PUBLIC PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL DISTRICT
In 2020, 3,748 women were murdered in Mexico.
2,801 of these were intentional
and 947 were femicides.
For women seeking justice for this violence,
it means becoming sisters.
It means being aware that we need each other.
Sayuri Herrera has been appointed director
of the new Femicide Department
for the Attorney General's Office in Mexico City.
Her appointment was announced by the prosecutor through social media.
As a lawyer with a background in social activism,
she has an atypical profile.
Of course, it's frightening taking the step up
to become a prosecutor.
But I thought, "Well, someone has to do it."
The appointment of Professor Sayuri Herrera Román
aims to establish a new model
for addressing crimes against women and to combat impunity.
I mean, it didn't have to be me. It could've been anyone.
But I felt the need to do it.
And so we ask ourselves,
if we have a crime designation, procedures, and public offices,
then why is it that impunity is the rule?
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE MEXICO CITY
THE PROSECUTOR
MEXICO CITY
First arrivals on this side. Step forward.
This side, please. Enter here.
PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF FEMICIDES
The people who commit femicides are men.
They are usually acquaintances of their victims,
women with whom they have ties.
So that's why it's a crime that can be addressed,
that can be reversed, and maybe even eradicated,
because we are aware of where it comes from.
SAYURI HERRERA MEXICO CITY FEMICIDE PROSECUTOR
Each unit has its own investigative team,
and this one handles all of the violent deaths
that take place in the city.
FEMICIDE BY STABBING FEMICIDE BY BEATING
Good morning, Femicide Prosecutor's Office.
How do we determine if it's a violent death?
Any time there is some type of injury,
we have to rule out four possible etiologies,
a natural cause,
accidental,
suicidal,
or the one that concerns us in this office,
criminal.
So we are on the lookout 24 hours a day
for anything that may come up regarding these types of issues.
Work shifts are not routine or monotonous. Not at all.
Whenever you're on duty, you never know what to expect.
HOLY WATER
Which is the main avenue?
At the corner of Gloria Marín Street?
Emiliano Zapata neighborhood, Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
We have everything. Violence, murder attempts, injuries.
-Suicides. -Gunshots, suicides, decomposing bodies.
I mean, being on duty means living on the edge all the time. It really does.
She was found dead, wrapped in a blanket.
A white and blue blanket with,
uh, vertical and horizontal black stripes.
When we are notified of a possible crime,
the city police are sent to corroborate,
then we send an investigative team to the site to collect evidence.
It's a lot of work.
You're exposed to so much because sometimes you go out on a call
at, what, three in the morning?
Sometimes we can't find the site.
These are rough places where sometimes there is no cell service.
Nasty places, right?
There's tons of garbage,
cockroaches, bedbugs, all kinds of things, you know?
Like I said, when I opened the store yesterday, I saw it.
It's always full of trash,
so I never thought there would be someone in there.
My career options were Homicide, Femicide or Abductions, or FAS.
Those were my three targets, and they assigned me to Femicides.
I remember, at that time, femicides were still on the rise,
although there weren't that many yet.
I remember that on my shift we would have one or two.
There weren't that many.
FEMICIDE MAP
The prosecutor is the one who is responsible for investigating
and clarifying facts and incidents of violence against individuals
in order to give them access to justice.
591? In which folders?
-Those folders are no longer there. -And what…?
That's what I want to know. What folders?
The prosecutor is in charge of a team of specialists,
which is made up of public prosecutors, forensic experts,
and investigative officers,
all of whom are responsible for carrying out this work.
I didn't have a judicial career. I've never been a prosecutor.
I come from an activism background,
so it's really challenging
because of that stigma that there is that you're not trustworthy.
They always said, "Sayuri is not institutional."
The first day I took office as prosecutor,
all of the other public prosecutors resigned.
All of them. They didn't want to be here.
And they didn't want to work with me.
They had prejudices about who I was.
That's why we are on strike.
That's why we have been on strike for 83 days.
And it's why we continue to resist
and demand that the university be democratic and free.
And that is why we are demanding to use this space for discussion.
I've met people in the Prosecutor's Office
who have said to me, "Oh, you're from the '99 generation."
As if to say, "You're one of those troublemakers
who went on strike."
STUDENT STRIKE AT UNAM
I have lived through very difficult times…
…times of repression,
because ever since UNAM, we were criminalized
for protesting, for demanding access to education,
keeping it free and public.
The authorities acted against all of the students
who were supporting the 1999 strike movement.
How many schools went on strike today?
Strike!
One more time!
Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!
Strike! Strike! Strike!
I come from that movement.
I didn't ask permission from my family
to participate in the strike.
I thought it was the right thing to do.
To defend public universities against the imposition of fees,
because my father was a farmer and my mother was too.
And we didn't have an income
that would allow us to pay for a college education.
-Pay them! Pay them! Pay them! -Pay them!
I had already applied to law school.
I had decided to become a lawyer before the strike broke out.
I thought, "Oh, I want to work in an office
and I'm going to defend people."
It was the progress of the strike and especially its conclusion…
…which was when the Federal Police stormed onto the university campus
in order to put an end to the strike.
I was very disillusioned, in general,
with the institutions and also with the government itself.
There was a warrant for my arrest.
I was persecuted.
You're a bunch of fucking disgusting bastards!
-You deserve to die, you asshole! -That's enough! Stop!
Fuck you!
After nine months and 17 days of the strikes,
the facilities were recovered peacefully.
The main public leaders of the General Strike Council were arrested.
This is Alejandro Echavarría, AKA "El Mosh."
Mario Flavio Benítez Chávez,
who maintains close ties
with the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
When we talked about the transformation of the university,
we also thought about what we had read about both male and female Zapatistas.
The Zapatista movement changed everything.
And it changed me too.
I was at the main campus when Subcomandante Marcos visited there.
LA JORNADA PROFILE
Good afternoon, National Autonomous University of Mexico.
EZLN! EZLN!
It was a moment that filled us with hope.
It was very exciting to hear them speak.
To all the university students,
we want to ask you
to never stop recognizing the less fortunate among us.
Never stop seeking a future
that, as such, will be a collective one, or it won't exist at all.
I have this picture framed on my wall
so I don't forget where I come from, and where I belong.
My father went from being a farmer to being a laborer.
He thought, "I'll be able to give my family a house."
But unfortunately, my father was a victim of fraud.
And then he ended up detained, deprived of his freedom,
and when he tells you that, he tells you very indignantly.
He had a female lawyer who… who got him out of jail.
And when he was released from jail,
he told me how proud he was of this lawyer.
And that's when I thought, "I want to be a lawyer too."
I took on cases of people who had been imprisoned.
President Enrique Peña Nieto,
when, we ask,
when will Julio Cesar's body be returned to his family?
You killed him. Give him back.
Forty-two, forty-three, justice!
WE ARE MISSING 43 WHERE ARE THEY
I took on cases of extrajudicial executions
and cases of torture.
What they do is start an investigation into crimes other than torture.
And I also took on cases
of people who had been falsely accused of kidnapping.
We are applying for the reunification of the family.
I'd represented female victims of sexual violence.
I work at the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center.
And then Lesvy's femicide occurred at UNAM.
The woman found yesterday who was strangled
with a telephone cord in UNAM was named Lesvy.
She was 22 years old.
It hasn't been determined
whether the young woman was murdered or committed suicide,
since her body showed no other signs of trauma.
The strange thing is that she appeared
with the cord of a public telephone wrapped around her neck.
This was the very first case of femicide that I handled.
Lesvy Berlín Rivera Osorio, 22 years old, is the young woman we are representing.
The prosecution's version of this case stated that it was a suicide
and they published a series of tweets that revictimized Lesvy.
And once again, I had to go up against the authorities
at the university.
And once again, I was part of the student movement,
but a very different student movement from what we had seen before,
because this one was demanding our right to live.
We did an impeccable job in the investigation.
We presented our forensic architecture report.
We presented our reconstruction of events at the crime scene.
And they concluded that this was a femicide.
We were the only ones
who told the authorities and the civil servants
from the very beginning that no, it was not a suicide,
that it was a femicide.
And today… today, it has been proven.
Today, the truth came out.
Today, there is a new path to justice.
And when we left the hearing,
we saw that mothers of other victims were there.
FEMICIDE IN MEXICO
KILLER WAS SENTENCED TWO YEARS LATER
The mothers were very excited, and they were saying things like,
"When will there be justice for my own daughter?"
"When will we have access to justice?"
But now they had hope.
They said, "Yes, you can have justice, there can be justice,
and when will it come for me?"
And yes, of course I was happy.
But when I saw the mothers with their hope and their demands for justice,
well, yes, I thought, "We are not done here yet."
Justice for one feels like justice for all.
And injustice for one feels the same way.
It was the women, the mothers, the female students,
who pressured the state
into recognizing that there was a crisis,
and pressured them into creating the Femicide Prosecutor's Office.
Next, we give the floor to Ms. Ernestina Godoy Ramos,
who is the Attorney General for Mexico City.
We authorities were too slow to understand
that the violence against women would end up affecting us all.
We would now like to establish a specialized prosecutor's office,
which will be dedicated exclusively to the investigation of femicide offenses.
PROSECUTORS' HALL
We believe that this prosecutor's office
should have the following mission in mind.
I felt strongly that this shouldn't be a bureaucratic appointment.
It wasn't about who we knew, who was available, or any of that,
but it should be a more public process.
That's why we decided to put out a public call for applications.
Professor, good morning.
This is the second part of the recruitment process
for selecting the head of the Femicide Prosecutor's Office.
For me, assistance should be focused on assuring that the most important person
is the one whose rights have been violated.
That is who we represent.
From the very beginning,
and then again after reviewing all of the documentation,
it seemed to me that the best interview was Sayuri's.
Well, I didn't know Sayuri personally.
I was well aware that she had been doing social work as a civilian.
And so we talked to her.
I never imagined I'd be a prosecutor.
When the Attorney General called to tell me
that I had been appointed as prosecutor for femicide,
I was at UNAM's main campus.
And I remember taking a deep breath
because suddenly I felt that my life was about to change.
It was taking a big turn.
If we decide to move upward, toward power,
we can only choose between resisting alone
or falling into the trap
that claims that things can be changed from within.
How many left-wing activists have fallen into this trap?
They think that if they become government officials,
they can do something to change things.
What happens is just the opposite.
It's power that transforms them,
and turns those who were once social activists
into mere bureaucrats in power.
Without a doubt, the task I intend to tackle
is not one that can be resolved by just one person,
but it does require a person who has the confidence,
as well as the necessary skills.
Not only that, but also the hope and the conviction
that we can reverse the situation we find ourselves living in.
I'm in the Prosecutor's Office because I do believe
that things really can be changed.
But even so, regardless of whether that change happens or not,
I believe that there are cases, victims
that right now, right here today, we can provide support.
And you can never lose sight of why you're in this place
and of… what you're looking for here.
I came here to investigate femicides.
Not for a position, not to become a prosecutor.
Good morning, Femicide Prosecutor's Office.
In the case of Joana Esmeralda,
her husband turned himself in.
He walked into a prosecutor's office in the GAM District,
and said, "I just murdered my wife."
MY WIFE IS DEAD
And he started telling us what he did step by step.
So then we were given the official order to go look for the remains of a victim.
Here, this is the ravine. This would be the place.
This is where he supposedly wanted to dispose of her.
GO TO THE CRIME SCENE
So, there on the canal, as referenced in number 28,
he states that he dismembered her, the victim,
and he disposed of her limbs there.
WENT TO DUMP THE BODY
Betsy, what time does the detention period end?
At 7:00 a.m.
3:45…
…to 6:45?
-We thought about moving him at 11:00? -Thanks, chief.
They authorized the Femicide Prosecutor's Office
to intervene at the scene, that is, near the Remedios river.
TICOMÁN NEIGHBORHOOD
FAMILY RELATIONSHIP ADULTS
We were born here.
My sister grew up here, she went to school here.
Her childhood, everything was in this neighborhood.
It's a very dangerous area. I think it's a red-light district.
So there's a lot of crime. Right now, it's really ugly here.
Well, she was the one who was holding the family together.
Being the oldest, she was like a second mom to all of us.
LIZBET CAMPOS JOANA ESMERALDA'S SISTER
For example, whenever we had a birthday,
she used to dress up as a clown and tell us jokes.
We were like her first children.
Then later, she had her own family.
I took those. They're the last ones I took of my grandma.
My mom was very loving.
In fact, for me, my mom was my whole world, she was my best friend,
the one I told everything to.
Well, I think that she was the best mom
because… she was always there for us.
For my sister, her life was her daughters.
And that morning, I noticed
that she hadn't taken her daughter to school.
And I thought it was strange because she was very, very responsible.
I went to my mom's, and she told me that my sister hadn't shown up.
We had already noticed some signs of violence.
She couldn't leave him because she was afraid
that her daughters might be taken away.
We went to file a report
because we did suspect that he had done something to her.
We had indications that one of my sisters had found her locked up.
We said she's not answering.
She's not giving us any signs that she's okay.
We think something's wrong.
And that's why we decided to go and file a report.
But then one of my sisters, who stayed at home, called me
and told me that some police officers had come,
that he had turned himself in and confessed to killing his wife.
From where you are sitting, you will make your statement.
What do you have to tell us about these events, Juan?
It was at my relative's home. I made the decision to take her life.
-How did you take her life, sir? -With a sharp weapon, sir.
And what did you do after that, sir?
I cleaned the place up to remove all of the evidence.
Cleaned the blood, cleaned up any evidence.
Okay.
This person came to that hearing
to tell the court how he had taken Joana's life, and…
and that he had done it because she had, according to him,
she had not been faithful to him.
And he was hoping for the judge to take that into consideration
as his motivation and justification for his crime.
He was hoping that it was grounds for dismissal of the charges.
It was because of infidelity
that I made the decision to take this person's life.
And she wouldn't listen.
I wanted to fix things, but she flatly refused.
That's why I did it, Your Honor. That's all.
My mom told him that she didn't want to be with him anymore.
She was sure this time.
And he said that they couldn't separate.
He even told me, "Your mom can't leave me because God made us to be together,
and we are married, so she belongs to me."
He even told me, "Because she is my wife."
I feel that was what triggered everything.
HIS WIFE TO THE CLIFF…
So we carried out the investigation at Joana's home.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL RECORD SEARCH WARRANT
First, the Investigative Police knock on the door.
Then the public prosecutor shows up
and says, "We are here to do an investigation
on behalf of the Prosecutor’s Office,
if you give us," he said with a strong voice, "access."
Then they open the door.
There were several documents.
Papers, posters up on all the walls in the house.
I remember there was a poster that said,
"I will love you. I will always take care of you."
Things like that, which was really very shocking,
especially once you understand the circumstances,
and you know what actually happened in there.
And we also found some writings by Joana herself.
There was a letter in which the victim told him
that they should separate,
that she didn't want anything to do with him,
and that she was leaving him all the furniture,
that he should sell it and he could give the money to their daughters.
We had to search each of the rooms
in order for us to pinpoint the exact place
where this man ended up taking Joana's life.
We used techniques such as blood trail tracking
and luminol application.
LUMINOL REAGENT
And from there, you have your crime scene
to then establish that this is where it happened,
whether it is his blood or not,
because it's not enough that he turns himself in
and says, "I killed her."
I mean, we need supporting data, scientific and technical data.
GENETICS EXPERT IN FORENSIC CHEMISTRY
At that time, the forensics experts had very little luminol,
and they told us, "We need you to tell us where to apply the luminol,"
as if to say, "If it doesn't work, it's going to be your fault,
because you told us where to use it."
The forensics guy says, "Well, here's a bed and some clothes."
"Let's try it there, right?"
This test is special because not all of the blood
is visible to the human eye.
They deliberately clean up the crime scene
so it looks like there's nothing to see there.
But if we apply this luminol technique,
we can see if there was ever any blood in that location.
Luminol reacts with the iron in the blood
and forms a chemical luminescence.
That blue light that is emitted gives us a positive result,
confirming that there is the presence of blood.
And what we see is impressive,
because it is as if the luminescence tells you, "This is how it happened."
We saw that there were some drag marks,
and the whole room was…
-It lit up. -It was literally lit up.
Based on that evidence, we established the scene of the crime.
But the thing that we were most interested in from that hearing
and from further contact with the suspect
was information he could give us
regarding where we could find Joana's remains.
Where did you dispose of the remains?
In the Remedios river, sir.
What did you do with the hacksaw and the knife?
I threw them into the Remedios as well, sir.
It was all on the same night. Everything happened during that one night.
-Who helped you? -I did it alone. No one helped me.
I made three separate trips to get rid of all kinds of evidence.
He also stated that he disposed of the remains near his home,
that is, he continued down the street and, right there,
he turned a corner, and he went up to where the river is and threw them in.
The Investigative Police did a search on the banks of the river,
but it was unsuccessful.
THE SEARCH ENDS YIELDING A NEGATIVE RESULT
I told the commander, "We have to look again."
And the commander told me, "Well, the river is flooding."
"We probably won't find anything."
I said, "But we have to try everything."
We've already started the process to go and look for her.
There is so much garbage in the river that it's like…
-Finding a needle in a haystack? -Exactly.
There are different types of searches,
depending on the type of area being searched.
In this case, since it's an open area, we use the quadrant method.
So we searched in one quadrant, and then we finished that search,
and we moved on to another quadrant.
That was in order to cover the whole area.
Because there, well, there is an inclined area,
you have to go down very carefully.
And that's where Brenda found one of Esmeralda's arms.
I saw a white cloth.
But it had a lot of little flies on it.
And ultimately, that would indicate
that there is something worth investigating right there.
It was her hand.
UPPER LEFT ARM
HAND
It was found almost on the shoreline, so that was really the first, uh…
like a sign or reference point for where to continue our search
from that moment on.
And we were all very happy.
We have a WhatsApp group where we keep each other updated,
and we reported that we found an arm.
And at one point, some people said, "Oh, we've found enough."
"That's enough remains."
I really think we were very stubborn there
because we were insisting on continuing the search.
We asked the Fire Department and search teams for help.
We thought it was necessary to request a boat
so that we could keep searching further up the river.
There I am in the back.
And that was when the search crews used their belts and ropes
to make their descent to the river.
And the water was almost up to their chests.
The smell was very strong there too.
I think even the most skeptical members of the team began to get more invested.
They became more enthusiastic about the idea
that it might be possible to find all of the remains, you know.
People can tell when you're doing things because you're invested.
That conviction, that enthusiasm is contagious,
when you're not doing something just to fill out a form,
or a piece of paper.
From there, we conducted three additional searches in the river.
One of our team members climbed down and said, "There's the leg."
And so we called the whole team together.
The experts and firefighters came down,
and they confirmed that it was the whole thigh and leg.
RIGHT HUMAN SEGMENT (THIGH, LEG AND FOOT)
And there she was.
We had found Esmeralda's whole body.
MISSING LIMBS
And, well, we were all very happy
because we had completed the work we had set out to do.
Then we gave ourselves a round of applause and that's when we took the group photo.
After that,
we contacted the family
and we told them that we had found all the rest of her remains.
That's when I said, "This guy didn't win."
He didn't win completely,
because he wanted to defeat Esmeralda even in death,
so that neither her family nor her children
could honor her in her death.
And he didn't get that victory.
She is Joana Esmeralda.
And today, we recovered her body.
And that was very, very beautiful.
41 YEARS OLD.
WelI, I was in shock.
I didn't grieve like I should have.
I didn't experience grief at the time,
because I was more concerned
about whether justice was going to be served or not.
So I was more worried about that part.
Liz, good morning.
All right, well, first of all…
we are very sorry for everything that happened to Joana.
And as we told you at the time,
our team has been focusing on the search
to locate the rest of her remains.
And fortunately, we have been able to find all of her remains. Okay?
Excuse me, I'm going to take my mask off for a moment.
No problem.
Well… we wanted to find and restore dignity
to the remains of Joana Esmeralda,
and to return them to her family,
so that with her complete body, she can finally rest in peace.
Everything that can explain what a femicide is in this country,
I think is summed up in that case.
I mean, you have everything there.
You have a history of violence,
you have orphaned children,
you have a person who trashes women's bodies,
a person who believes that his behavior is justified,
that he owns Esmeralda, whom he considers his property.
I think what we did was to follow the principles of thoroughness
and follow through on the obligation that we had to look for her.
We didn't take anything for granted,
thinking she's not going to be there, we're not going to find her.
Well, we deposit the remains in the coffin,
then we close it and we give you time to say goodbye.
And you tell us when we can come back to cover them, okay? All right.
That's it. Like that, buddy.
Let's give the family a few moments of privacy, please.
Let's step back a little and wait for them to tell us.
When my mom died, I didn't want to go on anymore.
Without my mom, I honestly couldn't find any reason to.
I really didn't want to be in this world anymore.
At least, in a way.
I just wanted to die.
But my little sister scolded me and said,
"If you're not here, I don't know what I'm going to do."
"If I don't have my dad, if I don't have my mom,
I don't know what I'm going to do without you."
So that's when I got up and said, "It's true."
"I'm thinking about my own pain, but I'm not thinking about hers."
She was also very young. She lost her mom when she was just ten years old.
And when she said those words to me, I said to myself,
"I have to stand up, no matter what."
"I have to put my pain aside to understand her,
and the two of us are going to move forward together."
I am my sister's guardian,
so the only job I could find with a decent schedule
was as a maid on the night shift,
so I could be with my sister in the daytime.
I feel that justice is…
well, you could say that in a way it goes hand in hand
with giving each person what they deserve.
So, with my mom, justice was served, although it took a long time.
It took them about two years to be able to convict him,
but they did give him a fair sentence
without the possibility of parole any time soon,
also taking away any rights he had over us,
over both my sister and me.
Please allow us to proceed, Mr. Prosecutor.
Yes, Your Honor. It is requested that the accused be sentenced.
The formal sentencing of Juan Gómez Pérez is decreed
as the probability has been demonstrated
that he acted as the principal offender
in the commission of the act defined by law as the crime of femicide
against the victim whose identity is being kept confidential.
GÓMEZ PÉREZ JUAN SENTENCED TO 70 YEARS
It was a lesson for everyone.
It was a relief in terms of justice, and dignity, and memory.
It was a moment of pride,
which those of us who carry out these kinds of tasks need to feel.
Is it from that one?
It's thanks to the team. It's about teamwork.
When I ask myself what it means
to be a woman in Mexico,
I think of all of them, of all those women who I know will never give up,
who I know will continue to demand justice.
They are women who are building,
just as we are all building, in different spaces,
the kind of world in which we all want to live.
Over time, I didn't want what my mom did in life to be in vain.
Her goal was for me to have a career.
So I continued studying.
I still feel a lot of pain, and I'll always feel it,
but I keep studying.
I'm studying law. I work and study.
With the money I earn, I can pay my rent, my internet,
and I try to make sure my sister has everything she needs for school.
Justice for one feels like justice for all.
And injustice for one also feels the same way.
So… we have to work on it.
Because of my experience, I would also like to be a prosecutor.
Before, I wanted another career, but with the experience I had,
I would like to work in the Prosecutor's Office
as a prosecutor handling cases of femicide.
In this case, I feel the pain I have experienced
would help me empathize with those families,
because I am able to understand all that they are going through.
I remember we used to go to the Chapultepec Zoo.
My sister really liked animals.
My nieces were very young at the time,
so we used to take them out on the boats a lot.
Look, my mom bought me one of these when I was very little. Remember?
There were some you could use like pets, and you could drag them on the floor.
The best therapy is justice, isn't it?
If there is justice, people can live in peace.
They can stop obsessing over things, over thinking about what happened,
over putting their lives on hold just to be in the Prosecutor's Office.
Oh.
We have an incident.
Patrol unit 56132 is reporting a Code 33 call
inside the Suntory Restaurant in the Del Valle neighborhood,
Benito Juárez borough.
Notify Central.
Please report to the base. nt in the Del Valle neighborhood,