President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rose to power in 2018 pledging a transformation of Mexico after decades of one-party rule and rampant corruption. He promised to democratize Mexico and put an end to the devastating neoliberal policies that have dominated the country in recent decades.

In a country where seven out of ten live in poverty, this is no small promise. But the president’s vision, which places the disenfranchised at its core, has largely been blind to the violence Mexican women regularly face. Mexicans are bombarded with news of violent deaths and disappearances on a daily basis. But the murder of twenty-five-year-old Ingrid Escamilla in Mexico City in February, stabbed and dismembered by her partner, shocked the public after pictures of her skinned body appeared on the front page of a local paper and circulated across social media. The leak and subsequent publishing of Escamilla’s picture — under the headline “It was cupid’s fault” — stoked more outrage.

Feminists protested outside the National Palace where López Obrador holds daily morning press conferences, chanting, spray-painting, and setting fire to the five-hundred-year-old palace’s front door to demand justice for Escamilla and the women who are murdered daily. A week after Escamilla’s murder, a seven-year-old girl’s body was found inside a plastic bag after she was kidnapped outside of her school and sexually assaulted. Protesters demanded a clear position from the president, who described the murder as “unfortunate” and said city officials were investigating.