The day the police shot, tortured and violated feminist protesters in Cancun

Lo que más recuerda Wendy Galarza de aquel 9 de noviembre es el fuego. El ruido y la furia. Las llamas que los manifestantes —rabiosos por el feminicidio de Alexis, una joven cuyos restos habían aparecido días antes en bolsas de basura— prendieron con sus propios carteles y pancartas en varios puntos de Cancún (Quintana Roo), por donde se extendió la protesta. Nadie esperaba los hechos que se sucedieron. Un grupo de más de 1.000 personas llegó al Palacio Municipal Benito Juárez, cuyas ventanas y puertas estaban protegidas con tiras de madera. Intentaron arrancar los listones para poder entrar. En ese momento la policía abrió fuego contra la marcha. Las balas alcanzaron al menos a tres personas. Pero la represión no acabó ahí. Una vez detenidas, trece personas sufrieron torturas y dos mujeres fueron violadas por agentes de seguridad, según el testimonio de las víctimas. Un año después todavía no hay culpables, y los afectados denuncian que el juicio no avanza y el proceso ha estado plagado de irregularidades.

"First the weapons pointed up, but a stampede was made, people started running and aimed against the protesters," Galarza recalls through the screen.When the shots began, she and her partner tried to flee the place on a motorcycle, but three agents surrounded them and threw the motorcycle to the ground.“Hence kicked, blows with macanas [batons], branches that broke the trees, rods..."They only stopped when a group of people approached who started recording the beating with their mobiles.They barely managed to tear off the motorcycle and flee from the place.Galarza did not know yet, but he had received two shots.“One of the bullets entered through the right leg, entrance and exit without compromising the bone.The other entered my pompi and left next to my vulva ”.

“Until I got off the motorcycle at home, I didn't realize that they had shot me.When I went down I felt an explosion, an intense blow, I passed my hand and was full of blood.I went home quickly, I took away my pants and I saw it.I didn't recognize it as a bullet yet ”.They went to the Red Cross at full race."When they go to me on the stretcher I hear the paramedics:‘ Another impact of bullet, entrance and exit, right leg ".

They referred it to a hospital.There, healing, cleaning, x -rays.They confirmed that, in effect, I was shot, and they sent her home.The next day, Tuesday, the beating rested.Wednesday went to make a complaint.“We went to the prosecution and when I started to narrate my bruises, the doctor who is there sees that it is another shot.On Wednesday.The shooting was Monday.I left the hospital with a bullet that they hadn't even seen ”.There were two other injured by the police shots that day, both reporters who covered the protest, Roberto Antonio Becerril Gómez and Cecilia Solís, who in an interview with El País said that “the police never fired in the air.It was as if they hunt us ".

Torture and sexual violence

The police brutality of that day did not end the shots.What María Elena García recalls the most is the fury of the protesters and the violence with which they found themselves.Chaos, screams, the confusion of the moment."I went into shock.I realized that it could be an easy target if it ran.I threw myself to the ground like in the American films.And I saw a group of small girls, about 18 years.I joined them.It was enough to realize that it was a very serious mistake.We were surrounded by ten police officers.They gave me a very thick square stick, and I felt a blow to the back very strong.When I look, I see that we are being enchanted ”.

The agents began to get rid of her and the group of girls.Garcia started screaming, trying to get someone's attention, but everyone ran."At that moment I realized that my life ended.They put my wives, we started to struggle, they wounded me on my wrist with the metal.When they lift me, the blouse opens back.I had no support.They started hitting me more.They duttered on my face, kicked in my belly, punch between chest and ribs.In the last, in the eye, I see white and lose stability ”.At that time the police began to drag her towards the back of the Municipal Palace, a dark park."They gag me, they give me the right bosom with my fist closed and in the ribs, I lose my air again and I fad a little".

Garcia speaks without hurry, but of running.No questions are needed.She prefers it to tell her time.It is not easy to remember certain things.A break ago, he drinks water, he continues: “As I had the broken blouse, the police began to play my breasts.He put his hand into my vagina and my anus, I felt perfect as he put two fingers in front and two fingers back.I brought a sports leggin, and it hurt me so much with the fabric. ”.The agent took her like this for two meters, "I was loading, but masturbating me.Around, the other elements began to say ‘Güey, leave me to me’.There I get to throw myself to the floor with all my strength, they kicked my back even though I had made a ball, they pulled my hair and when I was stated they pulled me out of the wife and made me walk like a dog ”.

The blows continued.Also psychological terror, threats, "we are going to leave you worse than Alexis".The whimers of other women around them also being tortured.Blood on the ground and clothes.From there they took them to the interior of the Municipal Palace.“I heard more screams and between blows and pushes, I noticed that another woman [Naomi Quetzaly Rojas Domínguez] subjected her the same as me.I told the human rights that they had done that to me too, I had next to what was the culprit ”.Hours later, when they finally released them thanks to the external pressure, the complaint went to put.

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— Jaynette Lancaster Tue Oct 17 18:33:55 +0000 2017

Irregularities at the trial

On November 10, Alberto Capella, the Secretary of Public Security of Quintana Roo, resigned for "moral responsibility," as he said in statements to this newspaper.The defense asks to be investigated for crimes of Human Rights Homission.The director of the Municipal Police, Eduardo Santamaría, was also relieved of his functions.But there have been no more responsibilities.On November 30, 2020, the Human Rights Commission of the State of Quintana Roo opened a file where “the Municipal Police made disproportionate use of force, perpetrated arbitrary arrests and acts that can be considered as cruel deals”.In the report he gave several judicial recommendations, but six months later, he was given a folder having fulfilled only one of them, according to the 9n commission.

The trial began in February 2020, and 11 agents of the Municipal Police of Cancun were charged for the crime of abuse of authority, robbery and injuries, explains Lizbeth Lugo Hernández, lawyer of Galazar, García and Naomi Quetzaly Rojas Domínguez Domínguez.Among the defendants, is Santamaría, to which the Human Rights Report of Quintana Roo places as the man who gave the order to shoot.“We are going to request the reclassification of the Folders of Quetzaly and María.We are requesting a crime of torture for cruel and inhuman treatment in the hypothesis of sexual violence, ”says Lugo Hernández.

From the first moment, defense lawyers met a wall.The evidence they presented, such as bullet caps, videos, or the clothes that the protesters wore that day, were not accepted.“There was a clean of the scene, we will never know which caps are the ones who used, rather than those who were uncertain in the companions.There is loss of videos, cuts in the recordings, which means that they are edited, and we don't even know if they are delivering the list of police elements that really participated in the operation ”.In addition, through resources and amparos, the defendants have managed to postpone the audiences again and again, so nothing has been reached.

In the place was also the National Guard and State Police.The shots came from local agents, but the others did nothing to stop them."The National Guard was present and never made any intervention to cease violent acts against unarmed citizenship, that is an act of omission"."The pattern of arrests," concludes Lugo Hernández, "is that they were aimed at the feminist movement, all the women who were arrested behaved badges.There was also a racial factor because the profile of the girls who arrested are all Mexican, and there were also foreign women demonstrating.In addition, there are several witnesses who say they saw lasers pointing them.They were directed attacks, which would explain that they have only injured below the hips ”.

Physical and psychological sequelae

After the tragedy, the trauma arrives.Physical and psychological consequences.Wendy Galarza says that he cannot lead a normal life, that he cannot walk as before because there comes a time when his leg inflames with pain.That also has posttraumatic stress, which is like a "foquito" that has to be treated.That she has thought a thousand times to leave Cancun, that the city is another, she is another, and even the sea looks differently.But that stays.Who wants to be congruent, what for her means to follow at the foot of the canyon.Together with the rest of the affected, he founded the 9N victims committee, which is now a spokesman.

Galarza says that at first they had a "spark" of hope that justice was done, but no longer.“Today I think I'm waiting for another type of justice.We have felt until the police stalks us ".The feeling of harassment is such that he has even changed his job: he stopped working with a child he took for fear of exposing him.She is now a teacher.“To cope with this situation I am looking for small rewards in other situations, such as small achievements of the committee or make visible other calls.I feel strong despite the vulnerable, ”he says.

María Elena García says that the first months Living was a nightmare.That he refused herself, who was not able to name him as a violation.That all I wanted to do was be in bed crying or going to his town and never returning.But he decided to stay, start doing activism, integrate into the committee.And he says he armed "a value housing".That, then, he realized how strong he was, and that he could release courage and rage, all that hatred.That she, who had always believed to dialogue as a solution to everything, discovered that sometimes it is also necessary to rebel and protest.

At the first hearing, the judge read all the victims' statements.“When he started reading mine, I realized that it wasn't something that was inventing in my head.Suddenly the world came to me and I began to feel that nothing made sense.That afternoon gave me an anxiety crisis of six hours.At that time there was no response or comfort in anything, and from there an anxiety crisis after another.If I was abused, it was sexual torture, I name it as what it is ”.

“I ended with all the damaged systems of my body, neurologist, post -traumatic stress, psychologist, extreme gastrointestinal disease, four rules cycles in a month...I go to the psychiatrist, I have prescriptions of several medications because I got to the point of love.Not by cowardice, I ended up wanting not to think, I wanted to stop the mind "."After a year of total resignification," he adds, "a full year of protests, torture, omission, today I feel brave than November 9".In his companions a new family has found, he says, that he does not feel alone, that helps him move on.

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