As a child, Aurelia, a young indigenous woman from the Xochicalco community in the mountains of Guerrero, was told by her grandmother that women who have sex outside of marriage are burned alive.
Now, at 23 years old, she has been imprisoned for six months for homicide in degree of kinship after having suffered a fortuitous childbirth, after having been the victim of rape.
The sentence imposed by the Mexican justice system is 13 years and four months in prison, but a judge has ordered that sentence be revoked and the criminal procedure reinstated after finding serious violations of the young woman's human rights.
Aurelia was not only a victim of sexual violence, like thousands of women in Mexico and in Guerrero —a state with two alerts for gender-based violence—, and was unaware of the right to abortion for rape guaranteed by NOM046 throughout the country—, but also She was also forced to accept a sentence for a crime she did not commit, according to the lawyer Verónica Garzón, from the Mexican Institute of Human Rights and Democracy (IMDHD), in an interview with this newspaper.
“They accuse her of having killed her baby,” she exposes.
After giving birth alone in her bed, she Aurelia lost so much blood that she had to be rushed to a hospital.
The nightmare began in those cold walls: her aunt brought the product in a shoe box and the medical staff reported Aurelia to the police, after inserting a contraceptive implant without her consent.
"They detain her and take her directly to the penitentiary center, where she remains until now," warns Garzón.
Prosecuted for the crime of homicide based on kinship - which reaches sentences of up to 60 years in prison in Guerrero -, Aurelia, whose native language is Nahuatl, was forced last July to accept the abbreviated procedure of the Mexican penal system.
Her defender points out that although she had an interpreter present, "that is not enough to really understand a whole system that is not yours."
Since then, the young woman has faced an entire system that "completely ignores the needs and rights of indigenous people," she says.
For pleading guilty, the Prosecutor's Office offered to reduce the sentence to 13 years and four months in prison, which he accepted for fear of facing a greater punishment.
“They tell her that it is impossible to fight for her innocence, that she was clearly guilty, so she accepts and they sentence her, and that is when my partner Ximena Ugarte and I assumed the representation of the case and filed the appeal,” she says.
"The human rights of indigenous people go beyond an interpreter"
The resolution of the appeal, in charge of the magistrate Indalecia Pacheco of the Superior Court of Justice of Guerrero, agrees with the lawyers when pointing out that the protection standards for indigenous people were not met and orders the resumption of the procedure so that Aurelia can make a decision with complete information, explains Garzón.
"That her consent be prior and free regarding the abbreviated procedure and if she decides not to take it, have an oral trial that respects human rights and the standards regarding indigenous people," she emphasizes.
Although there was an interpreter present at all the hearings, the lawyer emphasizes that this is not enough.
"The international human rights standards of indigenous people go beyond the mere presence of an interpreter, it implies bringing to Aurelia's knowledge a whole social, cultural, legal context, which is completely alien to her because it is not her context," she stresses. her.
Which she maintains “goes beyond translating words;
that she understands what the sentence means and what it implies, its nature, its objectives, its effects and consequences”.
In the sentence, the magistrate points out that "the trial failed to carry out an analysis of intersectionality to avoid acts of discrimination."
“This implied that the primary control judge avoid any communication barrier and guarantee the non-infringement of the rights of the accused, who is originally from an indigenous people, considering that the relationship between those of us who speak Spanish in Mexico and those who speak an indigenous language has been complicated and difficult, since indigenous people have been the product of a long and complex history of resistance and survival”, he argues in the opinion issued on January 18.
The judge also points out that "the intersectional perspective seeks to address the ways in which racism, patriarchy, adultcentrism, class oppression and other systems of discrimination create inequalities that structure the relative positions of women in general."
This sentence sets an important precedent on how to judge with an intercultural and gender perspective, insists Garzón.
“We are talking about a judge who talks about patriarchy, that really is not commonly found, and about the relationship of resistance that indigenous people have had against the State,” he indicates.
Relationship that has been violent, discriminatory and oppressive, he underlines.
Melissa Ayala, Litigation Coordinator of the Information Group on Reproduction Elected (Gire), agrees that it is urgent that judges incorporate this human rights approach in order to make visible the different realities that women experience in the country.
“Obviously the situation of violence and discrimination experienced by indigenous women is very different from the discrimination experienced, for example, by white women who live in a city like Mexico City,” she points out.
The shadow of the criminalization of abortion
Although last September the Supreme Court of Mexico declared it unconstitutional to criminalize a woman for interrupting her pregnancy, there are still many Mexican women, like Aurelia, who are being punished in the shadows of the system.
The sentence of the Court is not enough to protect them and their cases are difficult to identify, since they are imprisoned for crimes such as homicide by reason of kinship, intentional, negligent and infanticide.
"Which does not make sense because as the Court also said, the fetus or the product of a pregnancy is not a person," Ayala warns.
In Aurelia's procedure, the product of the pregnancy is designated as the victim, Garzón details.
“They call the product the minor of reserved identity”, he indicates.
That and other contradictions may be exposed in a new trial that the lawyer calculates will last a maximum of four months.
Meanwhile, the young woman will continue to be deprived of her liberty in the Iguala prison.
"It is a prison with more than inhuman conditions: they have no activities, there are very few women and men and women are not separated, which puts them at risk of being victims, especially of acts of sexual violence," she warns.
“It is an extremely hostile environment, and here the question is: why is even a woman like Aurelia imprisoned for this?”
The criminalization of abortion is a persistent problem in Guerrero, for which the second gender-based violence alert was issued in the state in June 2020, explains Viridiana Gutiérrez, from the Observatory of Violence against Women (Obvio).
“A federal norm conflicts with the criminal code, so we have undertaken this battle with the State because we want to homologate that the norm is the one that governs health services,” points out the coordinator of the petitioning organization.
To access an abortion, state law requires that there be a complaint and that the procedure be authorized by a Public Ministry, which goes against federal regulation NOM046, which in 2017 eliminated the requirements to access the interruption of pregnancy.
Since then, most states have standardized their criminal codes accordingly, but few entities, such as Guerrero, are reluctant to do so.
The same thing happens with the historic resolution of the Court that declared it unconstitutional to penalize women for having an abortion.
Guerrero is one of the 26 — of the 32 — entities in the country that still punish abortion as a crime in its penal code.
Only Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Baja California and Colima allow abortion up to the 12th week of gestation.
However, Guerrero is also one of the states where the decriminalization debate is currently most alive and has reached Congress.
“At this moment the initiative is presented, but it has been a very exhausting struggle because the more time passes, the more women, more girls, more adolescents are bringing children of rapists or are undergoing clandestine abortions that what derives is the danger to the health and life”, says the activist.
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