Lawmakers demand proper investigation of murdered women

State Assembly approved a resolution introduced by Loreto Quintero to ask the state Attorney General’s Office to apply standards set by Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice to conduct gender perspective research in all cases of violent death of women.

“Feminicide deeply hurts our society, for constituting a hate crime, where gender reasons converge that cause violent death of a woman,” Quintero said. “(It) is not exclusive to our state (as) throughout the country cases multiply by hundreds.”

The lawmaker indicated that according to crime incidence data of 2019 issued by the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, in that year 23 feminicides were reported in Baja California.

According to state Attorney General’s figures, this year 18 women had been murdered in Tijuana alone.

The National Action Party lawmaker said in one of the most recent cases, Marbella Valdez, 20, was located dead and gagged Feb. 8 in a clandestine garbage dump in the El Tecolote neighborhood in Tijuana.

The assemblywoman emphasized that any violent death of a woman should be investigated with a gender perspective. She added that it is mandatory authorities must to investigate exhaustively all possible gender reasons that could motivate the crime.

Such determination was set by the Mexican Supreme Court in the case of Mariana Lima Buendía, a woman murdered in 2010 by her husband, Julio César Hernández, a judicial police officer of the State of Mexico. That feminicide was the first to reach the highest court of the country.

Quintero said that in the investigation of women’s deaths, the state Attorney General’s Office must consider all characteristics set in law when determining a case as feminicide — whether the body shows signs of defense and struggle, indications of chronic abuse prior to the victim’s death, sexual violence and possible discriminatory gender connotations in an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.“The observance of this criterion will help female victims of violence and their families to break the pattern of impunity and discrimination they face in the search for justice,” Quintero said.