A politician in northern Mexico has come under fire for giving away chickenwire to inhabitants of an indigenous community as way to stop sexual assaults.
Iris Aguirre posted a photo on her Facebook page in which she posed with bales of chickenwire and poles with a caption saying the materials would be put to use in a rugged region of Zacatecas state populated by the indigenous Tepehuán people.
“In support of our Tepehuán brothers in the Sierra de Valparaíso, we have given mesh to seal off and prevent people coming in and raping their girls,” Aguirre wrote.
The post stirred outrage in Mexico, where authorities have repeatedly addressed the country’s epidemic of sexual violence with stopgap measures while failing to push for investigation and prosecution of offenders.
Previous simplistic responses to the wave of rape and “femicides” include a plan to distribute plastic whistles to women in Mexico City. The city has introduced female-only subway carriages, buses and taxis.
But the country’s authorities have often avoided tougher actions, such as increasing enforcement, investigating allegations of sexual violence or issuing state-wide alerts to address the rising numbers femicides.
Mexican social media users savaged Aguirre’s comments. “They’re proposing locking them up in a cage instead of applying the law and combatting the people that are doing this evil? It’s an upside down world,” read one tweet.
Aguirre followed up her post with another entry on Wednesday morning, saying she was trying to raise awareness of a spate of sexual assaults in Tepehuán communities and that thanks to her publicizing the problem the authorities had arrested three suspects.
“For me it is important to allocate these economic resources … which contribute to security conditions in Tepehuán communities, especially those that affect girls, adolescents and women,” she wrote, adding she was working on new laws and “their application”.
Aguirre occupies a seat in the Zacatecas state legislature assigned via proportional representation for the Social Encounter party, which was founded by evangelical pastors in 2015.
She previously courted controversy after Donald Trump’s election by blaming Mexican migrants – many of whom hail from Zacatecas – for their own misfortune and supposed unpopularity in the United States.
“They are making extreme decisions because Mexicans are sadly involved in very shameful things,” she said in the state legislature. “Mexicans have a bad reputation. Sadly, these are the consequences,” she continued, adding, “As the national representative of his country [Trump] is going to have impose very drastic restrictions. He’s doing it for the good of his people. We have to do it here, too.”
The hashtag #LadyTrump subsequently trended on Twitter.
