36-year-old Salvadoran migrant Victoria Salazar was not only a victim of police violence.
She was also abused by her partner.
The governor of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquín González, announced Tuesday that Salazar's boyfriend was arrested, accused of
sexual abuse against her and one of her two daughters.
"The partner of this woman who unfortunately died, the Salvadoran woman, Victoria, who had abuses against her and one of the daughters, was arrested," he said in a video posted on his Twitter account.
The arrest of the man, whose identity was not revealed, follows the controversy unleashed by the murder of the Salvadoran Victoria Esperanza Salazar who died on Saturday as a result of a broken neck suffered after being detained by members of the Tulum police.
[From El Salvador they demand justice for Victoria Salazar, killed by police submission in Mexico]
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele was quick to react.
"As I told you yesterday, despite the fact that some authorities came out to deny it, there were more aggressors and victims in this story" and added that the detainee is of Mexican nationality and that he "sexually abused" one of Salazar's two daughters.
The death of Salazar, who had been living in Mexico since 2018 as a refugee, sparked protests in the Mexican capital and in Quintana Roo after images of the moment when the Salvadoran woman remained on the ground, face down and handcuffed, were disseminated on social networks. , with a policewoman's knee around her neck.
Women protest in San Salvador, El Salvador, after the death of Victoria Salazar at the hands of the Mexican police, on March 29, 2021. REUTERS / Jose Cabezas
The forensic report released by the prosecution concluded that the migrant suffered "a fracture in the upper part of the spine caused by the rupture of the first and second vertebrae, which caused the loss of the victim's life."
["Justice for my daughter", asks the mother of the Salvadoran woman who died at the hands of the police in Tulum]
The Quintana Roo attorney general, Oscar Montes de Oca, affirmed that the injuries suffered by Salazar "are compatible and coincide with the subjection maneuvers that were applied to the victim during the process of his arrest" and demonstrate that there was a "disproportionate use ”Of force, for which the process was initiated against the four agents involved, three men and one woman, for the crime of femicide.
The four policemen were presented on Tuesday at an indictment hearing in which it was agreed that they will remain under preventive detention, the Prosecutor's Office reported.
The event also triggered the dismissal of Tulum's police chief, Nesguer Ignacio Vicencio Méndez.
["They raped me, they beat me and I felt like I was disappearing": in Mexico women suffer human rights abuses when they go out to protest]
The death of the Salvadoran woman was condemned by the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who admitted feeling "ashamed" for what happened in Tulum and assured that there will be no impunity.
Protesters place flowers next to a graffiti that reads "Justice for Victoria" during a protest in Mexico City on March 29, 2021 for the death of Salvadoran migrant Victoria Esperanza Salazar, who was subdued by the police in Tulum, Mexico. Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images
Salazar was originally from Sonsonate, a town west of San Salvador, from which she left 5 years ago due to violence and in order to seek better opportunities for her 15- and 16-year-old daughters, she explained to the news agency The Associated Press his mother, Rosibel Emerita Arriaza.
The single mother arrived in Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, where she made a refugee request that the Mexican authorities granted her.
Later she moved to Tulum, where she found work as a cleaning employee in hotels in that area and later had her daughters brought to Mexico.
Salazar's relatives reported that they were in talks with the Salvadoran authorities to repatriate their daughter's body, and planned to travel to Mexico to search for her daughters.
With information from The Associated Press.