At the end of October, it was reported that Baja California Sur’s dark side includes an excess of more than 2,500 reports of domestic violence. An alarming statistic that now rates Los Cabos with the highest number of cases in Mexico. On average, there are nine DV complaints per day registered by the public prosecutor’s office, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System ( SESNSP ).
During the period from January to September 2023, a total of 2,318 investigation files were opened for domestic violence that has been registered. In the same period in 2024, 2,541 cases were reported by female victims, an increase of 9.6%.
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This increase since the first quarter of 2024, caught everyone in the field of the judicial system by surprise, with 393 investigations filed during that period. During the months of April, May and June, 853 cases were registered, while in the third quarter, 995 complaints were recorded.
Unknown to the Los Cabos community at large is that our sunny region remains the municipality with the highest level for domestic violence with 1,268 complaints filed between January and September 2024, representing almost 50% of the total complaints in Southern Baja California. Followed by La Paz, with 1,009 cases, indicating that the southern parts of the state have the greatest concentration of these domestic violence problems.
In contrast, the other municipalities in the middle parts of the state have a lower number of such incidents, such as Comondú with 139 investigations Mulegé with 105 cases, and Loreto with only 17 complaints during the same period. This data comes from actual complaints filed with the public ministry, and there may be an unreported number of other victims.
Until the 19th century, there were no consistently applied legal consequences for men who physically abused their wives or female partners. In the United States, it wasn’t until 1871, that the states of Alabama and Massachusetts criminalized assaults by husbands against their wives. By 1874, North Carolina joined those two states by also criminalizing domestic violence. Around this time, Maryland did the same, and then later, New York began hearing court cases against marital violence and rape. Martial rape was outlawed throughout the entire U.S. by 1945.
During the early 1970s, the Women’s Liberation Movement protested that domestic violence was still not taken seriously by the justice system which led to the greater Battered Women’s Movement led by feminist activists and DV survivors. By 1983, over 700 domestic abuse shelters were opened and operating in the U.S.
The most recent data for Mexico records that around 45% of women in a relationship have experienced intimate partner violence and that 78.6% of Mexican women suffering physical abuse from partners have never reported the incident. Domestic violence is a serious global challenge. There are no countries in the planet with all the potential mechanisms set in place to fully prevent intimate partner violence. A partner should be someone a woman can rely upon and trust. However, women are more likely to suffer violence from their intimate partners than by any other type of perpetrator. Global data indicates that almost 50% of all murdered women in 2012 died at the hands of their partners or family, but less than 6% of men were killed under these circumstances.
The analysis conducted for Mexico using the National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships of 2016 and 2006, showed that women suffering intimate partner violence are more likely to experience depression, substance abuse, female reproductive disorders, sexually transmitted infections and other related symptoms.
Domestic violence is classified in three different types: economic, emotional, and physical. Mexico has long been known for the machismo that many of its men suffer from. This could be a source for many of these tragic cases of family-related crimes, where the women and children suffer. What Los Cabos can do to bring these numbers down is anyone’s guess, because of the many variables involving the women and children and what they can do to escape these dire situations that have given Los Cabos a black eye, the city doesn’t deserve. Like many of its undeserving local female victims and their innocent children.
