MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The Mexico City attorney general’s office said Thursday it opened an investigation into the apparent murder of a young woman found dead this week on a highway, a case that has fueled rage over rampant violence against women in Mexico.
Local media reported that Ariadna Fernanda Lopez was last seen Sunday evening in the Mexican capital’s upscale Condesa neighborhood before a group of cyclists found her body outside city limits in the neighboring Morelos state.
Calls on social media demanding #JusticiaParaAri (#JusticeForAri) quickly circulated.
Lopez’s alleged killing follows the high-profile murder of Debanhi Escobar, an 18-year-old law student who vanished in April after a driver was supposed to take her home from a party.
Her body was found two weeks later submerged in a cistern. Authorities have not resolved the case, which again put the spotlight on a spate of disappearances of women in the northern state of Nuevo Leon.
Violence against women and girls has increased over the last five years, Mexico’s statistics agency said in August.
An average of 10 women a day are killed in Mexico, and tens of thousands more are missing.
Between January and September of this year, there have been 695 femicides in the country, according to government figures, but some estimate that 10 women a day are murdered because of their gender.
(Reporting by Carolina Pulice, Brendan O’Boyle and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
