If you’re mad the long weekend’s over, and you’re looking for something to get mad at, here’s your chance. A woman in Mexico was arrested for refusing to do her husband‘s laundry. For real.
According to Fox News Latina, 26-year-old truck driver Edgar Ivan Perez Alvarado from Tamaulipas, Mexico called the cops on his 21-year-old wife, Dulce Requena Garcia, because she wasn’t pulling her weight around the house. The couple has apparently been fighting a lot lately, but things came to a head last week when Garcia confronted her husband over a suspected mistress, and thus refused to clean his clothes so he could go out with his friends. Alvarado was so peeved at the idea that his wife would defy him in such a way that he enlisted the authorities who actually came to his rescue over this non-violent situation.
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Sadly, just like the many other countries where the law sides with the man on most domestic disputes, the police upheld Alvarado’s complaint. They hit Garcia with a 400-peso fine (roughly $25), but since she didn’t have that kind of money, and her husband refused to pay on her behalf, she went to jail for 12 hours. There are so many things wrong with this incident, I don’t even know where to start. Since I don’t want to go on too much of a rant, I’ll quickly take you through the five stages of grief through which the story sent me.
1) Denial: There is no way this could be real — it must be Mexico’s version of April Fool’s Day.
2) Anger: How can we live in a world where a woman can be arrested over not doing laundry, and her husband can go about his business committing adultery?! This is so many levels of absurd!
3) Bargaining: We should get an international injunction for wrongful imprisonment! The American government could totally get police forces in there, and lock Alvarado up for spousal abuse, right?
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4) Depression: Just when the world starts looking like a slightly more equal place, something like this happens. Why do I even bother voting?
5) Acceptance: Well I suppose every culture is different, and misogyny is a particularly difficult thing for a society to outgrow. Plus maybe she also tried to strangle him with his pants?
When the couple went to court over the matter, Alvarado says he refused to pay the fine so his wife would go to jail just long enough to “calm down.” In response to Alvarado’s accusations that she was shirking her responsibilities at home (which are totally ridiculous grounds on which to be arrested in the first place, but whatever), Garcia said she wasn’t feeling well. She also called out Alvarado for being an adulterer, but considering this country protects men from their dangerous, laundry-delinquent wives, I have to assume her plea didn’t hold much water in court.
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