In rural areas in Mexico, it is still possible for men to buy a girl under 18 and marry her informally, very often then making his partner his slave who is constantly abused in many ways.
Although formal child marriage is forbidden in Mexico, nevertheless in 2018 informal marriages were still a problem in 30 out of 32 states. Although the exact extent is unknown since the informal nature leads to a lack of statistics, it is however known that the custom has become even more widespread as many men returning from migration in the US saved enough money just to buy a young wife.
In some rural areas payment of between US$8,000 and US$9,500 is enough for parents to agree to their young daughter being married with this custom still being popular in many Mexican states, especially in Guerrero, parts of Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Michoacán. Young girls are given to much older men with the money their parents receive often being crucial for them to be able to build a house or meet certain basic needs for their family since child marriages most frequently occur amongst poorer, indigenous, and non-educated communities.
Girls who are forced to marry older men very often come from poor families where they are already being abused and then the abuse continues when they become informal wives when they are beaten or raped with neither crime ever being reported. If the local priest refuses to conduct a marriage after the parents have agreed to a transaction, the parents of the bride simply offer a blessing.
“They deliver them as virgins, pure, malleable, without bad habits, when they are still obedient and can be influenced, guided, shown how to work in the house and in the fields, in motherhood and in marriage,” said Abel Barrera, director of the Human Rights Center of Montaña Tlachinollan (CDHM), located in Tlapa, the capital of Guerrero state.
This kind of marriage stems exclusively from local custom and is regulated by customary laws alone that are called Uses and Customs which fail to protect women and lead to a high level of abuse when women are impacted by violence all their lives. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that while boys living in such communities go to school, girls do not, as their duty is to work at home, thus the lack of any vocational skills causes them to be vulnerable to child marriages.
However, there are certain families that have decided to break those customs and give girls their own girls free will in terms of their future.
Another problem is not being able to properly assess the number of such informal child marriages and not being able to charge and punish those involved. Child marriages have been illegal in Mexico since 2014 when the Federal Congress voted that the minimum age for women to be married would be 18 whereas prior to this, child marriage was possible with parental consent. However as federal law is not automatically applicable in all Mexican states, the legislation was only adopted by 30 of 32 states by December 2018 but, since informal child marriages are not actually forbidden by law, they remain a problem.
The Girls Not Brides NGO told DevelopmentAid that many factors have led to the reason why informal child marriages are not illegal:
“Addressing early unions (the term typically used for this kind of informal marriage) in Mexico and LAC needs more than just laws and policies, and legal prohibition can actually have negative consequences for adolescents and young women. The reasons for adolescents making this decision are as varied as their experiences are, and include unplanned pregnancy, lack of opportunities to access paid work or continue in school, the desire to escape from a violent or hostile family environment, experience sexuality, and transition into adulthood, and thus achieve community status by starting a family.”
They also added that it is hard to estimate the number of informal marriages due to the lack of up-to-date official figures or registration:
“The Girl Not Brides team in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) – and other organisations concerned about CEFMU – find relevant data in the periodic surveys carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) such as the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID), and others. For example, according to the 2018 ENADID, 21% (just over one million) women now aged 20 to 24 entered a union or got married before the age of 18.”
