The national women’s strike will highlight the brutal reality faced by Mexican women

Activist Arussi Unda

, a spokeswoman of feminist collective " Brujas del Mar ,” knew hundreds of Mexican women shared her fury over violence against women and impunity for the perpetrators, but she was still surprised when her vision of women staging a national one-day strike was adopted by women across the country.

On March 9, in many towns and cities, Mexican wome n will skip school, work, and other activities to show how public life looks without them, delivering a critique of the violence that has led to a surge in femicides , the gender-motivated murders of women.

“It’s like a Cinderella story,” Unda told Reuters, marveling at how her obscure 15-member feminist collective Brujas del Mar (“Witches of the Sea”) had suddenly been thrust into the national spotlight by its proposal.

“This is like the lost village, the tiny collective, the nobody women (...) but sooner or later, it was going to happen,” said Unda, whose group in the eastern state of Veracruz lives off its own funds, plus sales of bandannas and key chains.

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in Mexico increased 137% in the past five years, according to Mexican government statistics, as gang violence pushed the national murder tally to record heights. Additionally, most violent crimes go unsolved.

In Veracruz, one of the main battlegrounds of warring drug cartels, femicides leaped almost 300% to 159 in 2019, fueling outrage among women’s advocacy groups.

“Women in Mexico are fed up,” said Unda, the spokeswoman for Brujas del Mar, which became known in Mexico in 2019 for its advocacy of abortion rights .

“It’s not just the obvious crisis of femicides in Mexico but also what happens every day at home, at school, at work. There’s no place that is safe for us.”

Notorious cases including the recent kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old girl named Fátima , and the publication of photos of a 25-year-old woman ’s skinned corpse, have pushed the strike known as “a day without us” to the center of national politics .

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Support for the March 9 protest, one day after International Women’s Day , has cut across a swath of society from companies and universities right up to government ministries.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said government employees are free to join the walkout. But he has also accused political opponents of seeking to exploit the country’s security problems to undermine his administration.

Unda dismissed his comments as a macho and condescending attitude toward the organizers.

“So, we’re stupid, or what?” she said.

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