Mexican women protest following murder of woman found dead in cistern after haunting last photo went viral

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Hundreds of women poured on to the streets of downtown Mexico City on Sunday to protest against the death of an 18-year-old in Monterrey.

Protesters chanted “justice, justice!” and carried banners saying “24,000 are missing” as they agitated against the rising disappearances of women in the country, and the lack of action to prevent it.

A total of 1,015 women were reported missing in Mexico in 2021, up from 977 recorded a year earlier. And overall, 100,000 people from all genders are logged as missing in Mexico.

In a shift from previous women’s rights protests, Sunday’s agitation was largely peaceful.

The women pasted small posters of missing women, each carrying a small description, on the Angel, a tall statue that commemorates the country’s independence. Several posters described the latest victim, Debanhi Escobar, as her death has sparked fresh concerns around the safety of women in Mexico.

Officials found Escobar’s body on Thursday in a cistern at a motel in Monterrey, not very far from where she was last captured in a viral photo two weeks earlier.

Authorities said the body was unrecognisable and that they were only able to identify her from the crucifix necklace she wore around her neck and the clothing that she had been described to be wearing on the night she went missing.

The teenager had last been seen on the night of 8 April in Nuevo León, Mexico, when she took a taxi home after partying with her friends.

The haunting and blurred photo showed a masked Escobar standing alone on one side of the highway wearing high-top sneakers and a skirt. It was captured by her taxi driver, who says he snapped the photo to show that the young woman did indeed get out of his car alive.

The 47-year-old driver had allegedly asked the young woman to leave his car after the pair got into an arugment when she refused his advances, according to her father Mario Escobar.

However, no one was able to establish contact with Escobar, a law student, after the last photo.

Her family slammed authorities for a lackadaisical approach to the search. They alleged that officials had inspected the motel multiple times but could not find anything.

Only after the motel staff alerted authorities to a foul smell from an underground tank did they find the woman’s body.

The cause of her death has been ascertained as a contusion to the skull, prompting officials to start an investigation.

Mr Escobar said his daughter had been “beaten and strangled”.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Friday the case “has caused, logically, a lot of worry, a lot of concern” among Mexicans and pledged to help prosecutors find the culprit.

Additional reporting by agencies