Breathe
"What does the Attorney General's Office want, do they want to see me dead so they can really take my case? They are trying to make me belong to the 95% of impunity in Mexico"... María Elena Ríos told me sitting in the dining room of her parents' house, in Santo Domingo Tonalá, Oaxaca, this week when I visited her during a break in the marathon sessions of a virtual hearing of her case.
September 9 will mark the fourth anniversary of the acid attack suffered by the Oaxacan saxophonist inside her home in Huajuapan de Leon, that morning that would change her life and that of her entire family forever, and since then she has pursued only two objectives: to recover her health -physical and emotional- and to get justice for the attack that almost killed her.
For two days I was able to witness Malena's entrances and exits to that room where she followed the hearing from a cell phone. Her eyes injected with anger at a judge - Teódulo Pacheco Pacheco - whom she denounced time and again as biased, indolent and a "psychological torturer", as she called him on more than one occasion.
His parents, Don Bulmaro and Doña María Elena, sat waiting, sometimes in an armchair, sometimes at the dining room table. Always side by side, with their eyes lost in nothingness and a very painful look of defeat. The worst face of impotence in social and economic disadvantage.
Maria Elena locked herself in that room like a caged lion and only her altered voice could be heard behind the door, asking to intervene:
"the defense is violating me and the judge is not intervening", she said.
The defense of Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal is trying to obtain house arrest for the accused of attempted femicide, as the mastermind of an act that left the victim with irreparable injuries, marked forever in body and mind.
Something that other acid attack victims describe as "a living death"....
The hearing began last Monday and by Thursday night 50 hours of hearing with 30-minute breaks had been completed. This fact alone is severely revictimizing for the saxophonist who at some point also told me: "They want to tire me, but I will not get tired of defending myself".
On the second day of the inexplicably prolonged hearing, "someone" from the CNDH contacted Maria Elena to suggest that she approach the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, of the Ministry of the Interior, but they could not even give her the telephone number. It seemed like a joke.
Last November, Maria Elena's defense requested her counterpart to comply with article 344 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which specifies that the parties must inform each other of the evidence they will present on the date set for the trial hearing, so that they can be studied and the conditions of EQUALITY are met.
However, Vera Carrizal's lawyers delivered the data only a few hours before the beginning of the meeting, disarming the defense of Maria Elena Rios to be able to properly refute the arguments of her aggressor. The judge allowed it.
The accused was given more than 20 hours to incorporate "evidence", while Ríos, through her social networks, denounced with photographs that she was being silenced by the moderator, preventing her from extending her arguments.
But the worst moment for the saxophonist's defense came when the judge threatened María Elena Ríos with being removed from the session and leaving her without her legal advisor, for demanding the floor to defend herself against the attacks against her.
Maria Elena requested the recusal of the judge to disregard her process, however, Judge Teodulo Pacheco Pacheco insisted on continuing the hearing, even over a Federal order in which he was notified that the event could not continue due to lack of conditions.
The judge disobeyed the order, continued with the hearing and the scenario could not have been worse.
María Elena Ríos has been for almost 4 years now the flag and voice of the women survivors of acid attacks in Mexico, but is she just another example of the gender violence exercised by the judiciary in her state? Because unfortunately Oaxaca has not exactly been a model of honorability in this matter.
"The objective of Judge Pacheco is to free my aggressor. With money impunity reigns..." accused the saxophonist in social networks, now calling on the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
Will they listen to it?
María Elena Ríos has faced 5 days of hearings, more than 50 hours of sessions loaded with institutional violence and a tortuous wait for a resolution.
- Monica Garza (@monicagarzag) January 21, 2023
Her aggressor could be released.
This is part of what she has been through in the last few days. https://t.co/7IH7xGTfOw
This text was published on the web platform La Razón by Mónica Garza on Saturday, January 21, 2023; this is an authorized reply by its author.
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