As related by the Toronto Star: An average of four women are murdered each day. In 2006, theSpecial Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Related to Acts of Violence Against Women in the Country (FEVIM) was established. The prosecutor found that 90 percent of women who were assassinated had sought help from the authorities.

New York University's Judith Adler Hellman, who's spent 40 years studying Mexico, said in a 2007 report: "No well-informed person in Mexico would be inclined to turn to the police for help."

Statistics are nice, but a few examples tell the tale. Recently, the Federal Court of Canadaoverturned decisions by the Immigration and Refugee Board in six cases. A synopsis of the six Toronto-area cases will illustrate why:

Osiris Leticia Padilla Perez was a 17-year-old in Tabasco when she was kidnapped and raped by Los Zetas drug gang. The board agreed her treatment was "a horrific event for a young woman" but not "appalling and atrocious," the board's requirement for refugee status.

Sara Triana Aguirre fled Mexico with her sister Sabrina to get away from her husband. A drug cartel operative, he tracked them from city to city, pistol-whipped his stepson, trashed their house and shot the family dog.

Christel PenaVargas sued the once all-powerful PRI after she was fired as a 27-year-old public relations assistant when the party lost an election. She was threatened, fled to another city, was hospitalized when her car brakes failed and two ofher lawyers died.

Zamora Huerta's common-law husband, a police interrogator, burned all of her documents after he tracked her down to another city. She had fled beatings that left her arm broken.

Rosa Alejandra Hurtado-Martinez was sexually assaulted by her neighbour, a police commander, who attacked her husband two days later. She and her daughter fled from city to city, but the commander managed to trace her.

Gisela Gallo Farias was 16 when a high-profile politician took her out of her housing project, gave her clothes and gifts and brought her to official functions. Three years later, the abuse started, including a beating and rape when she refused to take her clothes off at a party and a beating that caused a miscarriage.

Yougot to give to Mexico: It might be corrupt and violent, but it democratically spreads out its horror show across the board. Consider the six cases above, the outrages nicely spread among two drug cartels, two police officers, and two politicians. 

By the way, the reason the women were initially denied refugee status is precisely because Mexico is a democracy, and the first court’s feeling was that as a democracy, the aggrieved could move to another part of the country or seek protection from the sta 

Seven thousand sixty-two Mexicans requested refugee protection in 2007, sharply up from the 1,649 requests in 2001, many middle-class people seeking to escape extortion, kidnapping, and all-around violence spawned by the drug cartels, quickly leading to "the increasing Colombianization of Mexico," in the words of Judith Teichman, an author and professor of political science specializing in Latin America at the University of Toronto.

Despite the six successful appeals, eighty-nine percent of the requests are rejected.

"Unbearably high levels of violence against women continue to exist in Mexico," a UN report quoted by the court said. "Police corruption continues to be a major problem and many police officers are involved in kidnapping and extortion. Many believe that sexism and even violence against women are part of the social fabric."

It is easy to blame all of Mexico’s ills on the drug trade, or on economics, or on the petrified caste system. It is easy, and it would not be exactly wrong, because all those factors are destructive. But there is a bigger story to be told, and that is how the rot inside Mexico, and particularly in the Mexican state, is so pervasive that the entire nation is endangered.

It’s amazing that no one, not The New York Times, nor NBC News, nor the Atlantic Monthly, bothers to pay any attention to Mexico, but that’s the nature of the modern media. A few years back, I asked a bigshot at one of the networks why they don’t cover the mess in Mexico, and he answered, and I quote, “When something happens in Mexico, we’ll cover it.”

So sure, the media likes the headless bodies with the notes attached to them, courtesy of the drug wars, and the poor immigrants dying in the burning desert, but those stories are easy. Something larger is happening in Mexico, something very profound and dangerous, and they’re still not covering it.