Looking at our death: Being an expert woman in Mexico - Gatopardo

The dialogue is heard from outside because there are no walls in this corridor prosecutor's office. It works on a piece borrowed from the Central Homicide Prosecutor's Office of Mexico City, in the Azcapotzalco mayor's office. And nobody here has a separate office, not even the boss. The prosecutor, the agents, the investigative and administrative police officers share the area without the slightest privacy. The ministerial agents are in open cubicles, with low walls. Conversations are mixed even speaking in a low voice. Those who come to testify must recount out loud the details of a femicide, an autopsy or torture.

The walls are white and the floor is beige, the opaque and sad beige that stains the emepés of the country. Those places where there is more darkness than light, where all the procedures seem eternal and doubts multiply: “What am I doing here?” "Will it do any good?" A purple canvas stands out, hung to indicate that the prosecutor's office for femicides is there. There were no resources for a formal poster. Alongside, there are two black plastic leather armchairs donated by the Organized Women of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (MOFFYL); The young and hooded feminists held a raffle and thus gave away the only armchairs there are, the minimum comfortable space for mothers, sisters and friends who are going through painful moments.

The prosecutor's office is a fish tank with three glass partitions that do not reach the ceiling. She has a stark L-shaped desk that she and her assistant, Marisol Feria, share. There is only one desktop computer and each one brings her own laptop, her personal computer. Internet service is limited, it only works on desktop computers. Here there is no warehouse for stationery supplies, which accumulate behind the desk of an expert; it is a mountain of boxes of new paper that threatens to crush him. There is also no archive for the files: in each semi-cubicle, the agents arrange their cases on the floor. Between the computer and the garbage can, stuck to the wall, each one stacks the files that touch him. And there they remain, without lock or drawer, where anyone could steal the clues to find those who killed dozens of women.

In the last five years, between 2015 and September 2020, 316 investigations for femicide were initiated in Mexico City, only 36% of the 875 homicides of women that were committed in the same period, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) and the official figures of the capital government.

The prosecution team is about to move into a new building that they were promised. The plans are pasted on glass and walls, exhibited as the yearning for a better future: a place with a comfortable waiting room for the victims, a warehouse, an archive, and also a medical service, because sometimes the mothers faint or feel sick when they see them. it touches, for example, to identify the body of a murdered daughter. So far they have asked other offices for help, but recently the drug dealing office refused to attend to a victim. She said to them: "Why, if she doesn't touch me?"

The prosecutor's office that investigates femicides in the gigantic capital of eight and a half million inhabitants has 16 ministerial agents, although in reality they have only worked with 13; the rest was considered a population vulnerable to Covid-19 and is in their homes. Each one has around 50 research folders in charge.

Nine of the 16 agents are men. In this world, women tend to occupy lower-ranking positions: they are official secretaries even if they are lawyers with degrees or master's degrees, often better prepared than the men who give them orders.

How was the prosecution team formed? There was no selection. Most of its members were appointed, although not all of them have experience in litigation and others are specialized in administrative matters. The office began to function with public servants who were part of Homicide Agency E and had their desk right there where the authorities decided to accommodate the new prosecutor's office. It was the turn of those who inhabited the corridor.

***

Sayuri Herrera, the capital's first prosecutor for femicide, is a thirtysomething with a soft voice and implacable judgment. She has a degree in Law and Psychology, and a master's degree in Human Rights. She is young, but with a character forged in complex trenches. She has been a trial lawyer in emblematic cases such as that of the normalista Julio César Mondragón Fontes, whose face was ripped off, tortured and murdered in Iguala, in the Ayotzinapa case; or the femicide of Lesvy Berlin Rivera Osorio, a 22-year-old girl who was strangled by her boyfriend with a public telephone cable inside the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the most important in the country. This case achieved the first public apology from forensic doctors in the history of Mexico: Felipe Takajashi, director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences of Mexico City (Incifo), apologized because his experts had ruled the cause of death as suicide of Lesvy.

Before, in 1999, Sayuri Herrera was part of the UNAM student strike. The younger and more radical groups of the feminist movement respect her for her activism; Perhaps for this reason and in search of her approval, the capital government appointed her the first prosecutor for femicides on March 8, International Women's Day. While she was being announced, she was marching in the streets with thousands of women in an unprecedented demonstration, something that few officials can do without receiving complaints.

Now, the prosecutor's mornings begin with the same news: one, two, three women found in the city. Mutilated. beaten. Dismembered. doused with gasoline. Naked. Handcuffed. Wrapped in blankets. Abandoned bodies in wooded areas, in ditches. Inside their homes. Women murdered, tortured and violated in ways that do not fit into words. Since the prosecutor's office specialized in femicides has existed, the numbers have not gone down; rather, they have increased. In the capital, on average, a woman is murdered for reasons of gender every five days, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System. It happens because the violence does not subside — neither in the capital nor in the rest of the country — but, above all, because now, it seems, femicides are being counted better and families are encouraged to denounce them as such.

In April, the city had 369 open cases of femicide. Six months later, the figure rose to more than 600. Who keeps the account and the details is Dian, a girl who smiles with a natural gesture. She wears jeans and a loose short-sleeved t-shirt that reveals small tattoos on her arms. She is a geographer from UNAM. She keeps the statistics of the prosecution and, as part of the project headed by Herrera, she works on the development of a georeferenced map from the information in the files. It records the places where the bodies were found, but also where the crimes were committed, which are not always the same place. She puts together a database with various variables such as the relationship between victim and perpetrator, history of violence, children and area of ​​residence, among others. She integrates complex concepts such as “rubbishization of bodies”: women strangled, burned, beaten to death; corpses in bags like garbage.

So far they have not detected neighborhood patterns of violence; The data does not show whether one area is more dangerous than another in terms of femicides, although they do reveal particularities: places with a higher incidence, areas or lines of business with more crimes within a mayor's office.

The geographer studies the relationship between violence and spaces to understand what they are doing to women in Mexico City. She looks for clues that help prevent and design public policies.

In front of Dian are Zulema and Layla, who also recently arrived at the request of the prosecutor. Zulema —dark hair and a high tone of voice that stands out from the murmur of others— is a sociologist, feminist and human rights defender. She makes a list of indirect victims: one by one, she reviews the 600 files to identify children, parents and affected people who were left in some situation of vulnerability.

"We've detected between three and five victims per folder," he explains. The priority is orphaned children, who sometimes remain living with the probable culprits; also older adults and people with disabilities.

Once identified, she integrates them into a database and then communicates with them to advise and accompany them, so that the State guarantees their rights and tries to repair the damage. Zulema uses her personal computer to complete the database. And she calls the families from her cell phone because the prosecutor's office phones can only dial landlines. What budget is assigned to them is a question that relatives and activists have asked the City government, but there is no answer. In the 2020 expenditure budget, the word “femicide” is not written anywhere in the document.

Layla also surveys folders, seeking to identify how the treatment —or lack of treatment— has been for victims who are part of the LGBT+ community. Herrera asked to hire her when she detected that, among the 469 files that she received, there were a hundred that had few steps in about a year and several of those forgotten cases involved transsexuals, transvestites and sex workers. Layla has long, straight black hair on only one side; part of her head is shaved. She is wearing a black dress and a Star of David pendant. She is 26 years old. She graduated from Philosophy and worked in non-governmental organizations. She is an expert in transfeminicides; she knows how to look for clues because she understands them. She is part of the trans community. Where others only see women's underwear, makeup and objects, Layla identifies clues to transvestite practices or transition processes. In three months, she has detected 21 cases investigated without a differentiated perspective, limited by a legal identity that did not coincide with the personal identity of the murdered women.

Zulema and Layla share a table barely one meter by 50 centimeters. Like a puzzle, they accommodate their laptops, files and two cups of coffee. Together they try to cope with how difficult it is to look closely at death.

"In my case, the work here is by commitment to the subject," she says Layla. But it has been complicated by the rawness of the violence seen in each investigation. The violence of these crimes and institutional violence due to lack of perspective.

It hasn't been easy for Zulema either:

—Working with death has touched me, it has taken away my sleep, for example.

In the last six months, a worker resigned because she cried every day and then went to another instance: "I don't understand why they hate us so much," she said.

From her hallway, with few tools and despite the obstacles, the prosecution gives results. In six months, she rescued dozens of files from the archive, reopened forgotten investigations, doubled the number of cases, which shows, above all, realistic figures and inspires confidence in the population to approach to denounce. Also in a semester she already exceeded the total number of arrest warrants and links to process. The Prosecutor for the Investigation of the Crime of Homicide - on whom the femicides previously fell - issued 18 arrest warrants and 17 links to processes for femicides in all of 2019, and since the special prosecutor's office emerged, more than half of the steps have been issued between May and November 2020

The prosecution investigates, works and is effective.

Sayuri Herrera's office battles against the most diverse enemies, men determined to perpetuate violence beyond death. An already imprisoned feminicide, sentenced with evidence as strong as video recordings for strangling a woman and leaving her body in her own house, has refused to reveal the name of her victim. And so, the body of that woman is still deposited in a morgue without her loved ones being able to bury her.

***

Herrera attends a virtual meeting in which they talk about how the new building is going and a protest for the decriminalization of abortion, which was encapsulated by police.

"I saw all those police officers at the demonstration and I wondered why they aren't here," Sayuri Herrera complains to some other authority. I think all those human resources could help us.

Near his office, halfway down the hall, is a photocopier. There's never a line, but it's never empty either. It arrived recently and has been everyone's joy because bureaucracy is a world of paper: everything must be printed and filed. Without the photocopier, the femicide team had to call in favors on other floors and hallways. Now it's a non-stop machine.

Here comes a girl in stretchy jeans with rips in the legs, a gray T-shirt and platform tennis shoes, impeccable because they are new (or very clean). She is around 30 years old, she looks like a young woman you would find anywhere, until she turns and reveals on the left side of her belt a squad pistol. The girl is one of the few investigative police officers assigned to this unit where she does not have enough personnel to guarantee custody to the surviving victims.

During a judicial investigation, three instances intervene: the Public Ministry is the State authority that accompanies the person who denounces and whose task is to determine if the crime is valid to initiate an investigation; the police officers who investigate; and forensic specialists, experts, who certify and help understand the facts.

The special prosecutor's office for femicides does not have forensic experts assigned to go to crime scenes or carry out studies on the bodies. It depends on the homicide prosecutor's office "lent" them experts, as well as the teams of the Proximity Criminalistics Unit (ucepés, they are told), one for each cardinal point, with four shifts for each zone. The ucepés are made up of criminalists, photographers and investigative police officers. Doctors do not attend crime scenes. Thus, many times, after other interventions, the body of a murdered woman arrives at the Incifo, naked, without clothing or objects that help identify the cause of death, give clues to the femicide or reinforce the legal case. Along the way, traces that can reveal something important are erased.

II.

Errands at four in the morning, nurseries closed; secure a property; value drums with acids, pistols, rifles, jewelry; make long analyzes and opinions with a baby in her arms: these were Ana's worst nights during two decades of work in the Attorney General's Office (FGR) as an expert appraiser of transportable assets.

"At that time, where did she leave it?" She — she will say it by way of explanation six years later, while her son walks around the garden of her house, a country-type dwelling. Ana (no last name, for safety reasons) is a 52-year-old pharmacobiological chemist with long black hair, glasses and a wide smile, born in Oaxaca.

As an official expert witness, she worked in Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Puebla. The hardest part was the last few days: it was just her and another expert witness in a state where fuel theft and pipeline milking did not stop growing. She would take her little one at dawn, put him in the car and arrive with him wherever she was called. There were no other options because her husband was also a coroner and lived in Mexico City. She one day she arrived with the baby to an errand at 11 at night.

"Hey, you can't bring her son," an Emepe told him.

-And what do you want me to do? Anne grumbled.

She entered at 8 am and returned at 10 pm or after midnight; she made a dozen opinions a day, which was crazy. She came to work 72 hours without sleeping.

An album with more than 50 thousand photographs is part of the record of her work: each one tells a story. Like the case of two adolescent cousins, 14 and 15 years old, who were walking along a highway in Tlaxcala when a group of traffickers put them in a vehicle and kidnapped them to prostitute them in a place where construction materials were manufactured. Ana remembers three small rooms hidden between partitions: one very small, with a filthy and worn mattress, another with a dilapidated armchair and another larger one with two beds, a rustic dresser made with little boxes, lots of cheap makeup, and a bow with clothing. woman and hanging bags. The girls could go in and out, but they threatened to kill their families if they left. None of them dared to run, until the 14-year-old girl took the courage to run away and report it. The woman who lectured them had been kidnapped 25 years ago and over time had become a warden.

Ana's memories come in the form of objects and link stories. Toys in a house, also in Tlaxcala, where they found no children. A woman lived there with her children: pimps who fell in love with young girls and married them to prostitute them in bars. An old boat discovered during a Veracruz carnival in which three years ago a boy, his wife and his baby were traveling at the time they disappeared. The jewels that he valued in millions of pesos, bag by bag that he examined in front of an MP and that had been stolen from a Liverpool in Boca del Río in 2012, while a 19-year-old girl gave her statement: they had hired her to receive a package at a bus stop and she ended up being the first one detained by the military.

Ana has had in her hands traces of the mutations of violence in two decades. She went from valuing old R15 shotguns, which were used by peasants to take care of her land, to valuing powerful AK-47 kalashnikovs, war rifles that are prohibited in Mexico and with which the worst massacres have been perpetrated. She went from a relatively calm Oaxaca to a Veracruz of kidnappings, dumped bodies and ranches with clandestine graves; and from there, to the Puebla of the "huachicol".

—In Veracruz she left me shocked that, when they caught an alleged criminal, they were always young men who were no more than 22 years old, accompanied by a girl who was about 18 years old and a baby. The search places were always humble, but something always stood out: some high-top sneakers, some good sneakers, some Nintendo. The girls were sent to prisons in La Paz or Coahuila, they were taken far away. And the moms said “what's up?”; also very young mothers, who were no more than 40, and had to stay with their grandchildren without being able to see their daughters.

From her first day as an expert, in 1998, Ana felt a great weight because her signature on her opinions could sink someone or set them free.

Crime in the country has left forensic teams restless. If they are clandestine graves, they must be there from the time they begin to collect the evidence until another team arrives and replaces them. That's where they have to eat, near the crime scene. Sleep on boxes, in the car or sitting anywhere, nothing to go to a hotel.

-In the prosecutor's office there was a motto: "It doesn't matter how long it took you or how much it cost to do your job, give me results."

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Statistics, numbers, figures. She sits in front of a wall of plants, placid, she thinks about the risk she could have been in, like that time when her classmates were being lynched.

Now the FGR has 1,747 experts and experts. Ana was part of a previous generation where women had fewer spaces in forensic sciences. The American series came to turn a male world and with little gender perspective. With the CSI boom came more experts. Employment of forensic science technicians is expected to grow 27% between 2014 and 2024, at least in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Mexico there are no projections or current data about the number of men and women who work in this field. We try to find out by sending transparency requests, although in such a simple query to differentiate by gender, the states of Mexico City, Hidalgo, Colima, State of Mexico, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Yucatan did not respond.

Chihuahua, the state with the largest territorial extension, has 481 experts, of which 239 are women and 22 of its 39 coordinations are also led by women. Salaries range from 14 to 20 thousand pesos, lower than in Nuevo León, where they start at 20 and reach 50 thousand. Another state where women are the majority is Zacatecas: there are 133 women out of 259 coroners (although the chief is a man). In Campeche there are 34 women and 28 men, who earn between 10 and 17 thousand pesos, and in Michoacán, 13 women and 9 men, who earn between 23 and 25 thousand pesos; two peritas are the ones who earn the most.

In Baja California Sur there are 69 men and 50 women, 14 of them, hired less than two years ago; the coordinator is a man, who earns just 16 thousand, although he is 35 years old. Morelos has 112 experts and 84 experts; their salaries range from 18 to 22 thousand. In San Luis Potosí there are 35 men and 29 women, who earn between 30 and 34 thousand. Sonora has 73 women and 103 men, who earn between 14 and 20 thousand: except for one woman, it is men who have the highest salaries. Durango only shares forensic medicine data: 10 women and 13 men.

The greatest gender disparity is in the Jalisco prosecutors: 225 men and 174 women. In Coahuila there are 142 men and 53 women, 18 of them in criminalistics; a field expert earns 12,000 pesos, while anthropologists and archaeologists earn 22,000.

"Today, women occupy about 40% of the positions within specialized public institutions," says Manuela Melchor, criminologist and general editor of the Forensic Expression magazine, a specialized publication.

There is a world of possibilities in forensic expertise: criminalists, chemists, doctors, psychologists, topographers, photographers, geneticists, dactyloscopy specialists, forensic anthropologists and a long etcetera. In all criminal investigations, expert voices are required to rule or certify and, despite the very high number of violent deaths in Mexico, the problem of Forensic Science students is that they do not find much work when they graduate, says Juan Martín Hernández Mota, director of the magazine, who studied engineering in geodetic topography at UNAM and has postgraduate degrees in Physics and Criminology. "Or they become taxi drivers or Uber drivers, because the calls in the prosecutor's offices are almost nil." He has seen it in his extensive teaching career. And he calculates that each year an average of one thousand students graduate.

Hernández Mota was an expert specialized in land traffic at the FGR for two decades. His specialty and ballistics continue to have more of a male presence. He prefers “to work with women, because they are more meticulous, more detailed and careful, and less prone to corruption. But we still have a debt with them: no matter how much is said, in the forensic field there continues to be a macho culture, where strong or relevant cases are attended by a man and the woman is sent as a company or to give her opinion”.

III.

When you ask her for an interview, she naturally replies: "Does it look better at 10 or 11 at night?" Because that's how her days are: without pause. And when you call her, almost at midnight, she offers you a thousand apologies because she is still busy on an errand, that is, collecting evidence or accompanying a family to identify the body of a murdered woman.

Brenda Bazán, 36, brown-haired and friendly, is one of the most experienced women in the investigation of femicides throughout the country. She is an agent of the Public Ministry and for nine years she has been working exclusively on gender issues. She has been in the agencies of Cuautitlán, Ecatepec, Tlalnepantla, Tultepec and Toluca. That is, the areas with the most alarming rates of femicide violence, where being a woman is a danger in itself.

The State of Mexico is the cruelest and deadliest place. Cases have occurred there that have silenced the population. There a man took the girl Fatima when she was leaving school and murdered her. There a husband beat Elideth to death, a 30-year-old woman, mother of a 10-year-old boy. There they abandoned a girl under five years old, dead, in a garbage dump, where she spent months without being identified; she was called “little red socks”. There, in a vacant lot, they dumped the bodies of Angélica and her daughter, Karla, who had gone to dance. It is also one of the most unpunished territories: between 2014 and 2017, at least 1,413 women were murdered and only 236 cases were investigated as femicide, that is, 16.70%, according to a study sponsored by the European Union, the Dutch Embassy and the National Citizen Observatory of Femicide. A state where murdered women appear in morgues every day: of the 724 femicides registered in the country between January and September 2020, 106 occurred in Edomex, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of Public Security. In addition, with the pandemic and confinement, femicides have increased three or four times.

Brenda Bazán has made her career in this field. She is the woman who was part of the most emblematic file in the fight against femicide in Mexico, the case of Mariana Lima, a 29-year-old lawyer who was murdered at her home in Chimalhuacán in 2010. Her body showed signs of suffocation and the first official opinion certified “suicide”. Her parents, Irinea Buendía and Lauro Lima, knew that Mariana suffered beatings and violence from her husband, ministerial police officer Julio César Hernández Ballinas. They were not satisfied with the version that exculpated him and complained until the case reached the Supreme Court of Justice, in 2013. On March 24, 2015, in a historic ruling that established the first specific jurisprudence, the country's highest court He ordered the case to be reopened as a possible femicide and that the possible negligence of the State of Mexico Prosecutor's Office be investigated.

Then the case went to Brenda Bazán's desk. 10 boxes arrived at her office in Cuautitlán with the message “This file is your turn” and her life became more intense. At 30 years of age, she went on to lead a team of 22 experts. She investigated with a gender perspective. Comprobó que la versión del suicidio era absurda, como reclamaban los padres de la víctima, porque el peritaje inicial decía que Mariana Lima se había quitado la vida ahorcándose con hilos de macramé y colgándose de unos pocos clavos pequeños, como los que se usan para cuadros. Brenda enlazó las claves que llevaron a la exhumación de los restos de Mariana y al arresto de Julio César Hernández Ballinas, en junio de 2016. Construyó un expediente tan sólido que ha hecho a muchas personas volver a creer en la verdad y la justicia como horizontes posibles. Al mismo tiempo, develó la impericia y complicidad de sus colegas en la procuración de justicia.

—¿Y cómo reaccionaron tus compañeros?

—Se quedaban asombrados los involucrados. Sí había recelo, porque era pegarle a la coordinación del momento. No hubo aplauso ni reconocimiento a mi trabajo.

—¿Tuviste algún problema de seguridad?

—En un momento tuve que cambiar de sede por problemas de seguridad. Me radicaron en otro lugar, desde donde seguí la investigación.

El caso sigue en tribunales, a la espera de una sentencia definitiva. Aún incomoda; tanto que en enero de 2020 intentaron asesinar a una de las testigos clave, Guadalupe Michel Lima, hermana de la víctima. Le dispararon seis balazos.

***

Brenda Bazán quería ser médica, pero empezó como veterinaria. De ahí, pasó a Mercadotecnia y luego vino un golpe del destino: empezó a estudiar Derecho por un problema de herencia, una injusticia hacia un familiar. Porque siempre ha sido apegada a defender y argumentar, dice. Hizo su servicio social en la agencia Barrientos, en el municipio de Tlalnepantla, donde una capacitación en perspectiva de género le cambió la vida. Ganó un puesto por concurso y comenzó a trabajar en las escenas del crimen.

Ha visto cientos de cuerpos destrozados, pero hay uno que no logra olvidar:

—Mi primera experiencia: una mujer, un suicidio… o supuesto suicidio. Enfrentarlo nunca se te olvida pero yo siempre tuve una visión analítica, no de morbo. Siempre trato de entender la historia, de ver más que el cuerpo. Recuerdo un cigarro que había en ese lugar.

Ser analítica es observar cada detalle, como un cigarro o el hilo para macramé y los clavos que no podrían haber soportado el cuerpo de Mariana si se hubiera suicidado. ¿Tomar distancia de un caso significa perder empatía? Brenda cree que se necesita lo contrario:

—Para entender, tienes que tener sensibilidad: observar el dolor, el sufrimiento, las maniobras que la víctima pudo hacer o no. Imaginar lo que estaba sufriendo: eso es lo que te ayuda a ver la situación de manera analítica.

“Sensibilidad” es una palabra que menciona a cada rato. Ahí radica, en su opinión, la clave de la investigación de feminicidios. Porque en general los hombres y, en particular, los policías, dice, tienen poca preparación y carecen de la sensibilidad necesaria. Argumenta que, cuando hay una víctima femenina, muchas veces llegan al lugar y no toman la precaución de resguardar el área, la parte perimetral donde pudiera haber indicios. Por ejemplo, si encuentran a una víctima en un terreno baldío o una zona boscosa, los policías entran incluso con vehículos, borrando cualquier rastro.

—¿Y con qué tiene que ver esa falta de sensibilidad?

—Ya tienen una situación patriarcal muy importante.

Brenda habla en voz alta, firme. Tiene la cualidad de desenrollar el vocabulario de una abogada al castellano ordinario. Y en nueve años de investigar feminicidios, nunca había dado una entrevista. Lleva más de tres mil días trabajando como emepé especializada en perspectiva de género, investigando cada detalle desde esa mirada. Trabaja los siete días de la semana, 365 días al año. Procura quedarse en su casa los fines de semana pero no se desconecta. Su teléfono nunca está apagado ni en silencio.

—Somos ausentes de la familia, como los médicos. Tal vez tenemos que trasladarnos al lugar a las 11 de la noche y más; he llegado a mi casa a las cuatro o cinco de la mañana. Te impacta también el enterarte de los lugares de riesgo, de los modos de los perpetradores, sus dinámicas. Estás siempre alerta. Nosotras adquirimos pericia: miramos siempre por el retrovisor, estamos atentas si se acerca una motocicleta…, sobre todo si es de noche, mejor pasamos los topes rápido, sin frenar; nos mantenemos a distancia de otros autos para poder maniobrar.

Las precauciones naturalizadas, el terror bajo la piel. La agente describe el sobrevivir paranoico de millones de mujeres en México. Vivir en alerta, ése es el impacto en su vida personal. Es la lista de los miedos que se han hecho costumbres y han cambiado nuestra vida cotidiana desde que asesinan a cerca de 10 mujeres cada 24 horas.

Cuando terminó su trabajo en el caso de Mariana Lima, Brenda Bazán había decidido tomar un respiro, pero el gobierno de la Ciudad de México creó la fiscalía especial para feminicidios y Sayuri Herrera la llamó enseguida. Le pidió integrarse a su equipo porque la considera una de las personas más capaces, experimentadas y confiables en el tema. Ahora, trabajan juntas en la investigación y combaten el feminicidio en la capital del país. Entre los primeros hallazgos desde esa trinchera, cuenta que, así como en el pasado encontraban reticencia de muchos a reconocer al feminicidio como un delito específico, en el presente muchos burócratas y colegas quieren catalogar así a todo asesinato de una mujer. Y no sólo las sobrecargan de trabajo, también les impiden avanzar sobre el asunto nodal:

—Necesitamos reconocer la violencia que está impactando a las mujeres. Las lesiones degradantes, infamantes. Es importante para implementar toda la fuerza en la prevención. Si vamos reconociendo puntos rojos, entonces reconocemos la violencia y pasamos a ver qué se puede hacer para prevenir.

Después de dos horas de plática, cierra con una sonrisa. Desocupada ya, su celular suena con notificaciones de mensajes y llamadas. Va llenándose de dudas, consultas, recados. Recibe fotografías de las escenas del crimen, textos y llamadas de peritos que le dicen “a ver, jefa, hicimos tal cosa”, “a ver, jefa, ¿qué piensa de esto?”.

Ella observa las imágenes y les pregunta si ya pasaron a la sala, si ya revisaron el baño.

Brenda no duerme.

IV.

Es de noche cuando las mujeres llegan a la fiscalía de Chimalhuacán, el 2 de noviembre de 2020, donde la oscuridad es riesgo, hora de guardarse. Se animan porque salen juntas: son unas viente o treinta, en su mayoría, veinteañeras, aunque encabezadas por doña Lidia —así le llaman—, la mamá de Diana Velázquez Florencio, una mujer a quien asesinaron en 2017, cuando tenía 24 años.

Lidia es chaparrita, delgada y canosa. La mirada endurecida, la desconfianza que alterna con un cansancio inocultable. Envejecida por el dolor como miles de madres en México. Esta noche vuelve a las oficinas que tanto ha caminado para gritar otra vez el nombre de su hija, para instalarle un altar-protesta en el Día de Muertos y exigir justicia por las demás asesinadas.

En esta noche de velas, copal y cempasúchil, Lidia no habla del dolor ni de la ausencia. Elige nombrar otra parte de su calvario: las autoridades. “Ellos no trabajan —dice—. Son omisos, son negligentes, son corruptos al no hacer bien su trabajo. Desde el momento en que encuentran a nuestras hijas, dicen lo primero que se les ocurre. Su personal no está capacitado para el trabajo que hacen, peritos que no saben siquiera que tienen que tomar más de dos fotografías. Entonces desde ahí se entorpecen las investigaciones y, a nosotros, como familiares, nos dejan un largo, difícil y doloroso camino”.

Miran policías y algunos hombres. Con voz tímida y una grabadora, las veinteañeras cantan “Canción sin miedo”, el himno de estos tiempos compuesto por Vivir Quintana. Al terminar, indican por altavoz: “Morras, no se olviden de avisar en el grupo de WhatsApp cuando lleguen a su casa”. Y se van.

El edificio queda tapizado con rostros de mujeres que faltan. Marianas, Dianas, Lesvys, Sofías. La lista infinita de un país con miles de desaparecidas.

Una fiscalía especial conducida por treintañeras feministas es un oasis de esperanza en México. Una emepé especializada en perspectiva de género es un caso poco frecuente. Son arduas las batallas de las peritas dentro de las instituciones, en cada escena del crimen. Pero afuera todavía vivimos entre rincones oscuros, descampados de muerte y burocracia hecha montaña de papeles.

*Este reportaje fue realizado durante el mes de octubre de 2020. Al cierre de esta edición, finales de noviembre de 2020, el equipo de la fiscalía comenzó su mudanza a un nuevo edificio en calle Doctor Río de la Loza.