Mexico: The disappearance of Sandra Domínguez
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of an article published by Periódico Mural.
On October 4, Sandra Domínguez, a 38-year-old Ayuuk woman, disappeared in the town of María Lombardo, belonging to the indigenous municipality of San Juan Cotzocón, Mixe, in the state of Oaxaca. Her van was found near Playa Vicente, Veracruz.
Since she became aware of the events, her mother tried to file the corresponding complaint with María Lombardo’s public ministry without success, “you had to wait 72 hours ,” they told her.
It was not until the afternoon of October 8 that his sister Kenia, who is also an activist and member of the Current of the People Red Sun, was able to file the corresponding complaint with the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Oaxaca, in the Central Valleys. There they took the statement and the established legal protocol began immediately. Is it necessary that victims have to travel to Oaxaca to report a crime committed in a rural town?
Who is Sandra Dominguez?
Sandra Estéfana Domínguez Martínez is an Ayuuk indigenous lawyer, a feminist by conviction and a human rights defender who, according to the organization Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equality-Oaxaca, was part of the Network of Activist Women and Human Rights Defenders of Oaxaca, which in the years 2020 and 2023 had sued Donato Vargas Jiménez, currently State Coordinator of Peace Delegates of the Government of the State of Oaxaca, for crimes of gender violence after his participation in a WhatsApp chat called “Sierra XXX” where they spread pictures and videos of sexual content showing Ayuuk indigenous women without their agreement. In this context, Attorney Sandra Domínguez accompanied dozens of women victims of violence in the Sierra Mixe and provided them with the necessary legal advice.
The accusations and complaints against Donato Vargas and other state and federal officials transcended the criminal sphere when the victims in an organized manner evidenced the harassment and threats against them. None of this prevented the current Governor of Oaxaca from appointing Donato Vargas to the position he currently holds. At that time, Sandra Domínguez questioned Donato through a video that was spread on social networks: “Donato, once again you are the one who is involved in a chat of men, of officials, where they show women in sexual situations. Some time ago I reported a chat they called “Sierra Triple X”. You yourself Donato, you asked me for an apology.”
Reactions within the State
One day after Kenya filed a complaint for the disappearance of her sister and after the immediate dissemination of the FGEO and CEBPEO search files, the Secretary of the Government of the State of Oaxaca, Jesús Romero López, came out in defense of his State Coordinator of Peace Delegates saying that the situation “is used in the current political context . ” Immediately afterwards, Donato Vargas himself took the floor to distance himself from the accusations against him, saying that “she was a political cricket.” They resorted in the same way that AMLO did time ago: victimizing themselves considering that everything is an attack by their adversaries, conservatives, fifis [Translator’s note: means the ones who dress fancy clothes. It is a reference to the wealthy people, bourgeoisie, etc.], from the right.
That same day, through a statement, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Oaxaca reported the begin of the search, location and investigation protocol for Sandra. The next day the State tried to rebuild through the State Commission for the Search of Missing Persons for the State of Oaxaca, activating the approved search protocol, and with this, trying to clean up the heap of trash generated by the statements of the executive branch the day before.
In a recent statement, the Federal Representative of the Labor Party, Aracely Cruz, in a gesture of honesty, has gone against the tide by denouncing the disappearance of Sandra Domínguez, who was also her legal advisor when the current representative, being the wife of Donato Vargas, suffered gender violence from him. In her statement she directly rebuked the president of the republic Claudia Sheinbaum by pointing out “we cannot say that we are all there if we are missing Sandra, if we are missing thousands of missing people.”
This morning, October 11, 2024, the family of Sandra Estéfana Domínguez Martínez, accompanied by the Consortium, Red Sun and other democratic and collective women’s organizations, held a press conference on the square of the Santo Domingo Temple, in the City of Oaxaca, focusing its demands on the presentation of Sandra alive, on the non-criminalization of her and her family, and on the establishment of protection measures that allow the family and accompanying organizations to carry out their work without being subject to harassment, surveillance and repression against them.
Unfortunately, today Sandra Domínguez is part of the more than 600 women who disappeared in the state of Oaxaca during the government of Salomón Jara Cruz and the more than 116 thousand people who have disappeared throughout the country since the beginning of the war against the people that has passed through three stages: “the dirty war”, “the war against drugs” and the current militarization of the country.
