Navarro is community opinion editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune. She is a transfronteriza who lives on both sides of the border.
I was in my early 20s ready to go into a bar on a Friday night in Tijuana when a crowd of loud youngsters was leaving the area. One of the young men punched a woman right in front of me. I I could not see her face, but her back slammed into the pavement, and her legs went up in the air. That’s how hard he threw the punch. I was mad!
Right next to us, a local police officer who was keeping an eye on a nearby parking lot was also a witness to the crime.
I yelled at him, “Poli, le pegaron a la morra.” Officer, the girl was punched.
The aggressor — belligerently drunk — yelled back at us, “Es mi vieja.” She’s my woman.
I turned to the police officer who repeated to me, “Es su vieja.” She’s his woman.
I kept walking and finally sat at a bar. I must have reflected that night on how lucky I was for not being the victim. I questioned, how can a partner treat you like his property?
Later in life, as a reporter in Mexico, I could see how domestic violence is a crime but also is something that not many want to talk about, and how, if you are a victim, the chances of getting help from the system are very low, just like in any other case. In Mexico in 2021, an estimated 90 percent of crimes were never reported and authorities only resolved over 1 percent of the crimes that were. It was as a reporter in the United States where I learned about the circle of violence, the resources and the steps to follow in a domestic violence situation.
Nowadays, what scares me the most is the level at which violence has normalized in Mexico — from the kidnappings, killings and disappearances among drug cartel that have left over 30,000 people dead each year since 2018 to the abuse of domestic partners, in private or in public.
I know that the consequences of assaulting a person in a parking lot are different in the United States, no matter who you are.
That’s why I reflected back to that night in Tijuana after the arrest in very similar circumstances of star Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Julio Urías. Now we know it was a concerned citizen who saw Urías allegedly attacking a woman at Exposition Park on Sept. 3. The person was unaware that the aggressor was Urías, one of the most popular athletes in L.A. His report led to Urías’ arrest on suspicion of felony domestic violence. He was booked into custody with the Los Angeles Police Department and released the following day after he posted a $50,000 bond, according to jail records. Three days later, he was put on istrative leave by Major League Baseball, which is investigating the incident, and he has a Sept. 27 court date, jail records show.
Urías is originally from Mexico and we learned this was not his first experience as a domestic ab. Four years ago, he was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic battery after witnesses told the Los Angeles police they saw him push a woman to the ground, and surveillance footage ed the allegation.
Would it have been the same if those incidents occurred in Mexico? Because even with that arrest in his background, after the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series, Urías was praised on social media and received in the Mexican National Palace by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Then in 2021, Urías was among the athletes given the Mexican National Sports Award. In a ceremony, all the awardees were praised for “their example and their efforts, for the new generations,” by AMLO.
If you think what I witnessed in Tijuana almost 20 years ago was from the bad old days, don’t kid yourself. The statistics are unbelievable. To this day, almost half of all women in Mexico experience domestic abuse.
I can share more recent examples. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a Mexican high school teacher was assaulted by her domestic partner when she was teaching an online class in her home. The video is disturbing. You can listen to the man interrupting the class and violently demanding that she explain why she grabbed his laptop. You can also listen to her begging him — in front of her teenage students who reported the incident — to let her finish her class or at least disconnect from it.
As a binational resident, I see how domestic violence cases don’t recognize borders. I see how in many cases, victims don’t recognize or cannot stop the abuse. And how, it is on all of us, as a society, not to become desensitized to violence — to recognize, to report and to not tolerate it in any form. No matter who the ab is or what they do for a living. No matter what side of the border the abuse is happening.
As the mother of an 11-year-old boy who also straddles our two cultures, I want him to live in a world in which it is unthinkable that any man believes he has the right to abuse “his woman.” No woman is the property of a man. No gender has ownership or right over another.
