MEXICO CITY – When a male driver from a popular rideshare app asked Ninfa Fuentes for her phone number during a ride through Mexico City , she froze. But when he repeatedly pressed her about her Valentine’s Day plans, a rush of terror flooded her body.

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.

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“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.

The conversation around startling levels of sexual harassment and gender-based violence came roaring back this wee

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