Roxana Ruiz: "The price for not letting yourself be raped and killed in Mexico is going to jail"

Roxana Ruiz is fighting for her life again. Less than 48 hours ago she was sentenced to six years in prison for murdering the man who raped her and threatened to kill her at her home in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, in the State of Mexico. "It was my life or his," he says in an interview with EL PAÍS. Now he fights to avoid going to jail for excessive use of self-defense. The case has outraged Mexico, a country where 10 women are murdered every day and where Ruiz may have been just another statistic. Another woman murdered in the State where more femicides are committed every year.

The woman in the eye of the hurricane is an indigenous Mixtec woman from Oaxaca who is one and a half meters tall. He is 23 years old although his tired look seems to reflect many more. Since the age of 14, Roxana Ruiz has lived immersed in a spiral of violence that has not stopped growing. A reality that thousands of women go through every day in the country. When she was a teenager she met the father of her child. A guy who beat her, took away what little she earned and isolated her from her friends and family. "It took me a long time to understand that this was violence," he says. His big, dark eyes contrast with his small hands that he moves every time he speaks. It took him a long time to leave that relationship and just as he was starting to build his life again, the fateful night happened that changed everything forever. " You could say I touched freedom and fell again," he says. At that point, he takes a breath, closes his eyes and starts talking.

It was 2021 and he had gone out with his cart to sell chips. Some women who worked in front of her invited her to have a few beers. "I took one and left," he has said on several occasions. At that moment, a boy she knew by sight, Sinai Cruz, approached her and offered to accompany her home. "He insisted that I let it go and stay overnight because he lived so far away," Ruiz explains. She says that out of fear, she agreed to let him in. When she was asleep, she adds, the man raped her. "I woke up and this guy was on top of me with his pants and boxer down. And I, because all I did was get rid of it, defend myself and get out alive, "she says two years after that. Although a while has passed, his voice still trembles when he remembers it.

Ruiz says they struggled and he threatened her. "If you don't let you, I'm going to kill you," the assailant told him. At one point when the man was distracted, Ruiz grabbed a T-shirt and suffocated him. "We fell and he hit his head," she says. Sinaí Cruz died that night and Ruiz was arrested by Nezahualcóyotl police with her body in a bag. Hours later he confessed to the crime in the homicide prosecutor's office. "I explained to them that I defended myself when that person was abusing me, but they didn't take that into account in my statement," he says.

Two years later, Judge Monica Osorio Palomino, of the Judicial Branch of the State of Mexico, has imposed the maximum sentence because Roxana applied an "excessive use of legitimate defense." According to the magistrate, "a blow to the head" would have been enough to defend herself, she said at the hearing. A very difficult line to draw when violence pushes to extreme situations and when there is a disadvantage like that of Roxana with her aggressor. "It seems that the price for not letting yourself be raped and killed in Mexico is to go to jail," Ruiz said.

Roxana Ruiz Santiago, a 22-year-old woman, at a protest prior to a hearing on her criminal situation, in the federal courts of the Neza Bordo Prison, in the State of Mexico, on July 29, 2022.María Julia Castañeda

In the Federal Criminal Code, self-defence is considered an excuse when committing a crime. In addition, Ruiz, along with his lawyers, has denounced from the beginning that the investigation of the Prosecutor's Office was plagued by irregularities. "Now I know they should have ordered a gynecological analysis and other tests that they never did," says Roxana. Also of revictimization. "Recognize that first you wanted and then you didn't," an investigative police officer told him on the day of his arrest.

The Public Ministry stressed in the complaint that "both the victim and the woman were drinking alcoholic beverages," however they never mentioned Ruiz's statements in the record where she claimed to have been raped. The young woman's lawyer, Ángel Carrera, adds that the gender perspective was not applied when judging the case. "The context in which the events took place was not analyzed," he adds. Ruiz's defense has indicated that they will challenge the conviction and file an appeal with the appellate court. Until the appeal is resolved, Roxana does not have to go to prison, but she does have to go to the court to sign every week and not leave the State. If they do not have a good result in the appeal, Carrera points out that they will take the case to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, protected by other rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

Roxana was held in pre-trial detention for nine months awaiting her fate. He has already been in jail and does not want to go back in. His stay in the Bordo de Xochiaca prison continues to generate nightmares. "It's a very ugly and very hostile place," he says. "Not so much because of the inmates, but because of the system. In prison they don't respect your human rights," he says, summing it up this way: "They don't treat you like a person, they treat you like an animal." She acknowledges that there were times when she was locked up when she thought about taking her own life, but the support of several feminist collectives such as the neighborhood assembly 'Nos Quiero Vivas Neza' have helped her continue in her struggle. " I have taken refuge in their strength and in the encouragement they have given me. If not, right now, I wouldn't be here," he says. Several feminist groups launched the campaign: 'Defending my life is not a crime', in support of Ruiz.

The court handed down a harsh sentence of six years, two months and seven days; Also to pay the family of the aggressor 285,000 pesos ($16,000), an amount he does not have. "I feel sad, disappointed in justice," she said Monday as she left the hearing. "If I hadn't defended myself I would be dead," she explains from Nezahualcóyotl, a municipality that has had an alert for femicides since 2015 and another for disappearances since 2018. She says she is sad for her attacker's mother, even though the family has threatened her and vowed revenge if the sentence is not served. "I didn't plan to leave this lady's son dead, but I didn't want to die that night either. I didn't want to orphan my son," she replies.

After a long court battle, all Roxana wants is to be reunited with her five-year-old son. She has explained that they cannot see each other because she is working. "My son asks me every day when we are going to see each other again, when we are going to be happy, but I am afraid that they can do something to him."

- Have you thought about escaping?

- Well, sometimes crazy ideas go through my head, but I know that would hurt me and give reason to these people. They are not right and I am not going to give it to them right now.

Ruiz's case is reminiscent of that of Yakiri Rubio, a young woman who in 2013 was in jail for killing one of her rapists, was released after being acquitted by a Mexico City court. A paradigmatic case that set precedents when judging a homicide for excess of legitimate defense and with a gender perspective. With more than 3,500 murdered, 2022 closed as one of the most violent years for women in Mexico since it is recorded. In the midst of such an unhopeful scenario, Roxana Ruiz continues to fight for her life on the verge of entering prison.

A group of women take part in a protest for the freedom of Roxana Ruiz in Mexico City.PEDRO PARDO (AFP)

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