Paper short abstract:

Faced with the closure of spaces to condemn the increasing gendered-base violence levels in Mexico, a new feminist movement emerged in 2019. The ‘Glitter Revolution’ mobilised via social media to organise widespread protests, condemn the government’s inaction and claim their right to participate.

Paper long abstract:

Whilst there was originally optimism and hope following Andrés Manuel López Obrador's election in 2018, Mexican feminists soon found the government following the same tendencies as its predecessors by normalising and misrepresenting Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) (Salas Siguenza, 2021). Unable to find an official outlet to condemn the increasing number of femicides in Mexico, and outraged by the insufficient State response (Volpi, 2019) young women in Mexico took social media to claim a space for participation and articulate a narrative of the State as the perpetrator of VAWG (Acuña and Botello, 2020).

In 2019 they created one of the country's most radical and innovative movements in the last decades (Álvarez Enríquez, 2020). Using #NotOneMore and #TheyDontLookAfterMeTheyRapeMe they began organising protests against the Mexico City Police. After an incident where they threw pink glitter at the Ministry of Public Security, the movement became known as the "Glitter Revolution". The protests became viral and mainstream media categorised them as an attack or aggression, quickly followed by criticism and criminalisation by the local government (Salas Siguenza, 2021).

The local government's intimidation and the lack of recognition of its demands by the federal level led the new feminist movement in Mexico to launch a virtual campaign using #TheyDontTakeLookAfterMeTheyRapeMe and #DemandingJusticeIsNotProvoking calling for a national march. The movement used digital media as a tool to mobilise and create new spaces for participation – their ability to combine online and offline tools provided increased visibility of the issue and directly influenced Mexico's public agenda.