Growing Number of Women Are Crossing Mexico’s Southern Borders to Escape Violence Nina Lakhani - The Guardian
go to original June 11, 2017

A woman from Honduras, 40, who didn’t want to be identified and who is hoping to get refugee status in Mexico (Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

In the end it was a cup of coffee laced with poison that compelled Josefina Nieto to run for her life.

Nieto, 41, fled Guatemala with her youngest son last summer after surviving years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse from her husband, who she married at the age of 12.

A few months earlier, Nieto, a midwife, had obtained a restraining order against her husband and asked for a divorce after he falsely accused her of having an affair.

Her husband, a 52-year-old teacher and former police officer, was briefly detained after flouting the restraining order but returned home after paying a small fine. He warned her against going back to the authorities – “Till death do us part,” he said.

With no safe house or family to turn to, Nieto squatted in an abandoned house for several weeks with the two youngest of her five children until they were evicted by police. Out of options, they were forced to return home.

Just a few days later, Nieto was taken to the hospital after drinking a poison-laced cup of coffee prepared by her husband. Even then the authorities didn’t arrest him, and instead advised Nieto to get a divorce.

“I had nowhere to go, no family to help me. I thought it was my destiny to stay and be killed by him,” said Nieto, wringing her hands nervously as she recounted her escape to Mexico.

Nieto is part of a growing number of women crossing borders to escape violence and poverty, in a global trend known as the feminisation of migration.

In Mexico, one in four undocumented migrants apprehended by border control agents last year were female, compared to only one in seven detainees in 2011.

While a growing number of female migrants are fleeing a deadly mix of gang violence, organised crime and abuses by security forces which plagues El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, home remains the most dangerous place for women and girls.

Latin America is the region with the most female murders in the world, accounting for seven of the 10 countries with the highest femicide rate.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Rape and Murder of 11-Year-Old Girl Sparks New Protests Against Femicide in Mexico (teleSUR)

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