Ana María Serrano Céspedes, in an image from her social networks.
An unusual text message raised suspicions. Ana María Serrano Céspedes, an 18-year-old Mexican woman, wrote to her mother, Ximena Céspedes, on Tuesday afternoon, September 12th. It was a farewell: she said she was very alone and didn’t want to live like that anymore, so she should send greetings to her father. “It wasn’t a long message and Ana María wasn’t like that, everything was going great for her. All the teachers and classmates adored her, not only did she have her life ahead of her, but she was also passionate about what she was doing,” Céspedes tells EL PAÍS over the phone. It was something very strange, both in content and in the way it was written. The woman called her neighbor, who entered the family home in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Mexico, where he found the young woman’s body. This Sunday the police arrested his ex-partner, also an 18-year-old teenager, named Alán Gil Romero. He is accused of femicide.
According to the prosecutor’s investigation, Gil Romero Serrano murdered Céspedes and tried to disguise it as suicide. It was he who clumsily wrote to the teenager’s mother. When the family’s neighbor entered the house, the young man had already disappeared. After examining the crime scene, State Department officials had no doubt that it was a femicide. The case has attracted international attention because Serranos Céspedes is the niece of Colombia’s former finance and trade minister during the presidency of Iván Duque (2018-2022), José Manuel Restrepo.
Serrano Céspedes and Gil Romero had known each other for many years. Together they attended the German Alexander von Humboldt School in Mexico City, an exclusive center for children of wealthy families in the capital. “Everyone who is there is there because they have the means to pay for it, [la familia del presunto feminicida] “I lived in a good neighborhood next to me,” explains Céspedes, a naturalized Mexican but of Colombian origin. The young woman studied there since she was a child; He entered the first year of secondary school. “They go on trips at regular intervals and there they became friends, they were practically the best students in the school, they had a lot of empathy and a lot of affection,” says their mother.
The two young people started going out together. They had a relationship for a year and a half. “One of those normal relationships that you would have with any teenager: we met her parents, they traveled together, they went to dinner at my in-laws’ house,” the mother continues. They broke up last June and something started to change. “[Gil Romero] He put a lot of pressure on her, it had become very intense. He sent gifts every week, begged her to come back, occasionally stopped by the house, but beyond that we saw no special sign. Last week it seemed heavier, it started to bother them a little, the news was more precise,” says Céspedes.
On July 17, Serrano Céspedes began his medical studies at the Universidad Panamericana and was beaming. “I wanted to be a cardiologist and told my grandfather that she would take care of his heart. We have the photo from the day she came in, she loved what she did, she came every day to tell us what she had learned.” The Study Center regretted it on social media the murder of the young woman.
Next week Gil Romero left Mexico to travel to Europe, also to begin his university studies. “We haven’t had any contact with him or his parents and at this point in my life I don’t know if I want that. We went through all the stages: disbelief, anger, sadness… Someone said to me at the memorial service: “You have to find the reason for such an absurd death, otherwise you will go crazy.” “We have no information about how he died , we don’t know anything about the intensity or the harassment, we have no idea how this little boy can be like that,” complains Céspedes.
Mexico and Colombia shocked by femicide
Serrano Céspedes’ uncle, José Manuel Restrepo, the former Colombian minister, traveled to Mexico with his wife and children to accompany the grieving family and attend the funeral. He says he left the country without having any clarity about the details of the crime. When he arrived in Mexico City, he gradually got to know “the film of this macabre and sad story,” he explains to this newspaper over the phone. This Sunday evening, Restrepo and his children returned to Colombia, where they live, “with their hearts in their hands.” “There is no other way to return to reality after seeing so much humiliation,” he claims.
The crime shocked the South American country and was an important topic in the media and social discourse there. Despite the “very difficult time” his family is going through, Restrepo says he has felt the support of his compatriots. “Colombia behaved very well. It showed the spirit of a country that firmly rejects femicide. “Society in general, even people who think completely differently than you think, are all united around one girl, one life, one person.”
Now the family of Serrano Céspedes hopes that justice will do its job. The victim’s parents are staying in a hotel as their place of residence is still under investigation to collect all possible evidence. “You will not return our girl, but let the process be carried out, let it be carried out to the end and abide by the burden of the law.” And on the other hand, the ability to raise people’s awareness that it is about a crime that exists everywhere and to see the possibility of taking public action to help prevent it from happening again in Mexico, in Colombia or in the rest of the world. “says his mother.
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