MEXICO CITY (Process).– With the motto “In self-defense”, relatives of the victims of the multiple femicide and homicide in the Narvarte neighborhood denounce that, eight years after the crime that shook Mexico City and the country, they have delivered different types of information about the case to the capital’s Attorney General’s Office (FGJCDMX), headed by Ernestina Godoy, but she has not done enough to find the truth and do justice. The slaughter, they lament, continues unpunished.
“It seems that we, the relatives, are the investigators who give the information to the Prosecutor’s Office and they keep it in a drawer of their desk because they do nothing with it,” denounced Patricia Espinosa, sister of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa, in an interview.
The collaborator of Processalong with the domestic worker Alejandra Negrete, the makeup artist Yesenia Quiroz, the Colombian model Mile Martín, and the cultural activist Nadia Vera were shot to death on the afternoon of July 31, 2015 in apartment 401 of the building number 1909 Luz Saviñón street, in the aforementioned neighborhood of the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, seen until then as one of the safest in the capital.
According to Patricia Espinosa, in December 2022, after the premiere of the documentary in full light, by producer Alberto Arnaut, who revealed new data on the case by independent specialized experts, prosecutor Godoy Ramos – who intends to be re-elected for a second four-year term – showed “annoyance”, met with them and promised to have results in a year. Since then, seven months have passed and the relatives do not see substantial steps.
“There is no progress. It has been a rather unpleasant situation in the sense that, as a result of the documentary, the families have delivered videos, information, clues, books, articles, but everything continues to stop ”, she laments.
Until now, none of the three main lines of investigation into the crime have been proven or ruled out: the threats that Nadia and Rubén received in Veracruz during the government of Javier Duarte and his Secretary of Security, Arturo Bermúdez, for their activism and journalistic work; respectively; a reckoning of organized crime for drugs and human trafficking in which Mile and Yesenia could have been involved.
Patricia Espinosa insists that the FGJCDMX received all the information that the relatives and legal representatives gave it: videos, names, nicknames, numbers, evidence. She also details that the authority recognized the participation of more people in the crime, apart from the three who are in prison.
However, “they (the city authorities) have not done anything to find out who the other people who participated in the events are. They don’t look for them, they don’t have them identified, much less are they arrested. It has been a total refusal by the Prosecutor’s Office to go further. Acknowledging is not enough now eight years, they continue without doing anything to reach justice.
The “most worrying thing”, he regrets, is that with the passage of time “there is a lot of evidence that has already been lost because they let it be done that way from day one.” For example, “sheets” of calls, videos, call exchanges and more that could show alleged relationships between victims and perpetrators.
After the screening of the documentary directed by Arnaut, relatives of the victims and their lawyers met with Ernestina Godoy in December 2022. “We saw her upset by the documentary, she told us that her Prosecutor’s Office does not cover up for anyone, does not protect anyone and that If there are officials to punish, she was going to do it, her hand does not tremble to do it. But, from that to the facts, there is nothing. They are not just words”, says Espinosa.
So, Godoy promised in writing to meet with them every 45 days to receive progress on the investigation, says Patricia Espinosa. The last meeting was last May 16; that is, two and a half months ago. That day, “the prosecutor realized that her people give her information little by little. So, she told us that she would inform us when the next meeting would be. To date, we are still waiting, ”she laments.
Patricia Espinosa considers that if the Prosecutor’s Office does not have substantial progress seven months after Godoy Ramos’s promise, it will not have them by next December. “If the prosecutor is re-elected by then, her promise to us will be her first breach of her word,” she says.
“In self defense”
On the eve of the eighth anniversary of the crime against Nadia, Mile, Yesenia, Alejandra and Rubén, his sister underlines the motto that the commemorative events that include an art festival and a conference will carry: “In Self Defense”. And she explains that the families consider that they are defending themselves alone because “the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office has never accompanied us, it seems that we are advancing alone, we are defenseless, with our own elements to get to the truth.”
Eight years after they were promised truth and justice, he denounces that “we have a feeling of emptiness. We are already losing hope that justice will ever be done.”
Remember that, as a result of the “Voices for Narvarte” initiative, which was launched in 2020 on the fifth anniversary of the case, the then Head of Government, Claudia Sheinbaum, “said that she was going to give us a meeting, but she never attended us. She left (to seek the presidential candidacy) and I am very concerned because she could become our president, how important is she to the cases? She Gave her word and she’s leaving! If she did not comply as head (of government), then as president, who knows!
Stagecoaches in Veracruz
Edgardo Calderón, legal representative of the families of the victims and member of the international organization Article 19, agrees that, as a result of the documentary in full light and from the meeting with Ernestina Godoy, authorities from the Prosecutor’s Office have shown willingness to carry out some procedures, but none have resulted in concrete results that help discover the truth and exercise justice.
In an interview, he reports that, in recent months, FGJCDMX personnel “finally dared” to go to Veracruz to carry out some errands, in collaboration with the State Prosecutor’s Office to look for possible links between the crime and the reports of threats and persecution what Rubén and Nadia did before fleeing Jalapa and taking refuge in Mexico City.
He adds that staff from the Prosecutor’s Office are also working on expanding a context analysis “with other visions” on the different lines of investigation.
Regarding the suspicion of human trafficking, which the local FGJ agreed to open in August 2022 due to pressure from lawyers, he points out: “It is just beginning to investigate whether Yesenia and Mile were victims.” No leads have yet been followed on bank accounts or how Mile entered Mexico from her country, Colombia. Worse, she says, “one of the people who might know has already passed away.” And regarding the line of investigation on organized crime, he assures, “they haven’t even touched it.”
The “great conclusion” eight years after the case, says Edgardo Calderón, “is that some evidence has vanished over time because there is no longer a traceable path to corroborate some important data, there is no longer a way to follow them.”
Investigation against officials
The lawyer also states that, due to the demand of the relatives of the victims, a couple of months ago the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation file in the Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes committed by Public Servants against those officials of the then Attorney General’s Office, directed by Rodolfo Ríos, who omitted to investigate multiple data that today could shed some “light” on the investigation.
With this complaint, the relatives and lawyers “demand the punishment of the officials who allowed this situation. We do not believe that they were bureaucratic errors that were not investigated.
“We believe that everything was part of an intricate plan where there were orders from superiors, they protected some type of interest, they were not isolated errors. The families say that the authorities covered up, that they know something that they do not want to be investigated.
For this investigation, the legal defense of the victims stresses the importance of “not investigating act by act, but jointly, from the perspective of an organized apparatus of power.”
The victims’ lawyer adds: “What has been done, a little or a lot, has not borne fruit. Eight years after the crime, we are still waiting for truth and justice.”
