High rates of femicide, combined with a poor track record of bringing perpetrators to justice – particularly the wealthy and powerful – have made Mexico the most dangerous country for women in Latin America, according to the UN. But one grieving mother is determined to seek justice for her murdered daughter, despite the odds.
At 8:35pm on June 18, a Saturday, Patricia Garcia received a call informing her that her daughter, Frida Santamaria Garcia, was injured and in hospital.
Frida had spent that day working at a reception hall where a baptism party had been held, her mother recounted in a telephone interview from Sahuayo, a city in the western Mexican state of Michoacán.
"I immediately called her cousin, who worked with her, to ask if he knew anything. He called my daughter's phone, but it was her boyfriend, Juan Paulo N., who answered," Garcia said.
When she arrived at the Hospital Santa Maria Sahuayo, Garcia learned that her daughter had been shot. Frida had been left for dead after being robbed of her cell phone, she was told. The gunshots had punctured the young woman’s lungs and liver.
"It was the most terrible moment of my life," Garcia said. "A few minutes later, the doctor told me my daughter was dead."
Frida, 24, still had her whole life ahead of her when it was brutally cut short with a firearm.
"She was a very humble person with a big heart. She cared about the well-being of her family and friends. She was unconditional, loyal. She was unique," her grieving mother said.
Frida’s boyfriend denied involvement in her death. But on December 15, Juan Paulo suddenly retracted his denial and admitted that he shot his girlfriend, saying it was not intentional.
His retraction and delayed confession prompted the regional public prosecutor's office in Jiquilpan to reduce the charges against him to involuntary homicide.
This gave the accused the right to an abbreviated legal process and a three-year prison sentence with the possibility of parole. The punishment for involuntary homicide in Mexico is far more lenient than for those charged with femicide.
In this country of nearly 127 million people where, according to authorities, more than 10 women are killed every day, the case of Frida Santamaria Garcia is yet another illustration of the challenges victims’ families face in their quest for justice.
Suspect flees
Frida’s relationship with Juan Paulo began three or four months before her murder, according to her cousin, Samantha Morrett Garcia. “I found out about their relationship just a week before he shot her," Samantha revealed in a telephone interview from Jiquilpan.
While the Garcia family mourned the sudden loss of Frida on the evening of the tragedy, Juan Paulo had already left the city and fled to Guadalajara, capital of the neighbouring state of Jalisco.
It was the start of a harrowing legal obstacle course for the victim’s family. A filing made in the days after her murder at the attorney general's office in Jiquilpan did not advance the case. "He did not even inform me that I had a right to see a victims' counselor," said Garcia, revisiting the traumatic days when the family, shocked and pained by their sudden loss, first encountered the limitations of Mexico’s justice system.
The services of a private attorney would not be sought until five weeks later, finally allowing the investigation to move forward. "We realised that the investigation was not carried out correctly, neither in substance, nor in form," said the victim’s mother.
The family finally solicited the help of NGOs, including the MAPAS feminist collective, which advised the family to talk to the press and organised demonstrations calling for justice for Frida. The group denounced the lack of proper police reports or witness testimonies. Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office insisted on treating her case as a possible suicide.
When the suspect is the son of a former mayor
In Frida's case, there is another crucial fact that cannot be ignored: the accused, Juan Paulo, is the son of the former mayor of Sahuayo city, Alejandro Amezcua Chavez. Chavez is himself the brother-in-law of Alfredo Inaya, a former secretary of economic development in the cabinet of the governor of Michoacán state.
Mapas quickly denounced the "cynicism" with which the judiciary was treating the case against such a well-connected suspect.
"Until January 1, the Santamaria Garcia family and the MAPAS feminist collective believed that the state attorney's office was working to bring justice for Frida," said Sofia Blanco, spokesperson for the collective.
"We now know that, since December 20, it was working to reclassify this crime of femicide as 'manslaughter', without informing the family or their lawyer, so as not to give them time to challenge the decision before a hearing scheduled for January 4," she said.
The feminist collective also denounced the silence surrounding the case. "Neither the attorney general nor the Michoacán state governor has spoken out on the ruling in favour of [classifying this crime as] femicide," said Blanco.
She also denounced the Michoacán state supreme court for failing to “guarantee due process to the victim” and for doing nothing to prevent the prosecution from reducing the charges.
In a press release tracing the legal twists and turns of the case, the Garcia family noted that: "Currently, in Mexico, a person who is guilty of femicide can receive a sentence of up to 50 years in prison; for manslaughter, he faces a sentence of three years with the possibility of parole."
“We therefore understand why Juan Paulo's father and his brother-in-law acted with impunity, and corruptly, to redefine and reduce the charges for this crime."
A week after the reduced charges for her daughter’s murderer were announced, Garcia said she has appealed the decision, despite the threats the family and several witnesses have faced, and despite attempts to torpedo the case by people linked to the suspect.
‘Total injustice’
Mexico’s worsening gender violence crisis and the state’s failure to respond have led protesters and activists to call the country a “femicide nation”.
According to official figures, around 3,750 women were murdered and nearly 100,000 disappeared in Mexico in 2021. Of these murders, only 1,004 were investigated as "femicides". This failure on the part of the authorities has been denounced by NGOs such as Amnesty International, which says the lack of prosecutions results in "violations of women’s human rights to life and physical safety and their families’ rights to judicial protection”.
Mexico’s National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (CONAVIM) has estimated that 94% of such cases brought to the courts are dismissed.
"Investigations are not carried out according to the gender of the victim, they are not followed up, and corruption prevents the murderers from being brought to justice," explained Blanco.
On January 4, demonstrators gathered in front of the courthouse in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán state, declaring that every murder of a woman that goes unpunished is yet another example that Mexico is "a femicide nation". They demanded the maximum sentence for Frida's alleged murderer, and for all the other femicide victims.
"The prosecutor's office of Jiquilpan and the public prosecutor's office preferred to protect the integrity of Juan Paulo," Frida's mother said at a press conference that day. "And now he could be released on parole. This is total injustice.”
‘Cotton Field’ case forces government to act
Despite the deficiencies of the public prosecutor's office or the judicial system, convictions for femicide in Mexico do exist. "But when it comes to femicides committed by people whose families have political power, everything becomes complex," said Blanco, referring to the case of Jessica Gonzalez Villasenor, killed in 2020, whose alleged murderer, Diego Urik, also came from a wealthy family with political connections.
The young man, who was 18 at the time of the crime, lived in the wealthy Altozano neighbourhood of Morelia. SinEmbargo, a Mexican news site which specialises in investigating the links between power and organised crime, describes him as a "mirrey", a colloquial term used to describe a young man from a wealthy family who lives a life of luxury, parties and excess. The victim was a teacher from a working-class family.
On January 11, Urik pleaded not guilty. A verdict is expected on January 27. If he is found guilty, he could face a sentence of up to 50 years in prison; if not, he will be released.
"He has already taken everything from us, and no punishment will bring my sister back to us," Cristo Villasenor, the victim’s brother, told El Heraldo de Mexico daily. However, if the maximum sentence is handed down, it could set a precedent, he noted.
"It should be an example for society, and especially for those misogynistic men who believe they can take women's lives without paying the consequences,” he said.
Corruption and impunity are the main reasons why femicide rates, as well as the number of disappearances, are so high for women in Mexico. In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling condemning the country's negligence in investigating the deaths of eight girls who were tortured, raped, murdered and found in a vacant lot in Ciudad Juarez, a city in northern Mexico that has been referred to as the world's femicide capital.
The judgment of what came to be known as the “Cotton Field” case included a strong rebuke to the Mexican government, forcing it to act. Several commissions to eradicate violence against women have since been created and a special prosecutor has been appointed.
But as a January 2020 report, "Can a law put an end to femicide in Mexico?", noted, despite the “praises of a new law designed with a gender perspective, which guarantees a life without violence for all women … femicides are still being committed with near impunity across the entire country. The government and police institutions continue to look the other way, or in some cases they themselves participate in this new type of criminality”.
Mexico is the most dangerous country for women in Latin America and holds the unfortunate record for the highest number of femicides in the region, according to the UN. But back in 2007, Mexico was a pioneer for including femicide in its penal code, stating: "The crime of femicide is committed by any person who deprives a woman of her life for gender-related reasons."
The Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women recommends that all the violent deaths of women caused by criminal motives, suicides and accidents should be analysed from a gender perspective to determine whether or not there were gender-related reasons for the cause of death.
After Frida's death in Sahuayo, the relatives and friends of Juan Paulo asked, among other things, that the gender perspective not be applied to the investigation.
"What on earth is 'gender-neutral' justice? Justice for everyone except women?" asked Blanco, of the MAPAS feminist collective, in comments to a local media outlet.
"We represent half of the population!”
This article has been translated from the original in French.
