On the night of 23 June, searching woman defender Patricia Negrete Tafoya was killed at the end of her workday at the Regional Hospital in Pénjamo, in the state of Guanajuato. Patricia was riding her motorcycle when, just a few meters from the hospital, two men on a motorcycle pulled up alongside her and shot her repeatedly, killing her.
The woman defender was a member of the collective “Una promesa por cumplir”; she searched for her sister, Laura Angélica Tafoya, who disappeared on 5 January 2021 in Pénjamo. Since then, she actively participated in search days, accompanying families, and at meetings with the State Prosecutor’s Office.
Patricia is the fifth searching woman defender killed this year in Mexico, the fourth in the state of Guanajuato. It is important to recall the 9 May killing in this same state of Patricia Acosta Rangel and Katia Citlali Jáuregui Acosta, mother and daughter members of the collective “Salamanca Unidos Buscando Desaparecidos”, the same collective of Cecilia García Ramblas, who was killed in March.
We call on the international community to remain alert to the situation and express solidarity with the numerous collectives of women defenders that, throughout the entire country, with limited means and facing highly violent contexts, tirelessly search for their disappeared loved ones.
As we have repeatedly alerted, the situation of women defenders in Mexico who search for the disappeared is highly concerning. According to data from our Registry of Attacks, at least 23 searching women defenders have been killed in Mexico since 2019, seven of them in Guanajuato, one of the areas where searching families face the most risks and violence. At least 3 searching women defenders also remain disappeared in the country: Luz Alejandra Lara, from Guanajuato, Herminia Guadalupe Rivera and María de los Ángeles Valenzuela, both from Sinaloa.
The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico and IM-Defensoras embrace the pain of Patricia’s family and the collective “Una Promesa por cumplir”, and we urge the authorities to investigate the events promptly and diligently, taking into account human rights and gender perspectives, and to treat their efforts as searchers as a relevant line of inquiry in the investigation.
We also call on authorities at all levels to treat the situation of violence and risk faced by searching women defenders in the country—and particularly in the state of Guanajuato—as a top priority.