Mexico’s Disappearing Women
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2022
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The body of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar was discovered in late April, inside a water tank in a motel on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico—weeks after she went missing. The identity of her killer is still unknown.
The case has prompted a national outcry over the Mexican government’s consistent failure to deliver justice for missing women. But femicide in Mexico isn’t new, and past protests haven’t yielded meaningful change. Will this time be any different?
Guest: Oscar Lopez, reporter for the New York Times based in Mexico City.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I asked Oscar Lopez, who reports for the New York Times, to help describe this photograph. |
| 0:13.0 | It's gone viral in Mexico. |
| 0:15.2 | The photograph shows a young woman standing on a highway looking out into the darkness. She's wearing a face mask. |
| 0:25.1 | You can see just the highway behind her. And it's sort of unclear, you know, why this photo was taken. |
| 0:36.6 | This photo is not skillfully framed. |
| 0:39.3 | It's blurry. |
| 0:41.3 | But it's important because when it was taken, it's one of the last images we have of this teenager before she went missing. |
| 0:50.3 | You know what stood out to me about this photo? |
| 0:55.0 | She's wearing high tops. |
| 0:57.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:57.9 | She seems a little like a kid that I went to high school with. |
| 1:02.4 | Definitely. And I think that's, you know, part of, again, what made this photo kind of haunting and viral is that she does look so young and fragile. |
| 1:13.0 | What's this woman's name? Her name is DeBani. |
| 1:17.5 | DeBani Escobar, right? That's right. Deboni Escobar. |
| 1:25.2 | Deboni ended up at the side of the highway after leaving a party. |
| 1:31.1 | Some friends had called a car for her, but she ditched the cab before she got home. |
| 1:36.3 | That's when the driver took this snapshot. |
| 1:38.8 | And it's not really clear why she decided to get out of the car, or even why the driver decided to just kind of leave her there. Or why he decided to get out of the car or even why, you know, the driver decided to just kind of |
| 1:45.7 | leave her there. Or why he decided to take a picture. Right. I mean, that I think speaks to the |
| 1:52.3 | situation we're living in Mexico where apparently he took the photo to send to her friends to say, like, |
| 1:58.6 | you know, when I left her, she was fine, sort of implying that, |
| 2:03.0 | you know, in this country, it's very easy for women to go from one minute being fine and |
... |
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