MEXICAN OFFICIALS SEND CONFLICTING MESSAGES OVER DEATH OF MAGISTRATE
Leading LGBTQ+ figure, partner were found dead at home
Mexican authorities sent conflicting messages Tuesday about the violent deaths of a leading LGBTQ+ figure and their partner after thousands marched in the capital demanding justice.
Jesús Ociel Baena, the first openly nonbinary person to assume a judicial post in Mexico, was found dead Monday with around 20 wounds lying next to the body of Dorian Herrera at the home they shared in the central city of Aguascalientes.
Baena was one of the most visible LGBTQ+ figures in a country where sexual minorities are often violently targeted and had reported receiving death threats and hateful messages. The couple had received protection from state security, prompting many LGBTQ+ activists to call the deaths a hate crime.
The Aguascalientes state prosecutor’s office on Tuesday described the deaths as a murder-suicide, saying it appeared that Baena was murdered with razor blades by Herrera, who then committed suicide.
“It may seem like a not very credible hypothesis to many, but we’re being very careful to leave a record and preserve all evidence,” state prosecutor Jesús Figueroa Ortega said.
He said the magistrate’s cleaning woman found the bodies locked in the home and called Baena’s bodyguard. One of the wounds was on Baena’s jugular and investigators found blood on the bed and bloody footprints leading through the home, the prosecutor added.
Later in the day, the prosecutor’s office said Herrera had tested positive for methamphetamines.
Federal authorities, however, urged caution in the investigation. Félix Arturo Medina, an official with Mexico’s Interior Ministry, said that “it’s important to not throw out any line of investigation.”
He said federal officials hoped to coordinate with state authorities to investigate the deaths.
The state prosecutors’ hypothesis of a murder-suicide was quickly disputed by the family and friends of Baena and Herrera, who called it “completely unthinkable.”
Máximo Carrasco, a friend of both for more than five years who spoke on behalf of the couple’s relatives, said loved ones want the investigation taken out of the hands of the Aguascalientes state prosecutor’s office and handled by federal investigators.
He said that rather than investigating, state authorities are trying to give the killing a “carpetazo,” Spanish for trying to make the case go away.
“I knew what they were like as a couple,” Carrasco said. “This was a hate crime.”
He said that Baena and Herrera were close friends who often stayed at his home in Mexico City and that neither he nor anyone close to them saw anything other than a loving, respectful relationship.
Carrasco, who saw the two just a week before their deaths, echoed other accounts given to The Associated Press describing the magistrate and Herrera as chipper and talking passionately about future activism.
Alejandro Brito, director of the LGBTQ+ rights group Letra S, urged authorities to continue to investigate the incident and to take into consideration the context of the case and the threats of violence against Baena.
Brito called the state prosecutor’s version of events “loaded with prejudices” and said quick conclusions made by local authorities have only deepened distrust of authorities among historically victimized communities.