Mexican Cristina Gamero was 35 years old and a director of a multinational company when she was arrested in Mexico City, detained for more than eight hours in a patrol car that drove throughout the capital, and finally taken directly to the city’s women’s prison from Santa Martha Acatitla she knew the reason it all happened. They had accused her of 33 million pesos (about two million dollars) in fraud. Moments before her arrival, late at night, she still believed he was there because of a charge on his credit card; Nothing else went through his mind, he didn’t understand what was happening. In the dark, with her mother and the rest of her family crying inconsolably, she looked at the huge gray metal door and thought to herself, “I hope this is all because of the map.”
It was 2008. In Mexico there was talk of a “political change” that seemed impossible until recently. The hegemonic party, then the most powerful political force, the PRI, suffered a defeat in the 2000 presidential election when Vicente Fox Quesada, the flag-bearer of the National Action Party (PAN), won the presidency. Not only did a new path begin, almost symptomatically, in the country’s democratic life, but a security policy was also initiated that marked the line for the next six years. Mexico City was the scene of a very peculiar police operation, and in no time at all, television was full of live arrests, broadcasts of operations, and other programs that were far from what they were repeating. On the screens ad nauseam: justice.
Gamero was at the peak of her career, she was a very young woman who held an executive position in the multinational company where she worked, she constantly traveled to different cities around the world and felt like she was “omnipotent” with one mentioned certain humor . Until it wasn’t anymore. For more than a year, they kept her on the sidelines at her company – which was merging with another – while they investigated an alleged embezzlement she says she was unaware of. She was so sure that nothing would happen and that she was innocent that she wasn’t overly concerned and didn’t consult a lawyer or anyone who could give her advice.
His case is riddled with irregularities and violations of due process. For example, while she was in the squad car, she overheard one of the men guarding her say on the phone that he was off duty and doing “a small job” (a job). Police officers didn’t show her an arrest warrant either – she later found out they didn’t have it at the time of the arrest and so had her walking around town for hours – and she didn’t go public with it either, the ministry said the case was “extraordinary.” ‘ that he took her straight to the Santa Martha Acatitla Women’s Social Reintegration Center without a screening. Perhaps the most iconic reminder of this action by the Mexican authorities is the case of French national Florence Cassez, accused of kidnapping with her partner, Mexican Israel Vallarta, whose arrest was broadcast live on television.
Cristina Gamero at the MGE Systems anniversary. With kind approval
“Behind every woman incarcerated in Santa Martha is a man”
Cristina Gamero recalls that it has rained every day since she arrived in prison. Don’t forget, it’s impossible. The rain and the night still bring back to her the feelings of loneliness, helplessness and despair she felt when she was arrested. During her incarceration, Gamero, who had been a student since her teens with excellent grades and a model career, took refuge in books again and began studying law just months after being admitted. Cases started falling into her hands as if she were already a working attorney. Her colleagues in prison soon found out about her, and she was able to see the files of many women who had been imprisoned for years, even decades, without ever having received a sentence.
He learned about the testimonies of many of the women he lived with every day and realized that the vast majority of them had been unjustly imprisoned or judged without a gender perspective. “Behind every woman locked up in Santa Martha there is always a man, always unafraid of being wrong. “In all the cases I’ve seen in these almost 13 years, the common denominator is a man: the husband, the father, the boyfriend who, even indirectly, forced her to commit crimes,” she assures. “I’m not saying some of them aren’t criminals, but the vast majority are there because they had an unfair trial.”
The lawyer, now around 50 years old, recounts just some of the cases that illustrate her testimony: the case of María Catalina, one of the first to hear about her when she had just graduated from professional prison, and the one who achieved acquittal has. Then the Betty case, which got into his hands through the Mexican filmmaker Diana Garay, who in 2013 made the documentary My Friend Betty, about a woman sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering her mother, a trial full of irregularities and injuries their rights. Or the testimonies of two indigenous women, Angélica and Reina, also imprisoned in Santa Martha, who do not speak Spanish and yet never had an interpreter from the start. Both women had been arrested and tried for crimes committed by their partners.
He also received the statement of Cristina Flores, who was accused of kidnapping because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was directed by a close friend to go to a house where a kidnapped person was being unknowingly held. Flores remained in prison, although it was found that the circumstances surrounding the crime she was charged with exonerated her of all responsibility.
In addition to the women, in Santa Martha Actitla, as in so many prisons and jails in Mexico, there are many people without economic means: “Women are abandoned by their husbands and their children … They have no money, they do what is necessary is.” It seems to me that in Mexico you need good lawyers to defend people who don’t have money. There needs to be justice for them too,” says Gamero.
Just like when she was a little girl, the law graduate, who already had a degree in business administration, had fled back to her studies and all the academic pursuits she could. This led to her developing an alternative career in the future, and when perhaps she needed it most, which she now pursues as a commitment. “For me, law school represented a path to personal and moral freedom, a path to freedom of thought, to spirituality, and a way to help people who don’t have the resources to do a good defense,” he says. For this reason, Gamero founded the civil society Firmeza y Justicia SC “so that people can be confident that they have an adequate defense, a criminal defense that does not cost them dearly and that is effective.”
All the cases of women in prison that fell into the hands of Cristina Gamero, such as those of María Catalina, Betty, Angélica and Reina, were handled by her when she started her career as a lawyer, on a voluntary basis, that is, she asked nothing for it to get her out of jail.
Attorney Cristina Gamero.Courtesy
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