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Sonoran activists build Día de Muertos altar to honor femicide victims, demand justice

Activists in neighboring Sonora, Mexico, built an altar Tuesday to honor women who have been killed in the state and across the country. It’s part of an ongoing fight by feminist groups in the country to end rampant gender violence.

Dozens of people gathered in Hermosillo’s main plaza on Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, to remember the thousands of women who have been killed in Mexico in recent years.

Feminist groups strung up photos of the murdered and disappeared, surrounded by candles, marigolds and traditional decorations.

"Once again we're making the call to all levels of government and to society in general to eradicate violence against women in all its forms," Ana Morales read from a statement by the feminist group Marea Verde.

The statement called continued murders of women an epidemic of femicides and said they would honor those who have been killed by continuing to demand justice on their behalf.

Across Mexico, more than 2,800 women have been murdered from January through September of this year, according to the most recent data. About 26%, or 762 of those murders, have been classified as femicides, or the killing of a woman because of her gender. That's the highest number of femicides recorded in the first nine months of any year since 2019.

In Sonora, 110 women have been murdered so far this year; 34 have been classified as femicides. The state has the second-highest rate of femicides in the country, just behind Morelos. However, femicides are not uniformly classified in Mexico, and in some states with among the highest rates of murdered women, such as Zacatecas and Baja California, very few of those cases are classified as femicides.

Kendal Blust was a senior field correspondent at KJZZ from 2018 to 2023.