He says you couldn’t see much because it was dark outside, but there was a small yellow shop nearby. That it was on the street in the squad car and the vehicle was parked next to some trees. That there were two agents, a blond who had his niece and another, fatter, darker, who brought her into the booth. He remembers his head hitting the rearview mirror. One said to the other: “Leave her alone, don’t land with her.” María del Rocío Vázquez spoke up and apologized, as she says, for the ugly words. She speaks seriously and with disgust of the night of January 21-22, denouncing that she and Brenda Romero were raped by two elements of the Nezahualcóyotl Ministerial Police. She doesn’t know their names but is sure she would know them if she saw them. He says they did it for the same reason they did the beatings of days before: to make them plead guilty to a crime he assures them they did not commit.
On January 20, 2023, PRB received the call again. One man demanded 200,000 pesos (about US$10,000) in exchange for not harming his family. She was 59 years old and used to blackmail. In the first few months of 2023 alone, 1,542 extortions were reported in the state of Mexico, five times more than neighboring Mexico City or 500 times more than other states like Chihuahua. The woman decided to ask her son JERR to take the lead. He spoke to the blackmailer at around 5:45 p.m. and informed him that “some people” would come an hour later to collect the money at 161 Cerezos Street, in the La Perla neighborhood of Nezahualcóyotl.
That same Friday, clothing retailer María del Rocío Vázquez, 46, and Brenda Romero, 33, met with a delivery man to pick up some packages. They arrived at the park in front of 161 Calle Cerezos at around 5:15 p.m. While they waited, they heard gunshots. They got scared and ran away. Vázquez was reached by a young man in shorts and a white shirt. Romero was grabbed in the front by a man in a red t-shirt who hit him. “After that,” their statement said, “community officials arrived: a van with three men and two women.”
Later, in the prosecutor’s office, JERR identified María del Rocío Vázquez and Brenda Romero as the people who wanted to blackmail him. Those who say they don’t know him or have never met him have since been detained at the Nezahualcóyotl Bordo Women’s Reintegration Center. At their first hearing on January 23, the women complained before the control magistrate that they had been tortured and raped. Two investigation folders were opened with the complaints. So far they are still at the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Women, with no progress.
“I have trauma from something that we didn’t commit,” Rocío Vázquez says on the phone from prison. In the state of Mexico there are another 17,000 people deprived of their liberty who claim the same as Vázquez: being “unjustly imprisoned”. The Zeferino Ladrillero Human Rights Center estimated that nearly half of the 33,000 inmates at the facility had suffered irregularities in their procedures, from falsified evidence to confessions extracted under torture. “The human rights commission told me that the process could take years,” says the woman, “I’m very desperate.”
Using testimonies, complaints and police reports, EL PAÍS reconstructs one of these thousands of cases: the days in January when María del Rocío Vázquez and Brenda Romero were accused of extortion, arrested and imprisoned.
The Arrest, Page A
It is a one-way street separated by a hill of dry grass and some trees. In front of house number 161 there is a simple children’s playground. That’s where JERR, 28 years old and whose identity is being protected by prosecutors, was waiting for the people who had to deliver the money. According to her, at around 6:45 pm, two women arrived: “I’m the one who’s coming for the money,” she points out that one of them, dressed in a green jacket, told her; “What money?”, “Don’t be an asshole, you know what money,” replied the one in the black blouse, “borrow the money or you’re worth a dick.”
At that moment, JERR said, one of them pulled out a gun and pointed it at him at waist height. He then gave her 10,000 pesos in 500 bills wrapped in a blue plastic bag. You kept them. “They turn around and at that moment I pull the two women’s hair and throw them on the ground, so we started fighting,” he describes, “at that moment two policewomen came up to us and told us what was going on .” .
His statement corresponds exactly with the version of the state ministry. The two police officers claim that they “saw a male person holding one of the women on the ground and pulling the other’s hair” during a security patrol at 6.45 p.m. Everyone left their unit “immediately” and ran to the location. There, the man assured that he had been blackmailed, and during a security check – “which people have access to voluntarily” – one of them found the money and another a replica pistol. At 6:47 p.m. they were insured, entered on the national arrest register, had their rights read to them right there, and at 7:05 p.m., according to the police report, they arrived at the offices of the Public Ministry in La Perla.
Juan Hernández holds up a sign demanding justice for María del Rocío Vázquez and Brenda Romero. Nayeli Cruz
To support this version, prosecutors provided the testimonies of the agents and JERR and his mother, as well as 10,000 pesos and a black-painted replica of a squad firearm labeled “Swiss Arms” that was allegedly used by the women. It also includes 28 photos of the evidence and the crime scene, as well as recording of calls and messages from the PRB phone
Prints of the accused were not found on any of these objects. There are also no witness statements. Camera images, expert reports or economic reports are not included in the investigation folder. There are also no calls linking the victims to the defendants.
The Arrest, Page B
It starts in the same place, but Rocío and Brenda’s version of that January 20 afternoon is different. They say that after being surprised by two plainclothes police officers, they put her on the roof of a truck. “They didn’t tell us why we were there,” says Vázquez, who describes: “They started hitting me so I would tell them I was going with the people. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about. They poured water on me, pinched my nose and poured water into my mouth, and I drowned. They put a bag over me… I arrived at the doctor’s with my mouth open.” She says she doesn’t know how long it took, but they were taken to the La Perla Public Ministry. “The law enforcement officers continued to beat us there,” he emphasizes.
The forensic report of January 20 at 10:30 p.m. states that Rocío Vázquez had “traumatic edema in the right cheekbone”, another in the “lower lip with tearing of the mucous membrane” and a bruise on the left leg; For her part, Brenda Romero suffered a blow to the upper lip, a laceration to the right mucous membrane and multiple abrasions to her knees. “The injuries presented do not match what the victim said,” the women’s defense emphasizes, asking if JERR claims to have just pulled Rocío’s hair and Brenda on the ground, one knee on her back: “Where did the rest come from Lesions?” “Obviously due to the torture they used on the accused,” writes the defense attorney.
Rocío Vázquez claims that she saw a woman and a boy arrive at the prosecutor’s office and learned that they were victims of blackmail, which they are now accused of. He says he heard one of the agents comment, “They’re not, we’ve beaten them many times, if the men can’t take it, they don’t do it even less.” But this trader believes everything was already prepared. “Two policewomen took us to the bathroom and told me to touch a bag and Brenda to touch a gun. “I told them I wouldn’t touch anything because I didn’t bring it,” he says, “they wanted us to grab it, how do you think?”
They spent the night sitting on a wooden bench. “The next morning the police asked us to sign a form saying they found 20,500 bills for me and they found the gun. I told them I wouldn’t sign anything because they couldn’t find anything for me. “You’re going to pay me for this,” one of them told me.”
the rape
As of Saturday, the two women were in jail and were brought back overnight to testify at La Perla. They refused. “They wanted me to confess so they would give me fewer years. How can they give me many years for something I didn’t do?” says Vázquez.
Rocío’s account of what is happening around the Public Ministry is as follows: “We returned to prison with a man who wanted to leave because he had run over a person. There were two law enforcement officers and they started talking to each other that they were very rude and that they were lost. [consumido cocaína]. When we get to the delegation in Los Reyes, they open the doors and take the man down. But instead of belittling us, they say, “If they ask, they’ll still announce it.” Later, we walked a little further, circled the first block, and they stopped at a store. The bailiff said he wanted to buy a beer. Then they took off our handcuffs. The one who was fairer came to my niece’s side. And the other magistrate, fat, dark-skinned, said to me, ‘Come to the front.’ I said to him, ‘What for?’ Why don’t you come to us?’ “Drop your pants or I’ll get your daughter.” My head was in the rearview mirror, I climbed in front of his legs. He abused me, he raped me. Brenda had one behind her that said, “Leave her, don’t land on her.” Then the guy masturbates and tells us, “Don’t say anything because it’s going to get worse for you, we’ve got your kids in a good spot.”
The woman ends her story with the periodic beep, reminding her the call is from a prison. Juan Hernández, her husband, is also on the phone. This kind and decisive man, who works as an actor and maintenance technician at a cultural center in the Juárez neighborhood of Mexico City, says after he djed with his wife that he had to leave when he first heard this story in the audience out and vomit. . “Of courage, of not being able,” he says, overwhelmed. The women reportedly requested a gynecological examination as soon as they arrived at the prison. It wasn’t done on them because “the doctor didn’t have the tools to do it.”
On January 23, after hearing these testimonies, the judge ordered the torture and rape files to be opened at the first hearing, but to date the women have not even received a visit from investigators to testify. Neither Juan nor Rocío and Brenda’s attorneys had access to the investigative files of these crimes – which is their right as victims – and as far as they know, “they still don’t have anything.” With that in mind, they have filed an injunction for “failure to act in the investigation.”
In addition, says Juan Hernández, they are awaiting the decision of another Amparo on the main reason: the charge of extortion. She trusts the judge will take into account the abuse she has witnessed, in addition to video from surveillance cameras showing what happened at 161 Calle Cerezos at 5:45 p.m. “You see my wife running and a man is chasing her just as she says it happened,” he says. In the meantime, he’s had to learn to navigate the legal bureaucracy, where every time he wants to speak to his wife, an automated voice asks if he’s okay with a call from prison. He’s trying to stay strong for Rocío but admits, “We never thought we’d get this far.”
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