NewsLatin AmericaNegligence and impunity: the open wounds of the Narvarte case, the multiple murder that shook Mexico

Negligence and impunity: the open wounds of the Narvarte case, the multiple murder that shook Mexico

The normally quiet Narvarte neighborhood, a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City, became the scene of a terrifying event on July 31, 2015. At two in the afternoon that day, three armed men entered an apartment located on Luz Savinon street. Inside the building were the photojournalist Ruben Espinosa, the activist Nadia Vera, her roommates Mile Martin and Yessenia Quiroz and the domestic worker, Alejandra Negrete. In less than an hour the men gagged, beat, tortured and killed the five people with a coup de grâce. The press called it the Narvarte case, an act so violent that it dismayed the capital’s society and put them before the mirror of the terror that was bleeding the country dry —due to the so-called war on drugs imposed by President Felipe Calderon during his six-year term (2006-2012)—, but from which they felt distant, floating in a false bubble of security. Seven years after that crime, the documentary in full lightby director Alberto Arnaut Estrada and produced by Netflix, makes a detailed reconstruction of the case and denounces a series of omissions, errors and fallacies by the Mexican authorities in charge of the investigation, which point to a possible cover-up by security officials or groups criminals who could have participated in the multiple homicide.

Not only the macabre acts of violence suffered by these five people captured the attention of the country. Information soon began to be revealed that made the case go from a sinister criminal event to an affair sprinkled with politics. Espinosa was a photographer who had achieved fame in Veracruz, in southeastern Mexico, where he worked for the magazine Process and the photographic agency darkroom—, both for his journalistic work and for his work documenting the abuses and violations against social movements by the government headed by Javier Duarte —an obscure PRI politician who had to leave his position due to accusations of corruption and illicit enrichment— and his Secretary of Security, Arturo Bermudez Zurita, nicknamed Captain Stormfor the hard hand and the ruthless way of exercising his position.

Espinosa had also become a powerful voice against the violence suffered by journalists in the State, the most violent for the profession in the most violent country in the world for practicing journalism. During the Duarte government, 15 reporters were murdered and that violence had lit the flame of indignation in the young photographer, who demanded that the authorities clarify the crimes. Due to his work and activism, Espinosa began to receive threats, which grew in tone until he decided to take refuge in the supposedly safe part of the capital, exile to the point where death sought him. In one part of the documentary, a quote is collected with which he justified his departure from Veracruz: “Enough of martyrs and heroes. You have to be human and understand that there are things that you cannot compose overnight and that we function more alive than dead”. In Mexico City, he met again with Nadia, a young activist and human rights defender, whose tireless work in favor of the disappeared in the State also brought her strong threats. Both had denounced the persecution of which they were victims and blamed the Duarte government for what could happen to them.

The photojournalist Ruben Espinosa Becerril was killed along with Mile Martin, Yesenia Quiroz, Alejandra Negrete and Nadia Vera, in an apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood.Alberto Roa (DARKROOM)

The authorities in charge of the investigation of the crime had initially pointed out that it was an account pass by criminal groups, which was widely accepted by the Mexican press. They supported this hypothesis based on two facts: that Mile Martin, a girl of Colombian origin, practiced prostitution and was related to a women-trafficking gang dismantled during the Mancera administration, and that the experts found drugs in the apartment, although in small quantities that point more to recreational use.

Arnaut and his team accessed thousands of pages of the investigation, interviewed the victims’ lawyers and their relatives, some of the authorities, including former Governor Duarte – sentenced by a federal judge to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to the crimes of criminal association and money laundering—and the then head of the Government of Mexico City, Miguel Angel Mancera. To activists and defenders of human rights and organizations for the protection of journalists who closely followed the case; They talked with experts and telecommunications experts Their investigation soon revealed a dark plot that included the negligence of the authorities, who committed countless errors that hindered the clarification of the multiple homicide and determined the possible participation in the event of a group of powerful politicians, authorities security or organized crime networks. It is in that abyss of darkness where he plunges in full lightwhich presents data and evidence ignored and hidden by those in charge of the investigation, including videos and telecommunications records that expand the group of those involved in this event beyond the three armed men who killed Ruben, Nadia , Mile, Yessenia and Alejandra.

“We think that there is protection for officials from the Attorney General’s Office during the Mancera government and from the criminal groups that participated in this homicide. We don’t know the reasons or who they protect, but we do know that the Attorney General’s Office was willing to hide the participation of other people who were involved,” says Arnaut in a telephone interview. “It is very difficult to believe that they made so many mistakes so easily in a criminal investigation,” says the director, who cites as an example the fact that the authorities asked a telecommunications company for all the information on the calls of the numbers of the three involved. , but on several occasions they gave those numbers wrong. In addition, the security videos captured by public cameras were edited and family members were not given access to the original tapes for just a few months. “These errors do not allow us to get to the point of pointing out names, but we can be very clear that Nadia and Ruben left Veracruz fleeing the repressive policies of those characters [Duarte y el secretario Bermudez Zurita] and what has happened is a consequence of that political exile”, explains the director. For Arnaut, it is a state crime “from the moment in which the Mexico City Attorney General concealed and directly hindered the investigation of the case.”

in full light In addition to ensuring that this crime does not go unpunished, it intends to prevent a society such as Mexico’s, so overwhelmed by daily horror, from forgetting not only the suffering of the victims, but also their lives and, in the case of Ruben and Nadia, his bravery. “From the beginning, the documentary was focused on giving these people back the dignity that the authorities took away from them,” says Arnaut. The director also hopes that this work, which opens on December 8, will be a pressure tool. “It is a criticism of the Mexican justice system, because it has serious deficiencies. What interests us in this case is that social pressure is generated that is great enough for the authorities to take it seriously,” he says. And he adds: “That they show willingness to get to the bottom of the matter.”

Journalists and media outlets in Jalisco raise their cameras to protest against the murder of journalist Ruben Espinosa in 2015.
Journalists and media outlets in Jalisco raise their cameras to protest against the murder of journalist Ruben Espinosa in 2015.Leonardo Alvarez Hernandez (GETTY IMAGES)

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