Shortly after Victoria Salazar, a 36-year-old Salvadoran, pleaded for them to stop, two vertebrae, the first and the second, were broken.
He was on the floor, unconscious.
In the middle of the street of one of the tourist jewels of the Mexican Caribbean par excellence, Tulum, in the coveted Riviera Maya.
To the horror of dozens of tourists and neighbors who recorded live that macabre crime perpetrated by four Municipal Police officers this Saturday.
The images of Salazar's murder went around the world: the scene was tragically similar to the police maneuver that ended the life of African American George Floyd in Minnesota.
Knee to neck.
This Monday a hundred women demanded justice for the murder of Salazar on the main avenue of the city: "Paradise smells of blood," they shouted.
It was not the only crime that this weekend dyed the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean with horror.
The same day, in another paradisiacal corner, Holbox, an island north of the same state, Quintana Roo, a woman woke up tortured on the shore.
Karla Moguel, 29, was mutilated, murdered and thrown into the sea along with the golf cart she was driving.
Local media described the femicide as the first to hit the island.
But the women who shouted this Monday in Tulum assure that under the fruitful image that Mexico sells of paradise hides the same cruel face that does not give truce to half the population in the country: 10 murdered a day;
more than 80% say they have ever been a victim of gender violence, according to a survey by the National Institute of Statistics.
The assassinations of Salazar and that of Moguel have once again brought out one of the worst evils in Mexico, sexist violence, which always finds a corner to sneak into, even in the luxury destinations of millions of Americans, Canadians and Europeans who they visit its beaches every summer.
Holbox or Tulum are still Mexico.
“Here too they kill us, they abuse us in dark streets, complaints come to us from humble neighborhoods to tenants of new renowned real estate projects.
Not everything is as they paint it, ”says one of the organizers of the march, the Colectivo Feminista de Tulum, who prefers not to disclose her identity.
Women demonstrate in Tulum (Quintana Roo) after the murder of the Salvadoran Victoria Salazar at the hands of the police Teresa de Miguel
And the tragedy has exploded today at the gates of the National Palace of the capital, where the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who usually minimizes gender violence in his conferences and has come to equate the feminist movement with the opposition to his Government , has had to publicly acknowledge an issue that has escaped the control of the authorities for years — less than 10% of crimes related to sexist violence are resolved.
"It is a fact that fills us with sorrow, pain and shame," said the president.
Especially embarrassing for Mexico has been to receive 24 hours after Salazar's crime an international delegation to inaugurate the Generation Equality Forum organized together with the Government of France and the United Nations.
As has happened with other cities in the country, feminist organizations have never had so many allies as now.
And in Tulum, of 47,000 inhabitants, they say, it is the first time that more than a hundred women have demonstrated, who cut the main avenue and put their finger on the Government's sore.
"The system killed Victoria," read the posters.
Salazar's murder has turned the city into a symbol of the feminist movement in the State of Quintana Roo.
“Not only machismo, but also racism killed Victoria.
Can you imagine if it had been a
gringo
or a European?
Do they really want us to believe that they had grabbed her like that and thrown her on the floor like that?
"The worrying thing is that for a case like George Floyd's, a country arose and here, where these things also happen, we don't see the same indignation," adds Fernández.
The Quintana Roo Prosecutor's Office is doing everything possible these days so that the crime does not go unpunished, as it usually happens in the country.
The four agents, three men and one woman, have been separated from the charge, arrested and charged with femicide.
And the director of the Municipal Police, Nesguer Vicencio Méndez, has been dismissed.
"We will do everything in our power to have better police corporations," acknowledged the Governor of the State, Carlos Joaquín.
Next to the Municipal Palace of Tulum, a group of 100 girls lay down this Monday in front of the main entrance.
And there, leaning on the tile, they remembered in a group the harsh images of Salazar lying on the street.
Unconscious.
Without any of the four policemen who had detained and subjected her face down calling an ambulance when they observed that she was not moving.
The pulled women sang the Mexican feminist anthem
Song without fear
, by singer-songwriter Vivir Quintana.
"If they kill one, we all respond," they shouted at each other in unison.
On one side of the main entrance of the City Hall, the group of girls later covered with canvases and posters others who decided to record what also happens in a corner like this of paradise.
Against the clock and protected by their companions, they drew on a blank wall a portrait of Salazar inspired by a photograph from social networks.
As the authorities try to solve one of the crimes that has already transcended the Mexican borders, the jewel of the Caribbean has been touched.
Two women paint a mural on the outskirts of the Tulum Municipal Palace in honor of the Salvadoran Victoria Salazar, murdered at the hands of the police.Teresa de Miguel
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