Pair of brutal murders cast light on Mexico’s femicide problem

In Mexico City, Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Anton and Ingrid Escamilla—the former just a child and the latter aged 25—recently became the latest names on the list of Mexican women and girls murdered because of their gender.

Last month, Ms. Escamilla’s body was found with several cuts and stab wounds, and her 46-year-old partner Francisco Robledo confessed to the crime. The exposure of the murder was quick and irresponsible, with several local newspapers publishing pictures of the corpse and Mexico City’s prosecution service investigating at least six people—among them law enforcement agents—for leaking the images.

The case of 7-year-old Fátima—found in the same week as Ms. Escamilla—was more harrowing still. The child was abducted while waiting to be picked up from school by her parents, and her body was discovered in a bag, showing signs of torture. Surveillance camera footage led police to a couple who later confessed the murder. One of the abductors said she had taken Fátima because her husband “wanted a young girlfriend.”

As shocking as these two cases were, they are typical of a wave of femicide sweeping across Mexico. In 2019 alone, Mexico City recorded 68 murders of women on account of their gender, according to figures from the national public security system. The number of unsolved disappearances, meanwhile, is above 60,000.

Feminist groups and civil society as a whole have led protests against these repeated murders, and are now turning their anger toward President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Having put public security at the head of his priority list ever since...