When a male driver from a popular rideshare app asked Ninfa Fuentes for her phone number during a ride through Mexico City, she froze.

What should have been a quiet ride home at the end of the workday three years ago turned into a nightmare that many women in Mexico experience daily: holding their breath until they know they've made it home alive.

"I felt like I was dying," Fuentes, 48, said.

An international economics researcher and a survivor of sexual violence, she has not used public transportation or ride-hailing services since.

She instead turned to AmorrAs, a self-managed feminist network that provides safe transportation — and support — for women in Mexico City and its suburbs.

The conversation around startling levels of sexual harassment and gender-based violence came roaring back this week after Mexico’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was captured in video being groped by a drunk man.

Following the incident, Sheinbaum said she had pressed charges against the man and unveiled a plan to make sexual harassment a crime across all Mexican states — a bid to make it easier for women to report such assaults in a country where an average of 10 women are killed daily.

AmorrAs seeks to offer a solution to an endemic problem on rideshare apps and public transportation in Mexico, which have faced criticism for high levels of sexual harassment and violence.

The network was founded by 29-year-old Karina Alba following the 2022 killing of Debanhi Escobar, who was found dead days after getting out of a taxi on a dark highway in the northern city of Monterrey.

The network now has more than 20 women-only "ally" drivers, serving more than 2,000 women per year.

On a recent afternoon, 38-year-old Dian Colmenero received a WhatsApp message from Alba confirming that the woman she was going to drive was waiting at her workplace.

For security reasons, women have to schedule their rides with AmorrAs in advance by filling a form. The price for each ride then varies based on the distance traveled.

"Before driving with AmorrAs, I had experienced violence on public transport, on the subway, and even with ride-hailing apps," she said. "I once had to ride with a driver who told me and my partner that he had beaten up several women."

Colmenero greeted her regular passenger, Ninfa Fuentes, with a warm hug. As the noise of the capital’s traffic rattles the car, Fuentes peers out the window, confident that she will arrive home safe and sound.

According to the National Public Security System’s Executive Secretariat, Mexico has reported 61,713 sex crimes so far in 2025, including 8,704 reports of sexual harassment.

The National Citizen Observatory on Femicide says sex crimes in Mexico are the least reported due to the high level of stigma surrounding them and the lack of credibility authorities often extend to women’s reports.

Experts and advocates say the history of violence against women in Mexico is rooted in deep-seated cultural machismo and systemic gender inequality, alongside a justice system riddled with problems.

AP Video and production by Fernanda Pesce