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 Editorials | Issues | April 2007 
Official Version of Woman’s Death Disputed by Many
 Kelly Arthur Garrett - The Herald Mexico
| | An ad hoc committee said it would pursue legal action against National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) president José Luis Soberanes. |
The National Human Rights Commission ruling last week that a 73-year-old indigenous Veracruz woman died from illness rather than foul play has by no means put the issue to rest. Far from it.
Opposition legislators, non-government human rights organizations and independent commentators have all challenged the official version of what happened in the Zongolica mountains on February 25, when Ernestina Ascensio Rosario was found barely alive by family members. Before she died the next day, Rosario was able to tell her rescuers that army personnel had attacked her.
On Tuesday, some 250 town officials and representatives of local indigenous rights organizations, as well as the victim´s family members, decided to take action. After meeting for nearly three hours, the ad hoc committee said it would pursue legal action against National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) president José Luis Soberanes, and ask for his removal as the chief official human rights officer in Mexico.
"He lied to the general population (when he said) that our sister´s death was from different illnesses," said Javier Pérez Pascuala, municipal president of Soledad Azompa, near Rosario´s town of Tetlacinga. "Her children here are witnesses to their mother´s last words that she had been sexually attacked."
The community group also said it will ask Amnesty International to investigate the death. The delegates said they are considering a march to Mexico City to press for action on the case.
The credibility of government investigators, including army officials, has been an issue since Sra. Rosario was first found almost unconscious on February 25. Army officials initially said that semen was found on the body during an autopsy, and blamed civilians dressed as soldiers for the rape and murder.
After the CNDH report concluded there was no rape, and that Sra. Rosario died of an illness, there was no more mention of semen, rape or murder by the Army.
"Where did the semen come from then?" said Leonardo Curzio, a political analyst and radio commentator. "This has been very strange from the beginning."
STRANGE ANNOUNCEMENT
Adding to the strangeness was a pronouncement by President Calderón on March 13 that there was no evidence that Sra. Rosario had been raped. This verdict by the president was arrived at two weeks before the CNDH revealed its findings.
But it proved prescient, because Soberanes announced that there was no rape or beating. Instead, he said. Sra. Rosario died from anemia resulting from internal bleeding brought on by untreated gastritis.
The conclusion, based on a second autopsy, dismissed the testimony of the family and community members who were on the scene, and overturned the findings of the first autopsy. On Monday, the Veracruz doctors who performed the original autopsy expressed outrage that their report had been invalidated by the CNDH, and said they stood by their original findings that the woman´s death was "trauma-induced," the Mexico daily La Jornada reported Tuesday.
"We have two totally opposed versions," said political analyst José Antonio Crespo. "One is from testimony from the indigenous in the area, practically the entire Veracruz government and the doctors who performed the first autopsy, saying it was ´violation and violence.´ The other is from the National Human Rights Commission."
´RIDICULOUS´ FINDINGS
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) legislators called Soberanes´ findings "ridiculous" and briefly stormed the speakers platform at the Chamber of Deputies last week, demanding a new investigation.
Curzio and Crespo said they worried that political alignment, rather than the truth, will determine the outcome of the case.
"There´s no political science at work here," Crespo said. "You have to resort to magic realism to understand what´s going on in this country." |
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