In Mexican capital, red shoes to protest killings of women

Peter Orsi, Associated Press
Updated 5:50 pm CST, Saturday, January 11, 2020



Photo: Christian Palma, AP
IMAGE 2 OF 7
Elizabeth Machuca Campos holds the portrait of her sister Eugenia Machuca Campos amid women's red shoes placed in the Zocalo by people protesting violence against women in Mexico City, Saturday, Jan. 11, 2020. According to Elizabeth, her sister's ex-boyfriend is serving time in jail for her Oct. 2017 murder in the State of Mexico.


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Stiletto heels. Clogs. Trainers. Tiny, child-size Crocs.

Activists placed hundreds of painted-red women’s shoes on Mexico City’s sun-drenched main square Saturday to call attention to gender-based violence in a country where, on average, 10 women and girls are murdered each day and less than 10 percent of the cases are ever solved.

As residents and tourists milled about the plaza, or Zocalo — the historical, political, cultural and religious heart of the country — demonstrators marched to the massive front door of the colonial-era National Palace and placed five pairs on the paving stones as a uniformed guard looked on.

“Not one more killed!” they cried to the beat of a drum.

“The shoes represent absence, visualizing absence,” said 60-year-old artist Elina Chauvet, who first realized the piece of performance-protest art in 2009 after her sister was killed by her husband in a domestic violence case in the northern border city of Juarez. “The red is for the blood that has been spilled, but it is also a work that speaks of love.”

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/In-Mexican-capital-red-shoes-to-protest-killings-14968229.php#photo-18867326