He was leading the A Todo Terreno program, in MVSRadioIt was 12:30 and we were waiting for the call to be taken by the mother of a young woman who had disappeared. The story came to us because Yanin, the show’s producer, knew people close to the family. Never before had we touched on issues of the disappeared or femicides. It had already been a couple of blocks in which her mother’s call should have come in, but she still didn’t answer. As the minutes passed, the information began to circulate on social networks, they had found the body of a young woman who coincided in age and place, with whom we were going to announce as missing. Her mother didn’t pick up the phone that day. Weeks before, Mariana Joselin told her mother that she did not like the way the butcher shop employee looked at her. That man with the uncomfortable look was the one who took her life from her, and then disappeared. Almost five years later, a judge sentenced Juan de la Cruz Quintero, for the femicide of Mariana, to life imprisonment. Five years seem like an eternity, in which private investigations, private lawyers, media pressure, and a mother who did not rest, achieved what rarely happens in the country of impunity, a sentence. I imagine that for her family, the path now will be even more painful, but with the certainty that this man will never touch any other girl.
A short time later, we had the parents of Victoria Pamela Salas on the program, who knew that their daughter had been murdered, before even thinking she had disappeared. His mother spoke as if she were in a kind of trance, she recounted the facts as if she were speed-reading someone else’s story, when she realized it was hers, she would stop and disarm herself for just a few seconds to re-enter that moment. trance that allowed him to continue telling his story. Her father did not speak, he accompanied her in pain, but it did not allow her to utter a single word. Consuelo’s face was that of living flesh that screams in pain because its skin has been ripped off. This same month, April 2022, Mario Sáenz, with whom Victoria had a relationship, was finally sentenced to 45 years in prison. The first to put Mario on the parents’ radar were the same police officers who came to Consuelo to tell her that something had happened to her daughter. Sáenz’s defense insists that he is innocent, and the case was full of irregularities at first, all in favor of the sentenced person, who was not arrested until Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration began.
I bring these two stories up again because they happened in the same year, and they got justice five years later, in the same month. Without a doubt, ending impunity is vital, but there is still a gap as to how we can make the demand for #NiUnaMás a reality.
Mexican journalist, host, broadcaster, writer and communicator
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Mexican journalist, host, announcer, writer and communicator. She hosts the program “A Todo Terreno” on MVS Radio. She has written for various publications and worked in different spaces on radio and television.