 31, and the disappearance of Debanhi Escobar on April 8 of that year added fuel to already deep popular outrage.

A group of demonstrators, including Samantha Montalvo, Jennifer Aguayo and Nancy (who asked me not to use her last name out of fear of reprisals), went to the governor’s office after the protest. Alicia Leal, who was then the head of the Women's Secretariat, had invited them to dialogue. Instead, they were met by a large contingent of police.

Nancy was a few steps away from the entrance when she began to hear shouting. “I turned around and saw police beating my friends,” she said.

The protesters were beaten with tactical shields, kettled, and sprayed with tear gas. Some responded by throwing the paint or wheatpaste that they were carrying to paste up missing person posters.

“The police would open up their shields and grab legs, arms, hair, or whatever else and pull the girls behind their line,” said Aguayo, whose wife was also dragged into the state palace.

On that occasion, the CEDHNL found members of the Fuerza Civil physically and arbitrarily assaulted protesters, detaining and confining them in an unguarded area of the palace. The protesters were threatened with sexual violence and disappearance.

“These were death threats and they were made by the officers,” said Aguayo. “This is not right! How is it possible that that the government palace has become a torture chamber?”

The CEDHNL demanded a public apology as part of the reparation of the damage to the victims of April 10, 2022. Almost two years later, on February 20, 2024, Governor Samuel García offered a public apology at an event where he announced the creation of the Office of the Attorney General for the Defense of Women. But the victims were not notified.

The state’s Security Secretariat rejected the CEDHNL's recommendations, claiming the commission was subjecting police members to excessive scrutiny.

"The most serious thing is that if the authority does not recognize the violation, it can happen again in the next march, and the police officer knows he’ll get off scot-free,” explains Méndez Arellano.

Despite the failure of the changes to police protocol, the repression in April became the playbook for how the Fuerza Civil reacted to feminist protests.

Afterlives of repression

On March 8, 2024, CEDHNL once again documented mistreatment, arbitrary detentions, and excessive use of force by Fuerza Civil. Five people were detained that day, including two teenagers.

The aftermath of police repression is still present in the lives of many protesters. Carrillo has been in therapy for more than a year, and although she returned to the march in 2024, she said it didn’t feel the same. Nancy and Montalvo marched together with Carrillo this year in a bid to reclaim the space that was taken from them.

“Today I am sorry because I let it defeat me, I left friendships because an institution beat me and hurt me so much that my anger was towards them, when they were not to blame, because they were also victims,” said Nancy.

Montalvo says that the aggressions of the state left her and others broken. “The state is the perpetrator, and it is so big people don't even notice it,” she said.

Contreras, for her part, accepted that there would be no justice from the government, and forged her own way forward. “For me, talking about what happened, making it visible and teaching about it has become the key,” she explains.

The violence against feminist collectives has had devastating consequences. Some protesters no longer participate in the same way, fracturing the bonds between activists.

“It's what the state does, isn't it?” asks Montalvo. “It breaks minds, so that collectives splinter, because if you break up these collectives, if you break the spirit of the organizers, you can push them apart.”

This story was reported as part of the “Journalists against Torture” project, with the support of Documenta.