“The numbers were startling: In March, Mexico’s government said, the country’s emergency call centers were flooded with more than 26,000 reports of violence against women, the highest since the hotline was created.

“But Mexico’s president brushed aside his own cabinet’s announcement, suggesting, without evidence, that the vast majority of the calls for help were little more than pranks.

“‘Ninety percent of those calls that you’re referring to are fake,’ said the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when asked about the surge in calls at a recent news conference. ‘The same thing happens with the calls the metro gets about sabotage or bombs.’

“Mr. López Obrador, a leftist populist, won the presidency more than a year ago by promising to transform Mexico into a more equal society, and he appointed the first cabinet with gender parity in Mexico’s history, giving prominent feminists top posts.”

Read article by Natalie Kitroeff from The New York Times.