Demographics

Historical population

Year	Pop.	±% p.a.
1895	12,700,294	—
1900	13,607,272	+1.39%
1910	15,160,369	+1.09%
1921	14,334,780	−0.51%
1930	16,552,722	+1.61%
1940	19,653,552	+1.73%
1950	25,791,017	+2.75%
1960	34,923,129	+3.08%
1970	48,225,238	+3.28%
1980	66,846,833	+3.32%
1990	81,249,645	+1.97%
2000	97,483,412	+1.84%
2010	112,336,538	+1.43%
2015	121,005,816	+1.50%
Source: INEGI

Throughout the 19th century, the population of Mexico had barely doubled. This trend continued during the first two decades of the 20th century, and even in the 1921 census there was a loss of about 1 million inhabitants. The phenomenon can be explained because during the decade from 1910 to 1921 the Mexican Revolution took place.

The growth rate increased dramatically between the 1930s and the 1980s, when the country registered growth rates of over 3% (1950–1980). The Mexican population doubled in twenty years, and at that rate it was expected that by the year 2000 there would be 120 million Mexicans. Life expectancy went from 36 years (in 1895) to 72 years (in the year 2000).

According to estimations made by Mexico's National Geography and Statistics Institute, as of 2017 Mexico has 123.5 million inhabitants making it the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Between 2005 and 2010, the Mexican population grew at an average of 1.70% per year, up from 1.16% per year between 2000 and 2005.

Even though Mexico is a very ethnically diverse country, research about ethnicity has largely been a forgotten field, in consequence of the post-revolutionary efforts of Mexico's government to unify all non-indigenous Mexicans under a single ethnic identity (that of the "Mestizo"). As a result, since 1930 the only explicit ethnic classification that has been included in Mexican censuses has been that of "Indigenous peoples". Even then, across the years the government has used different criteria to count Indigenous peoples, with each of them returning considerably different numbers. It is not until very recently that the Mexican government begun conducting surveys that considered the Afro-Mexican and Euro-Mexican population that lives in the country.

As of 2017update, it is estimated that 1.2 million foreigners have settled in the country, up from nearly 1 million in 2010. The vast majority of migrants come from the United States (900,000), making Mexico the top destination for U.S. citizens abroad. The second largest group comes from neighboring Guatemala (54,500), followed by Spain (27,600). Other major sources of migration are fellow Latin American countries, which include Colombia (20,600), Argentina (19,200) and Cuba (18,100). Historically, the Lebanese diaspora and the German-born Mennonite migration have left a notorious impact in the country's culture, particularly in its cuisine and traditional music. At the turn of the 21st century, several trends have increased the number of foreigners residing in the country such as the 2008–2014 Spanish financial crisis, increasing gang-related violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America, the ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela, and the automotive industry boom led by Japanese and South Korean investment.

Ethnicity and race

Despite living in a diverse country, the majority of Mexicans are united under the same national identity. This is the product of an ideology, strongly promoted by Mexican academics and politicians such as Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos, known as mestizaje, whose goal was that of Mexico becoming a racially and culturally homogeneous country. In practice, this ideology was reflected in Mexico's national censuses of 1921 and 1930: in the former, approximately 60% of Mexico's population identified as Mestizos, and in the latter, Mexico's government declared that all Mexicans were now Mestizos, for which racial classifications would be dropped in favor of language-based ones in future censuses. Today, historians and academics consider that a good number of people were classified under the "mestizo identity" by the government regardless of whether they were of mixed ancestry or not, as the population trends reported in those censuses are incongruent with those exhibited in earlier censuses and modern research has observed that when asked directly about their ethno-racial identification, many Mexicans do not identify as Mestizos. Ethnoracial labels such as "White" or "Indian" are far more prominent in contemporary Mexican society than the "Mestizo" one is, whose use is mostly limited to intellectual circles.

The total percentage of Mexico's indigenous peoples tends to vary depending of the criteria used by the government on its censuses: it is 5.4% if the ability to speak an indigenous language is used as the criteria to define a person as indigenous, if racial self-identification is used it is 14.9%a and if people who consider themselves part indigenous are also included it amounts to 23%. Nonetheless, all the censuses conclude that the majority of Mexico's indigenous population is concentrated in rural areas of the southern and south-eastern Mexican states. Yucatán at 59%, Quintana Roo 39% and Campeche 27%, who are chiefly Maya; Oaxaca with 48% of the population, the most numerous groups being the Mixtec and Zapotec peoples; Chiapas at 28%, the majority being Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya; Hidalgo 24%, the majority being Otomi; Puebla 19%, and Guerrero 17%, mostly Nahua peoples and the states of San Luis Potosí and Veracruz are both home to a population that is 15% indigenous, mostly from the Totonac, Nahua and Teenek (Huastec) groups. All of the indices of social development for the indigenous population are considerably lower than the national average which is motive of concern for Mexico's government.

Similarly to Mestizo and indigenous peoples, estimates of the percentage of European-descended Mexicans vary considerably: according to the Encyclopædia Britannica which uses as reference the 1921 census, their numbers range from around 10%–20% (the results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate). Recent nationwide field surveys that account for different phenotypical traits (hair color, skin color etc.) on the other hand, report rather higher percentages, with it being between 18%-23% if the criteria is the presence of blond hair, and of 47% if the criteria is skin color, with the later surveys having been conducted by Mexico's government.
While during the colonial era, most of the European migration into Mexico was Spanish, in the 19th and 20th centuries a substantial number of non-Spanish Europeans immigrated to the country, with Europeans often being the most numerous ethnic group in colonial Mexican cities. Nowadays Mexico's northern and western regions have the highest percentages of European populations, with the majority of the people not having native admixture or being of predominantly European ancestry.

The Afro-Mexican population (1,381,853 individuals as of 2015update) is an ethnic group made up of descendants of Colonial-era slaves and recent immigrants of sub-Saharan African descent. Mexico had an active slave trade during the colonial period, and some 200,000 Africans were taken there, primarily in the 17th century. The creation of a national Mexican identity, especially after the Mexican Revolution, emphasized Mexico's indigenous and European past; it passively eliminated the African ancestors and contributions. Most of the African-descended population was absorbed into the surrounding Mestizo (mixed European/indigenous) and indigenous populations through unions among the groups. Evidence of this long history of intermarriage with Mestizo and indigenous Mexicans is also expressed in the fact that in the 2015 inter-census, 64.9% (896,829) of Afro-Mexicans also identified as indigenous. It was also reported that 9.3% of Afro-Mexicans speak an indigenous language. The states with the highest self-report of Afro-Mexicans were Guerrero (6.5% of the population), Oaxaca (4.95%) and Veracruz (3.28%). Afro-Mexican culture is strongest in the communities of the Costa Chica of Oaxaca and Costa Chica of Guerrero.

During the early 20th century, a substantial number of Arabs (mostly Christians) began arriving from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The largest group were the Lebanese and an estimated 400,000 Mexicans have some Lebanese ancestry. Smaller ethnic groups in Mexico include South and East Asians, present since the colonial era. During the colonial era Asians were termed Chino (regardless of ethnicity), and arrived as merchants, artisans and slaves. A study by Juan Esteban Rodríguez, a graduate student at the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, indicated that up to one third of people sampled from Guerrero state had significantly more Asian ancestry than most Mexicans, primarily Filipino or Indonesian. Modern Asian immigration began in the late 19th century, and at one point in the early 20th century the Chinese were the second largest immigrant group.

Official censuses

According to indepentent Mexico's first-ever (but second-ever counting New Spain's) national census that considered race, made right after the Mexican revolution in 1921, 59% of Mexico's population was Mestizo, 29% was Indigenous, and 9% was European, with Mestizos being the most numerous ethno-racial group in almost all the states. For a long time this census' results were taken as fact, with extraofficial international publications such as The World Factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica using them as a reference to estimate Mexico's racial composition up to this day. In recent time nonetheless, Mexican academics have subjected the census' results to scrutiny, claiming that such a drastic alteration in demographic trends in regards to New Spain's 1793 census (on which Europeans were estimated to be 18% to 22% of the population, Mestizos 21% to 25% and Indigenous peoples 51% to 61%) is not possible and cite, among other statistics the relatively low frequency of marriages between people of different continental ancestries in colonial and early independent Mexico. Said authors claim that the Mexican society went through a "more cultural than biological mestizaje process" sponsored by the state in its efforts to unify the Mexican population which resulted in the inflation of the percentage of the Mestizo Mexican group at the expense of the identity of the other races that exist in Mexico.

In recent times the Mexican government has decided to conduct new ethnic surveys and censuses, also widening the criteria to classify the ethnicities who were already considered such as the Indigenous Mexican one, which was previously reserved to people who lived in indigenous communities or spoke an indigenous language. According to these recent surveys, Indigenous peoples amount to 23% of Mexico's population (including people who declared to be partially indigenous), Afro-Mexicans are 2% of Mexico's population. (including people who declared to be partially African) and White or European Mexicans amount to 47% of Mexico's population (based on appearance rather than on self-declared of ancestry). Less numerous groups in Mexico such as Asians and Middle Easterners are also accounted for. Out of all the ethnic groups that have recently been surveyed, that of Mestizos is notably absent, which may be consequence of the ethnic label's fluid and subjective definition, which complicates a precise calculation as well the tendency that Mexicans have to identify people with "static" ethnic labels rather than "fluid" ones.

Emigration

In the early 1960s, around 600,000 Mexicans lived abroad, which increased sevenfold by the 1990s to 4.4 million. At the turn of the 21st century, this figure more than doubled to 9.5 million. As of 2017, it is estimated that 12.9 million Mexicans live abroad, primarily in the United States, which concentrates nearly 98% of the expatriate population. The majority of Mexicans have settled in states such as California, Texas and Illinois, particularly around the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. As a result of these major migration flows in recent decades, around 36 million U.S. residents, or 11.2% of the country's population, identified as being of full or partial Mexican ancestry. The remaining 2% of expatriates have settled in Canada (86,000), primarily in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, followed by Spain (49,000) and Germany (18,000), both European destinations represent almost two-thirds of the Mexican population living in the continent. As for Latin America, it is estimated that 69,000 Mexicans live in the region, Guatemala (18,000) being the top destination for expatriates, followed by Bolivia (10,000) and Panama (5,000).

Languages

Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by the vast majority of the population, making Mexico the world's most populous Hispanophone country. Mexican Spanish refers to the varieties of the language spoken in the country, which differ from one region to another in sound, structure, and vocabulary. In general, Mexican Spanish does not make any phonetic distinction among the letters s and z, as well as c when preceding the vowels e and i, as opposed to Peninsular Spanish. The letters b and v have the same pronunciation as well. Furthermore, the usage of vos, the second person singular pronoun, found in several Latin American varieties, is replaced by tú; whereas vosotros, the second person plural pronoun, fell out of use and was effectively replaced by ustedes. In written form, the Spanish Royal Academy serves as the primary guideline for spelling, except for words of Amerindian origin that retain their original phonology such as cenzontle instead of sinzontle and México not Méjico. Words of foreign origin also maintain their original spelling such as whisky and film, as opposed to güisqui and filme as the Royal Academy suggests. The letter x is distinctly used in Mexican Spanish, which may be pronounced as ks (as in oxígeno or taxi), as ʃ particularly in Amerindian words (e.g. mixiote, Xola and uxmal) and as the voiceless velar fricative x (such as Texas and Oaxaca).

The federal government officially recognizes sixty-eight linguistic groups and 364 varieties of indigenous languages. It is estimated that around 8.3 million citizens speak these languages, with Nahuatl being the most widely spoken by more than 1.7 million, followed by Yucatec Maya used daily by nearly 850,000 people, Tzeltal and Tzotzil, two variants of the Mayan languages, are spoken by around half a million people each, primarily in the southern state of Chiapas. Mixtec and Zapotec, both with estimated 500,000 native speakers each, are two other well-known language groups. Since its creation in March 2003, the National Indigenous Languages Institute has been in charge of promoting and protecting the use of the country's indigenous languages, through the General Law of Indigenous Peoples' Linguistic Rights, which recognizes them de jure as "national languages" with status equal to that of Spanish. Notwithstanding, in practice, indigenous peoples often face discrimination and are unable to have proper access to public services such as education and healthcare, as well as the justice system, as Spanish is the prominent language.

Aside from indigenous languages, there are several minority languages spoken in Mexico due to international migration such as Low German by the 80,000-strong Menonite population, primarily settled in the northern states, fuelled by the tolerance of the federal government towards this community by allowing them to set their own educational system compatible with their customs and traditions. The Chipilo dialect, a variance of the Venetian language, is spoken in the town of Chipilo, located in the central state of Puebla, by around 2,500 people, mainly descendants of Venetians that migrated to the area in the late 19th century. Furthermore, English is the most commonly taught foreign language in Mexico. It is estimated that nearly 24 million, or around a fifth of the population, study the language through public schools, private institutions or self-access channels. However, a high level of English proficiency is limited to only 5% of the population. Moreover, French is the second most widely taught foreign language, as every year between 200,000 and 250,000 Mexican students enroll in language courses.

Urban areas

The 20 largest cities in Mexico as of the 2010 census. Ecatepec and Nezahualcóyotl are part of Metropolitan Mexico City; Juárez is northern border city, directly across from El Paso, Texas; Tijuana is across from San Diego, California; and Mexicali is across from Calexico, California.

v t e Largest cities or towns in Mexico 2010 Census
	Rank	Name	State	Pop.	Rank	Name	State	Pop.
Mexico City Ecatepec	1	Mexico City	Mexico City	8,851,080	11	Culiacán	Sinaloa	905,265	Guadalajara Puebla
	2	Ecatepec	Mexico	1,655,015	12	Chihuahua	Chihuahua	809,232
	3	Guadalajara	Jalisco	1,495,182	13	Naucalpan	Mexico	792,211
	4	Puebla	Puebla	1,434,062	14	Mérida	Yucatán	777,615
	5	Juárez	Chihuahua	1,321,004	15	San Luis Potosí	San Luis Potosí	722,772
	6	Tijuana	Baja California	1,300,983	16	Aguascalientes	Aguascalientes	722,250
	7	León	Guanajuato	1,238,962	17	Hermosillo	Sonora	715,061
	8	Monterrey	Nuevo León	1,168,709	18	Saltillo	Coahuila	709,671
	9	Zapopan	Jalisco	1,142,483	19	Mexicali	Baja California	689,775
	10	Nezahualcóyotl	Mexico	1,104,585	20	Guadalupe	Nuevo León	673,616

Religion

The 2010 census by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (National Institute of Statistics and Geography) gave Roman Catholicism as the main religion, with 82.7% of the population, while 10% (10,924,103) belong to other Christian denominations, including Evangelicals (5%); Pentecostals (1.6%); other Protestant or Reformed (0.7%); Jehovah's Witnesses (1.4%); Seventh-day Adventists (0.6%); and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (0.3%). 172,891 (or less than 0.2% of the total) belonged to other, non-Christian religions; 4.7% declared having no religion; 2.7% were unspecified.

The 92,924,489 Catholics of Mexico constitute in absolute terms the second largest Catholic community in the world, after Brazil's. 47% percent of them attend church services weekly. The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, is celebrated on 12 December and is regarded by many Mexicans as the most important religious holiday of their country. In spite of this, the Mexican State is officially lay secularist since the separation between religious institutions and the political administration of the nation was enshrined in the 1857, and was ratified in the current Constitution of 1917. Catholic priest and insurgent for independence, José María Morelos, called for Roman Catholicism to be the exclusive faith in Mexico. A provision of the Plan of Iguala of Agustín de Iturbide bringing about Mexican independence in 1821, also included Catholic exclusivity in the religious sphere. The Constitution of 1824 declared that the official religion of the Republic would be Catholic. Mexican liberals took power in the mid-nineteenth-century, determined to curtail the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and embedded anticlericalism in the Constitution of 1857, touching off the civil war, the War of the Reform (1858–61), largely over religion. Conservatives were defeated on the battlefield and then sought a foreign ally for their cause of religion, aligning with the French, who placed Maximilian Hapsburg as monarch in the Second Mexican Empire (1862–67). The Mexican republic defeated the Conservatives and executed Maximilian and two prominent Mexican generals, definitively ending the Conservative attempt to reassert the power of the Catholic Church. Liberal general and President Porfirio Díaz (r. 1876–80; 1880-1911) did not provoke the Catholic Church, coming to a modus vivendi with it; but he did not remove the anticlerical articles from the 1857 Constitution. From the late nineteenth century Porfiriato, Protestants began to make inroads in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution had a large number of Protestants participating in northern Mexico. The Constitution of 1917 strengthened the anticlerical provisions that were carried over from the 1857 Constitution.citation needed

The late 1920s was marked by a religious conflict known as the Cristero War (1926–29), when former revolutionary general, President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–28), began stringently enforcing the anticlerical provisions of the Constitution of 1917, it provoked a massive uprising in many parts of Mexico and resistance by the Roman Catholic Church. The war ended with an agreement between the parties in conflict (Catholic Church and State), by means of which the respective fields of action were defined. When President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sought Mexico's inclusion in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the constitution was changed in 1992 to eliminate the anticlerical articles long opposed by the Catholic Church and other religious institutions; the anticlerical articles were considered a violation of freedom of religion. Mexico reestablished of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, to which the Mexican State did not recognize as a political entity.

According to the figures of INEGI, most Mexicans declare themselves Christian and most Catholics (almost 93 million adherents according to the census of 2010).

The second-largest Christian group is the Jehovah's Witnesses, which totals more than 1 million adherents, making the Mexican congregation of this Christian branch the second largest worldwide.citation needed Ranked third-largest in Mexico is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are known as Mormons; the 2010 census reported 314,932 members, though the church in 2009 claimed to have over one million registered members. Fourth largest is Church of the La Luz del Mundo, which has its center in "La Hermosa Provincia", a colony of Guadalajara. The denominations Pentecostal also have an important presence, especially in the cities of the border and in the indigenous communities. In fact, Pentecostal churches together have more than 1.3 million adherents, which in net numbers place them as the second Christian creed in Mexico. The situation changes when the different Pentecostal denominations are considered as separate entities. Other groups are growing, such as Iglesia apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús, Mennonites and Seventh-day Adventist Church. Migratory phenomena have led to the spread of different aspects of Christianity, including branches Protestants, Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Orthodox Church.citation needed

According to Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum (in texts edited by the National Autonomous University of Mexico), it is remarkable the survival of magic-religious rituals of the old indigenous groups, not only in the current indigenous people but in the mestizos and whites that make up the Mexican rural and urban society. There is often a syncretism between shamanism and the Catholic tradition. Another religion of popular syncretism in Mexico (especially in recent years) is the Santería. This is mainly due to the large number of Cubans who settled in the territory after the Cuban Revolution (mainly in states such as Veracruz and Yucatán). Although Mexico was also a recipient of black slaves from Africa in the 16th century, the apogee of these cults is relatively new.

In certain regions, the profession of a creed other than the Catholic is seen as a threat to community unity. It is argued that the Catholic religion is part of the ethnic identity, and that the Protestants are not willing to participate in the traditional customs and practices (the tequio or community work, participation in the festivities and similar issues). The refusal of the Protestants is because their religious beliefs do not allow them to participate in the cult of images. In extreme cases, tension between Catholics and Protestants has led to the expulsion or even murder of Protestants in several villages. The best known cases are those of San Juan Chamula, in Chiapas, and San Nicolás, in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo.

A similar argument was presented by a committee of anthropologists to request the government of the Republic to expel the Summer Linguistic Institute (SIL), in the year 1979, which was accused of promoting the division of indigenous peoples by translating the Bible into vernacular languages and evangelizing in a Protestant creed that threatened the integrity of popular cultures.citation needed The Mexican government paid attention to the call of the anthropologists and canceled the agreement that had held with the SIL. Conflicts have also occurred in other areas of social life. For example, given that Jehovah's Witnesses are prohibited from surrendering honors to national symbols (something that is done every Monday in Mexican public schools), children who have been educated in that religion were expelled from public schools. This type of problem can only be solved with the intervention of the National Commission of Human Rights, and not always with favorable results for children.citation needed The impact of the Catholic religion in Mexico has also caused a fusion of elements. Beyond churches and religious denominations, a phenomenon persists in Mexico that some anthropologists and sociologists call "popular religion",citation needed that is, religion as the practice and understanding of the people. In Mexico, the main component is the Catholic religion, to which elements of other beliefs have been added, already of pre-Hispanic, African or Asian origin. In general, popular religiosity is viewed with bad eyes by institutionally structured religions. One of the most exemplary cases of popular religiosity is the cult of Holy Dead (Santa Muerte).citation needed The Catholic hierarchy insists on describing it as a satanic cult. However, most of the people who profess this cult declare themselves to be Catholic believers, and consider that there is no contradiction between the tributes they offer to the Christ Child and the adoration of God. Other examples are the representations of the Passion of Christ and the celebration of Day of the Dead, which take place within the framework of the Catholic Christian imaginary, but under a very particular reinterpretation of its protagonists.citation needed

The presence of Jews in Mexico dates back to 1521, when Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs, accompanied by several Conversos. According to the 2010 census, there are 67,476 Jews in Mexico. Islam in Mexico is practiced mostly by Arab Mexicans. In the 2010 census 18,185 Mexicans reported belonging to an Eastern religion, a category which includes a tiny Buddhist population.

Health

Since the early 1990s, Mexico entered a transitional stage in the health of its population and some indicators such as mortality patterns are identical to those found in highly developed countries like Germany or Japan. Mexico's medical infrastructure is highly rated for the most part and is usually excellent in major cities, but rural communities still lack equipment for advanced medical procedures, forcing patients in those locations to travel to the closest urban areas to get specialized medical care. Social determinants of health can be used to evaluate the state of health in Mexico.

State-funded institutions such as Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) play a major role in health and social security. Private health services are also very important and account for 13% of all medical units in the country.

Medical training is done mostly at public universities with much specializations done in vocational or internship settings. Some public universities in Mexico, such as the University of Guadalajara, have signed agreements with the U.S. to receive and train American students in Medicine. Health care costs in private institutions and prescription drugs in Mexico are on average lower than that of its North American economic partners.

Education

In 2004, the literacy rate was at 97% for youth under the age of 14, and 91% for people over 15, placing Mexico at 24th place in the world according to UNESCO.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico ranks 103rd in the QS World University Rankings, making it the best university in Mexico. After it comes the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education as the best private school in Mexico and 158th worldwide in 2019. Private business schools also stand out in international rankings. IPADE and EGADE, the business schools of Universidad Panamericana and of Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education respectively, were ranked in the top 10 in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal among recruiters outside the United States.

Women

Until the twentieth century, Mexico was an overwhelmingly rural country, with rural women's status defined within the context of the family and local community. With urbanization beginning in the sixteenth century, following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, cities have provided economic and social opportunities not possible within rural villages. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, women including middle-class women began working outside the home in offices and factories, and the gained access to education. Women were granted suffrage in 1953. In the 21st century, Mexican women are prominent in politics, academia, journalism, literature, and visual arts among other fields. In President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's first cabinet following his 2018 election, he appointed women in equal numbers as men. However, a wave of feminism in 2020 has criticized the president for his tone-deaf response to murders of women in Mexico.

Mexico is among the countries that treat particular murders of women as femicide. In 2014, Mexico had the 16th highest rate of homicides committed against women in the world. The remains of the victims were frequently mutilated. According to a 1997 study, domestic abuse in Mexican culture "is embedded in gender and marital relations fostered in Mexican women's dependence on their spouses for subsistence and for self-esteem, sustained by ideologies of romantic love, by family structure and residential arrangements". The perpetrators are often the boyfriend, father-in-law, ex-husbands or husbands but only 1.6% of the murder cases led to an arrest and sentencing in 2015. After a particularly well-publicized gruesome femicide followed by that of a kidnapped little girl, women began protesting more vociferously, falling on deaf ears, including those of President López Obrador. This is the first new and major movement with which his presidency has had to deal. On International Women's Day (8 March) in 2020, women staged a massive demonstration in Mexico City with some 80,000 participants. On Monday, 9 March 2020, the second day of action was marked by the absence of women at work, in class, shopping and other public activities. The "Day Without Women" (Día Sin Nosotras) was reported in the international press along with the previous day's demonstrations.