Girl who refused to marry is imprisoned; her mom had agreed to sell her for $ 10,000 in Mexico

A 14-year-old girl who refused to marry a boy who was also a minor was imprisoned for several hours by community police in an indigenous town in the state Mexican from Guerrero (south), human rights defenders reported this Wednesday.

The minor, identified as Anali “N”, had run away to avoid being sold and married to a 16-year-old in exchange for about $ 10,000 that would be paid to her family that lives in Joya Real, in the municipality of Cochoapa el Grande, one of the poorest in the country.

Abel Barrera Hernández, director of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center, explained that the minor was imprisoned for 14 hours after being captured on Monday night by community police from Joya Real, with about 600 inhabitants and where the so-called uses and customs prevail.

Another minor who agreed to receive Anayeli at his home after she escaped to avoid getting married was also released.

Municipal and state authorities were asked “to give protection to the two minors,” Barrera Hernández explained.

The release came after a dialogue was established between community authorities and lawyers from the Tlachinollan Center, supported by personnel from the state prosecutor’s office, elements of the national guard and the local defense attorney.

Although marriage between minors in Mexico was prohibited by law in 2019, in indigenous communities of Mexico that are governed by uses and customs continue to give these unions.

Only On October 9, another 15-year-old girl from the state of Guerrero, identified as Angélica “N”, was detained because she fled because her father-in-law tried to rape her.

This minor was forced to marry a man who lives in the United States in exchange for about $ 6,000.

Guerrero It is one of the states where these ancestral practices of marrying minors in exchange for a payment are still presented, which can be the same with money as with animals and even alcoholic beverages.

During a visit to Guerrero last October, the leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected requests to intervene in this problem, arguing that it is not generalized.

“The sale of girls, the prostitution of girls (…) is not the rule. In the communities there are many cultural, moral and spiritual values, that may be the exception, but it is not the rule. “, said.

According to official figures, some 3,000 girls and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17 gave birth in Guerrero in 2020, some of them within these arranged marriages.