The Mexican president said that a metal barrier to isolate the presidential palace before a planned women’s march is aimed at preventing provocations and protecting historic buildings from vandalism.
In a country where femicide grew by almost 130% between 2015 and 2020, critics said the decision to raise the three-meter-high (10-foot) barriers was symptomatic of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s apathy towards the crisis of violence against the women.
Before International Women’s Day on Monday, barriers were also set up around other buildings and monuments in central Mexico City, where a year ago tens of thousands of people protested rampant violence against women and impunity.
“We have to avoid provoking people who only want to cause harm,” said López Obrador at an event in Yucatán. “Imagine, if we don’t take care of the national palace and they vandalize it. What image will this send to the world? “
López Obrador reiterated that women have the right to protest and cited his own movement in 2006 as an appropriate form of peaceful protest.
“The presidency was stolen from us … and we protested, but we never broke the glass. (…) I walked two, three times from Tabasco to Mexico City ”, he said. López Obrador has repeatedly accused opponents of electoral fraud over the years.
At least 939 women were victims of femicide in Mexico last year, official data show.
Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero said on Twitter that the barriers are “for the protection of women”.
The rage of the women’s rights movement has increased this year after Félix Salgado, accused of rape, announced his candidacy for governor of the state of Guerrero. Salgado denied the charges.
López Obrador said that those who ask him to withdraw support for Salgado, a member of the ruling party Morena, are politically motivated.