On Thursday 24 April, the body of Ayuujk woman defender Sandra Domínguez was found in the municipality of Santiago Sochiapan, in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The body of her partner Alexander Hernández was found alongside her. Both of them show clear signs of having been murdered. Sandra had been missing since 4 October 2024, when she was last seen in María Lombardo, in the municipality of San Juan Cotzocón, Oaxaca.
Sandra was a woman lawyer and tireless defender of the rights of Ayuujk communities and women in Oaxaca. In 2020 and 2023, she had publicly denounced the State Coordinator of the government of Oaxaca’s Delegates for Peace, Donato Vargas Jiménez, for sexual violence. Vargas Jiménez was part of a WhatsApp group called “Sierra XXX” in which intimate photographs of indigenous Ayuujk women circulated.
Sandra Domínguez joins a heartbreaking list of women defenders killed in Mexico, and more broadly of all women who are persecuted, harassed, imprisoned, disappeared and silenced in the country simply for being women, activists, indigenous, feminists and for defending human rights. Her struggle is the struggle of all of us.
The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico, Consorcio Oaxaca and IM-Defensoras embrace Sandra’s family and close circle, sharing the pain and indignation for her killing. We also recognize the crucial work of the family, and the persons and organizations who have accompanied them in the ardous collective effort searching for her whereabouts and demanding truth and justice. Echoing the words of Komité Tyotk (Committee of family and friends searching for woman defender Sandra Estefanía Domínguez), “Sandra’s case is a painful and powerful reflection of the reality we face in the country; without demands from society, there is no real commitment from the State. The searches do not advance alone; institutional omission also kills. Indifference is one more form of violence.”
Finally, we demand that authorities carry out the investigation of Sandra’s murder taking into account her work in defense of human rights as a possible cause of the crime, and that all those responsible – both the material and intellectual authors – be identified.