The endless obstacle course of María Elena Ríos, the saxophonist attacked with acid

María Elena Ríos poses with her saxophone in a park in Santo Domingo Tonalá, Oaxaca. Gladys Serrano

María Elena Ríos takes the call from a van on the way to Mexico City.

She comes to the capital, from Oaxaca, for her medical therapy;

she is still in recovery and she has to inject an anesthetic for the pain of the wounds left by the acid burns.

The journey that she used to make protected by a couple of state agents now makes it by public transport.

Two months ago they took away part of her protection measures, although one of her aggressors is still looking for and capturing her.

"Of course I feel at risk," she tells EL PAÍS.

This Monday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has demanded information on the case of the saxophonist, who was attacked in 2019: "We are going to ask for reports to see the progress in the investigations and why the aggressor is free."

On September 9, 2019, a man threw a bucket of acid at the face, chest, arms and legs of María Elena Ríos.

She was 26 years old.

She spent five months bedridden in a hospital, she had to relearn how to walk, how to look in the mirror.

Almost three years have passed and the young woman still has to go to a medical center in Mexico City where she receives her treatments.

"I don't go to the doctors out of vanity, they still have to give me general anesthesia for the pain," she details.

For the attack, three men are in prison —still preventive, without trial—: two alleged perpetrators and the individual whom María Elena Ríos identifies as the person who masterminded the attack.

The businessman and former local PRI deputy Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal turned himself in to the authorities a few months after the attack due to the media and police siege against him.

Vera and Ríos had maintained a personal relationship, in which the young woman suffered gender-based violence, some time before the attack.

"If he was able to do this to me when I told him I didn't want to be with him anymore, now that everyone knows what he did, if he is released he could attack me and my family," she explains.

The one who is still free is the son of the politician: Juan Antonio Vera Hernández, who is also accused of attempted femicide.

The Oaxaca Prosecutor's Office has even offered a million pesos (about 50,000 dollars) as a reward for him, but he has still not been arrested.

And the fear of María Elena Ríos does not end.

The young woman has denounced the constant attacks that both she and her close circle receive from the Vera family.

"I can no longer upload anything to my social networks because they have violated my friends," she says.

The defendants' version is that Ríos faked the attack to receive money.

“I didn't throw the acid on myself.

There is enough evidence for him to be linked, where it is established and widely seen that he tried to kill me.

It's all very detailed."

In the reconstruction of the Prosecutor's Office, it is included that Vera Carrizal paid about 1,500 dollars to the attackers so that they would throw the corrosive acid at the young woman.

In a document of almost a hundred pages, the National Human Rights Commission reflected the multiple violence and threats that Ríos and his family had suffered during this process from the environment of the alleged aggressors, and recommended that the case be brought by the Attorney General's Office, that a public apology be issued and that the damage be repaired, among other 300 points.

This CNDH recommendation is in line with Ríos' requests: on the one hand, protection from the family of businessmen and, on the other, to stop being in the hands of the Oaxaca Prosecutor's Office, whom he accuses of being in collusion with the aggressors.

“They are not even looking for Juan Antonio, why?

Because she is his cuate, ”says the young woman, who affirms that the fugitive was seen in Mexico City and the State of Mexico, and the Prosecutor's Office did not want to act.

"My aggressor is not just any criminal, he is a person with political and economic power," says Ríos regarding the PRI deputy.

"They have houses and businesses in Mexico City."

For that reason, he explains, he feels so vulnerable since the security measures in the capital were cut off and they were limited only to the State of Oaxaca.

Before, it had 24-hour security in the two regions and on the routes between the two areas.

Last Friday, a Board of Governors ratified the restriction of protection.

In Mexico City, the young woman continues to have her medical treatment, her legal advice and it is where she has the status of victim of forced displacement, but since April she no longer has protection.

“They say that I am no longer at risk, but the last threat came to me on April 26,” she says.

She now values ​​the president's intervention, but considers it insufficient.

“I did not want to be a defender, I was a girl who wanted to live her life and they did not allow me to live.

The saxophonist has continued to recover and is optimistic: "The treatments continue to be painful, but I think I will improve a lot, although I will never be like before."

“I am a survivor and I have every right to be happy, to have my friends, to raise my life.

It's not going to be as planned, but I'm alive and I want to continue living”, she affirms, sure, “that never exempts them from the damage that they have perpetuated to date”.

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