The story of the La Mataviejitas case seems to have no end. On the documentary La Dama del Silencio – from Netflix – and the chapter “The two lives of Juana Barraza” – from the documentary series Cenizas de Gloria, by Vix – which last year revived the crime story that affected Mexican society between the end of the year and the 20th century shocked the nineties and early 2000s for the murder of women between 70 and 90 years old in their own homes in Mexico City, now adds the position of the main convict in the case, Juana Barraza Samperio. In a nearly hour-long interview with public television Channel 14, she absolved herself of responsibility for the 17 crimes for which she was sentenced to 759 years in prison and denounced “injustices” in her trial. Araceli Vázquez García, who was arrested as a suspect in 2004 – two years before Barraza in a court case plagued by irregularities – also remains in prison.
“I've already been convicted, I've already been here [en el penal de Santa Martha Acatitla], it had been two years and they continued to kill women. “So how am I the serial killer?” asks Juana Barraza. As he talks about the moment of his arrest, his mouth goes dry. She explains that she defended her innocence before the police: “Forgive me, but I have always worked alone and I am a fighter, I am not a murderer, and I have the evidence and I told you, leave it to me prove they do.” caught me dressed as a nurse. However, he confirms that he admitted his guilt in the trial:
– Do you plead guilty? asks the interviewer.
—Yes, when they made me sign the papers and when they showed me the photos of my children, I broke down. [Me dijeron] that if I didn't sign these papers my children would pay the price, so I stayed and said, “My children.”
A childhood marked by violence
In the first minutes of the interview, Juana Barraza describes the violent environment in which she spent her childhood. Through tears, she tells how her mother beat her and that she once threw a knife at her, which left a mark on her right hand. “I didn't have a good childhood because my mother beat me a lot. He always insulted me. I remember one time he threw me to the ground, kicked me and told me he would curse the time of my birth. […] When I ate, it was when my stepfather was there because then he saw that we needed to eat, but when he wasn't there, my mother fed me pure, chopped chayote with salt. She called my father because I always called her father and she hit me very badly. The proof is like this [muestra su mano derecha cerrada]that here he threw a knife at me and I stopped my hand like that and here he stuck it in me and ever since then I've had this scar and every time I see it I remember it.”
She describes how her mother “sold” her to a man when she was 11 in exchange for a few beers. “At 12 I had the child who killed me, the young man. At first I didn't want him because I didn't know how to take care of him, because I didn't know what it was like to have a baby. […] And they sent for this man, and he said, “He is mine.” […]”I will have it in my house.” She says that she lived locked in a room with her son and that her eyes were constantly swollen from the beating he gave her because she resisted him ” grabbed”. She was free until her uncle and aunt came to rescue her. He put up some partitions and some boats and went to their house with the child.
Report rape, extortion and torture
Juana Barraza points out that after her capture she was the victim of rape and was also beaten. “When they gave me the papers to sign [en el juzgado]I didn't sign anything […] I told them: If I sign these papers, it will be like accepting my responsibility, and I didn't do that, I did it in the Attorney General's office [de Ciudad de México] I did it because they tortured me, beat me, raped me and threatened me with my children, otherwise I wouldn't have signed them either. “Do you think beatings don’t hurt?” Rape doesn’t hurt?” “So much dirt, so much slime,” I tell him. Nothing more because they have daughters and believe that they will never suffer such pain and that they will feel what I felt and that is my pain that I carry, nothing more than that is my pain. “It’s not so much prison.”
Barraza claims they originally asked him for 200,000 pesos to release them. “Here is the one who goes, the rich, because the poor stay. Since I couldn't pay the money they demanded from me… After they arrested me, they said to me, “Give me 200,000 pesos and leave, ma'am.” I stared at them and started laugh. Yes, I joked and told them, “Do you think if I had the money I would keep working for my kids?”
At the end of March 2008, Juana Barraza Samperio was sentenced to 759 years in prison in Court 67 of the Santa Marta Acatitla Women's Prison. She says she had a Bible with her and laughed once. “Since I didn’t do anything, I treated it as just another day, quiet,” he says.
He says that the treaty secretary who read the verdict was a young man who at that moment began to cry. “I said to him, 'Why are you crying when I'm the one you're judging?', and he says, 'No, ma'am, I admire your courage. Another would have collapsed in his place.' I said to him, “Look, the first time I didn't break down because I didn't do anything.” Secondly, if I did, I'd say, well, I'd even be happy to pay for it, and I'd start crying , because it's a very long sentence, but I didn't do anything. How should I explain it to you? “I didn’t do anything,” he said in an interview with Channel 14.
He also states that he reached out to the media to tell them “the truth,” but they did not publish his message: “[Les dije] that the real murderers are on the streets, not us, and why they attacked me. If you weren't so sure, why did the State Department buy people to come as witnesses so they could blame me?
Testing
One of the pieces of evidence that the Attorney General's Office of the Mexican capital had against Araceli Vázquez García became evidence against Juana Barraza. It is the fingerprint on a glass at the crime scene of one of the victims, Gloria Enedina Rizo Ramírez, 81, committed in 2003. Then-deputy prosecutor Renato Sales said that it was Barrazas and that that is why Vázquez never noticed it. According to the investigation of the documentary “The Lady of Silence”, they were able to attribute this crime.
Another trace of Barraza appeared at the scene of the murder of another victim, María Guadalupe González Juanbelz, for which Jorge Mario Tablas Silva had already been convicted. Tablas was charged with four murders of elderly women, two of which fell to the attorney general's office, and he died in prison, according to the same inquest.
The impact of the La Mataviejitas case received a new boost in the middle of last year with the premiere of the documentary “The Lady of Silence: the Mataviejitas case” on Netflix. The film, based on a comprehensive investigation, presents the story of Araceli Vázquez García, who was arrested two years before Juana Barraza Samperio for allegedly being responsible for the crimes of elderly women and who has been in prison for 19 years waiting for the Mexican justice reviewed her case.
The documentary reveals that, more than 17 years after the trial concluded, Barraza and Vázquez's first declassified court files reveal sloppiness, manipulation and opacity in the official investigation, which was also marked by dozens of arbitrary arrests.
The longing of Juana Barraza
If he could escape prison, Barraza would like to be with his grandchildren and one of his daughters. “That’s what I ask for most, to society that’s what I ask for most,” he says. “If I didn't do evil before, even less so now that I'm older and sicker. For what? So that my sugar and blood pressure increase? No thanks. “If I've saved her many times before, I don't think I saved her this time,” he promises.
He says it's time for “the truth” to come out, again pointing to the media. “The media is to blame because they were the ones who gave me the nickname. “Let them leave me alone, they already gave me a punishment.”
“Here I am paying for a crime I didn’t even commit [cometí], but then definitely not. “I’m here for a reason,” he says.
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