Haitian Migrant Mother Becomes Chile's Sixth Femicide Victim

Chilean police report the year’s sixth femicide victim is a 26-year-old Haitian woman, Delicienne Sajuste, murdered by her ex-boyfriend in El Quisco, San Antonio Commissioner Robinson Alarcon said Wednesday.

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Sajuste set out for work Tuesday morning after leaving her five-month-old daughter in the care of friends when she was cornered by her ex and stabbed multiple times with a butcher’s knife in the chest and abdomen. When bystanders tried to intervene, the 29-year-old man whipped out a bottle of hydrochloric acid and drank its contents.

The pair was immediately transported to Claudio Vicuña hospital in San Antonio where the women was confirmed dead and her attacker continues to receive treatment.

The migrant couple who arrived in Chile in 2017 had allegedly separated five months ago and had a tumultuous history of violence which escalated after the relationship’s end.

Not two weeks into the new year and already four femicides have been registered with Chilean police, the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality said.

With roughly 40 deaths and 100 attempted femicides recorded per year, Chile holds one of the lowest rates of gender-based crimes on the continent. The regional crisis has prompted Latin American women to initiate social movements to denounce gender-based crime.

In Mexico, a total of 242,256 people were victims of crimes against life and bodily integrity, between January and November 2018 and another 786 femicides were recorded by the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (Sesnsp).

According to a new study issued by the Gender Observatory of the Ministry of Women in Paraguay, in 2018 there were 55 cases of attempted femicide and a total of 57 women were murdered.

Between 2016 and 2018, the total number of femicides was 146, which is equivalent to a violent death every 7.7 days, often committed by couples, ex-partners, husbands or former victims.

While during its last tour of Honduras, the United Nations denounced the nation’s “machismo” culture for its rising rates of femicides after witnessing the murders of 13 women during the organization’s two-week stay.