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MEXICO: Gov’t, Military Scramble to Deny Rape of Indigenous Woman

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar 30 2007 (IPS) - The handling of the case of an elderly indigenous woman who was allegedly raped by soldiers and died soon afterwards has seriously undermined public trust in the governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), the Mexican government and the armed forces, which deny that she was sexually assaulted.

“We believe they want to let the case go unpunished, which is simply unacceptable. We regret and deplore that the government should abase itself in this way before the power of the military,” the president of the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights, Adrián Ramírez, told IPS.

Ernestina Ascensio, a 73-year-old Nahuátl indigenous sheep herder, died on Feb. 25 in the rural municipality of Soledad Atzompa in the state of Veracruz, located on the Gulf of Mexico. A military detachment of some 100 troops is stationed in this extremely poor area.

According to the elderly woman’s relatives, before she died she told them that several soldiers had attacked her, and this testimony was confirmed by Veracruz prosecutors, who stated after a forensic examination of the body that the injuries received were consistent with having been brutally raped and sodomised. She had also suffered fractures of the skull and hip.

However, a rival version of the facts soon followed. After exhumation of the body and a second autopsy, president of the CNDH José Luis Soberanes declared Thursday that Ascensio had not been raped but had died of anaemia caused by malnutrition and chronic intestinal bleeding.

“I don’t know whether they’re trying to protect the guilty or what, but this information from the CNDH is very serious, because it does not appear to be substantiated,” Ramírez said.

“What has happened in this case has created a conflict between the authorities on one side and indigenous people and society on the other,” the activist said.

Local residents and authorities in Ascensio’s home district, which has a mainly indigenous population of 17,000 dispersed over 66 square kilometres, said they were outraged by the version propounded by the CNDH and by the position taken by President Felipe Calderón, who declared that the elderly woman had not been raped even before the results of the second autopsy were reported.

Local residents in Soledad Atzompa issued a statement claiming that the CNDH was lying. They also sent an open letter to Calderón demanding that the perpetrators not be protected and that they be brought to justice.

The Ascensio case is riddled with uncertainties. Shortly after the alleged rape, the assistant prosecutor of Veracruz, Miguel Mina, announced that the first autopsy had found that the elderly indigenous woman had been “raped anally and vaginally,” and that the victim’s body was “torn and lacerated” as a result of the sexual assault.

The Defence Ministry later said in a communiqué that “forensic experts are carrying out a comparison of seminal fluid found on the body of the deceased with blood samples to be taken from military personnel.”

Afterwards, however, they withdrew that communiqué and asked the media to publish instead a statement to the effect that there was no evidence that military personnel had ever attacked Ascensio.

“We respect the CNDH’s conclusions and those of the other reports, but this has raised enormous doubts and questions,” Isabel Uriarte of the Agustín Pro Juárez human rights group told IPS.

Members of the group, which has links with the Jesuit order, visited the scene of the alleged rape and interviewed relatives and neighbours of the indigenous woman, who confirmed that the victim herself had said she had been attacked by soldiers.

The position adopted by the CNDH, the military and President Calderón “put a great deal of pressure on the investigations,” Uriarte said.

“We hope the prosecutor’s office in Veracruz, which has jurisdiction over this investigation, won’t allow itself to be swayed by one version or another, but will delve thoroughly into the matter, weigh the evidence and come up with a substantiated verdict so that the guilty parties, if any, may be brought to justice,” Uriarte said.

Before the results of the second autopsy sponsored by the CNDH were made known, the Defence Ministry said that “disaffected groups with a grudge against the armed forces have repeatedly tried to bring into disrepute the actions carried out by the military for the benefit of Mexican society, and in this particular instance it was criminals wearing military uniforms who were the perpetrators of the crime.”

But according to Calderón and the CNDH, there was no crime.

The suspicions aroused by the case have been fuelled by Calderón’s close relationship with the armed services ever since his term of office began in December. Thousands of soldiers have been deployed throughout the country to combat the drug cartels. But in the area where Ascensio lived, there has been no reported presence of drug traffickers.

The president constantly praises the job done by the military, and a few weeks ago ordered pay increases for all ranks.

Members of the armed forces have been accused of raping several other indigenous women, whose cases have not been clarified.

The Agustín Pro Juárez group has files on at least seven cases in addition to that of Ascensio. The indigenous plaintiffs are Inés Fernández and Valentina Rosendo, who were raped in 2002, and Francisca Santos, Victoriana Vázquez and three sisters, Ana, Beatriz and Celia González, who were raped in 1994.