Kneeling at four-year-old Lupita’s grave, Mexican activist Veronica Villarreal spoke to the murdered girl as if she had known her all her short life.
“Hey girl,” she said, laying flowers on the earth.
In reality, Villalvazo never met the child long known only as “the little girl in the red socks.” But she was determined not to let her be just another anonymous statistic in the wave of violence against women and girls in Mexico.
Lupita’s semi-naked body, beaten and sexually assaulted, was found in a Mexico City suburb on March 18.
No one came forward to claim her, and for months, she was known only by the clothing she had on when locals found her in a vacant lot: a pair of bright red socks.
Villalvazo, a 47-year-old journalist and women’s rights activist, first read about the case in the local newspapers she monitors every day in an attempt to document Mexico’s epidemic of violence against women. The problem, which has lingered for years, exploded into the headlines again in 2017, when 7.5 women were murdered per day, according to statistics from the United Nations and the government — a new high after three years of decline.
Villalvazo, who goes by the pseudonym “Frida Guerrera” (Frida the Warrior), did not want the girl’s case to end as just another unsolved homicide in a country where 99 percent of violent crimes are never punished.
(DD note: Vallalvazo maintainsthe Frida Medio Blog created on July 1, 2007, with the purpose of denouncing the violations of Human Rights in Oaxaca, has covered the social conflict of 2006, the conflict in the Triqui region of the State ... in 2010 FridaGuerrera was recognized as the first, Carlos Montemayor National Prize ... for giving voice to the triqui population displaced and murdered by the PRI governments. As of 2016 registering femicides throughout the country …The column chronicling her search for Lupita and her fight to seek justice for Lupita's murder is at the end of this Daily Times story. It will bring tears to your eyes.)
She asked authorities for a picture that could help identify the girl. But she never received an answer.
“The authorities’ silence is a touchy subject. The message they send is, ‘We don’t care. We’re not going to do anything,’” Villalvazo told AFP.
“In Mexico, it’s no big deal — you can kill a woman, a girl, rape her, torture her, kidnap her, and absolutely nothing will happen to you, because they don’t investigate. Because it doesn’t concern them.”
Finally, a confidential source passed Villalvazo a bloody crime scene photo, which she was able to use to create a composite sketch of the girl.
It was the first step toward identifying her and finding her killers — a long journey that took a decisive turn Wednesday when prosecutors finally announced the girl’s identity at a press conference, shortly after arresting her mother and stepfather and charging them with her murder.
Villalvazo published the sketch of Lupita everywhere she could.
That ultimately led two of the girl’s aunts to get in touch with her last November.
They had not had any news on Lupita for months, and got murky responses whenever they asked her mother — their sister — about her.
In interviews with AFP, they described the girl’s short life as one of abuse and abandonment.
“She didn’t deserve this,” said one aunt, Marina Concepcion Medina, 39.
Lupita’s parents never registered her for a birth certificate, and she was bounced around from home to home — at one point living with garbage pickers.
Marina and her sister Luz Maria Medina, 33, asked to take her in after noticing bruises on her and other signs of abuse. “I told (my sister), ‘Leave her here.’ Lupita grabbed my hand and told me she didn’t want to leave with her mom,” Luz Maria said.
FROM FRIDA'S BLOG
FROM FRIDA'S BLOG
< THE ROTA / FRIDAGUERRERA COLUMN
Buscarte #CalcetitasRojas #Yolloxochitzin #Lupita
Red socks were the only things she was left wearing along with her water-green sweatshirt, black boots thrown contemptuously next to her body and a small blanket with little bear cubs on it near her head found in a vacant lot where now nearly ten months later had accumulated heaps of dirt and debris as if pretending to bury the terrible crime against the one whom I affectionately call “my girl.”
That March 18, 2017, when I found the image after documenting daily the search for it, it brought tears to my being as a mother and person and to those who have followed my daily transmission of #FeminicideNationalEmergency since April 26, 2017. It was then I requested, in the absence of a face, data that would lead me to find out who this little girl was. Day after day, I requested the support of thousands of people who had seen us for eight months.
On October 27, we managed to get that first face; after an arduous task someone finally made the connection requested and the first painful image showing the face of the severally wounded little girl arrived.
On November 1st, after announcing it on my Columna Rota and showing the face of the little girl wearing red socks, a feminicide , a murder in which the pain does not subside, many let me know that it was impossible that we were not going to be able to find her, her family, her identity and much less those who had dared to murder her, rape her, bite her and leave her lying there like garbage.
I knew that she had been "buried by the Prosecutor's Office in a private vault”; that's fine, but once again she was hidden and invisible, as if she had not existed.
A forensic artist named Rosa Alejandra Arce, realized this need to give a face and identity to the girl and it was on November 15, 2017 we released the second image. After that everything was like a wave; I received dozens of messages telling me that maybe it was a girl seen in such and such a place, one from a woman who saw the corpse of the little girl in the Forensic Medical Service (SEMEFO) in Nezahualcóyotl; she was looking for her niece and fortunately for her it was not her niece, but she was sure that it was my girl.
Someone else then told me that she looked very similar to her niece, and when this woman called me, I felt I had the need to meet her.
On November 25, 2017 I received a message via Facebook and someone asked to talk with me about the girl, I asked for a phone number and called it , that was November 27, 2017 when we talked and the woman was indeed the girl’s Aunt Marina.
Everything has happened quickly since then, I went to see her and talked with the two aunts who suspected that it could be their niece, “my girl”, and finally they were more than convinced that their niece was the missing little girl.
On December 14, 2017, once again I received a Facebook message. On this occasion , a young man, Alberto , (for security we changed his name), told me that he had something to tell me about the girl.
I went to see him the very next day, December 15. With a photo and a video of the girl alive , which he shared , convinced me; it was her in that photograph and she was wearing the booties that were left near her injured little body.
December 18, 2017 , everything was finalized, there is really no point in saying that the entire investigation was given to the Attorney General of the State of Mexico.
That Which Seemed Impossible:
Lupita was born on January 16, 2013 in Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico, she was the fourth daughter of "Monse". The story of the little one is like that of many of our girls in this country, she came from a mother with drug addiction problems in a world where poverty and institutional neglect are felt daily without really looking for ways to address such a serious problem. Jeremy Guadalupe, as she was known by the people close to her , was not registered when she was born, she was delivered by a midwife, one of those many women who help thousands of women that do not have access to health services.
Lupita was born under protections that were never granted. Many people wanted and tried to take care of her, but for some reason no one could make it. Lupita , like the rest of Monse’s children moved from place to place; all who tried to help were rejected by Monse, the mother of the girl. Nothing much could be expected from Lupita’s mother since she was educated in the same way; by a mother who only sought personal satisfaction, not giving thought to her children who were not animals and who raised themselves.
On December 2, 2013, Monse was imprisoned for robbery. Lupita was left in the house of "someone" from where she was later rescued by the maternal family. She was full of lice, suffered from pediculosis, for two years the little girl , Lupita, was shuttled between her grandmother's house and “other people who took care of her.”
However, at that time while her aunts , Marina y Luz, her maternal grandmother and people who knew her were trying to rescue the girl, the innocent Lupita was handed over to her mother on April 2, 2016 when she got out of jail.
Again Lupita wandered in the street and among garbage dumps next to her mother. In December 2016, Lupita arrived at Doña Rufina's house ( a fictitious name to protect her identity) in Lago Cuitzeo , very close to the neighborhood where she had stayed with Karla, as the little girl called her, a woman “who used to burn her with cigarettes”.
"Abuelita I'm hungry !” , Lupita expressed ,while hugging Doña Rufina's legs, who was standing in the laundry room as usual, a woman as humble as her but with a giant heart. Alberto saw and heard Doña Rufina, who is the young man's grandmother, the little girl wore green-blue pants full of holes, a pink t-shirt, and black little black boots.
"It's only one taco abuelita. Can’t I have one?" pleaded the little girl.
It was approximately 5pm that afternoon of December 20, 2016 when Alberto gave her a coin to buy potato chips and a "coca". She then returned to the house of Doña Rufina. After that she did not want to leave. During the 15 days no one came looking for her ,Dona Rufina, Alondra and Alberto became grandmother , mother and father in Lupita’s eyes.
While the family tried to teach and educate her, Lupita continued to look through garbage cans for food to their disgust and with tears in her eyes, Dona Rufina told me that she had hide the trash cans so Lupita couldn’t rummage through them. The family tried to establish and maintain regular hours for meals, which was impossible, the little girl wanted to eat constantly ; when she least expected it Dona Rufino found Lupita was “ eating with some aunts or uncles and her father.”
“My” little girl, “your” little girl, “our” little girl was snatched from Dona Rufina and Alberto’s family home in the middle of February by Monse, her mother, and Pablo her stepfather. They only let Dona Rufina know that they were taking her away.
"There was nothing I could do, she was her mother" Dona Rufina tells me and since then nobody saw her again, only Pablo's mother who on March 17 went to DIF in Neza to let her know that the girl had been severely beaten by Pablo and her mom.
On March 18 her body was found very early in the morning and was reported, there was Lupita, Yolloxochitzin, “our girl”, raped savagely, murdered and left as a piece of nothing, a nobody who remained anonymous to everyone for almost nine months.
The authorities did little to find her or identify her, only proudly, I was told by the Prosecutor Irma Millán : “I BURIED HER, I MADE HER MASS AND I DID NOT MAKE A VIDEO SO THAT IT WOULD BE KNOWN.”
Yes, Irma Millan, the same one who did not answer my attempts to collaborate with them on April 26, 2017 to help find Lupita. Neither Irma Millán, nor Alejandro Gómez, Prosecutor of feminicides and State Attorney General nor anyone else did anything to find out who this little girl was.
Marina and Luz María , Lupita’s two aunts, went that November 27 to the Prosecutor's Office of Nezahualcóyotl. Right away, the officials made it known that the girl had already been claimed by her grandparents and said that it was already a closed case; "they even showed me pictures of the grandparents", says Marina, then immediately as they were leaving, they were rebuked, questioned about why they had not come before to claim Lupita or why they had not looked for her earlier.
"We had not seen anything, nor did we look for anyone until we saw her image with Frida”.
TO HUG LUPITA
To know the daily life with the girl's family has given me the opportunity to know the context in which she grew up, to meet her two little brothers who are fortunately with a family that loves and protects them and her older sister who is with an aunt, who does everything possible to overcome the hundreds of problems that have come together after making the complaint, the official denouncement.
On January 6, 2018, I met her little sister , another little girl who was only a year younger than “my girl”. When she was in front of me, she disarmed me , it was her, her same face, her voice, she came out with her little skateboard, there in Neza, she was wearing striped pajamas, pink with blue and white, and when she saw me she smiled. I could not but kneel before her, I opened my arms, to receive her shouting : “Hello Beautiful !”. She hugged me, I shed a couple of tears but I could not let myself cry in front of her and with her little voice she said: "Monse killed Lupita but I do not want to feel ugly inside, touching her heart, I just want to love Lupita, forgive Monse, now that she is in heaven, but I have asked the kings for her “Casimerito” doll, which arrived at her sister's house.
The sensation still remains in my arms, in my head, her arms around my neck, lying on my shoulder, I did not want to let go, it was like hugging Lupita, Yolloxochitzin, “my little girl” that after months of looking for her ; a girl who is dead , who I did not know alive but that the personal conviction led me to look for her as well as find her, as if looking for a needle in a haystack.
When Monse and Pablo were arrested, I couldn’t see more than the face I had searched for for months and I saw it with tears in my eyes, seeing her, alive, innocent, the photo of her face etched in my mind.
I told you “my girl”, they could not just leave you there and not pay for so much pain.
Frida, Jan 2018:
I wanted to tell the story of disappearances and feminicides and why I look for them; to help me better visualize them.
DD note: This is a farewell note that Alberto wrote to LUPITA and gave to Frida;
For some reason you came into my life as a gift that destiny put on my road .You arrived hungry, cold, lacking love, affection, things that in your little 4 years you never knew.
You suddenly arrived one afternoon and without knocking on the door you entered the house and you entered my heart to stay forever.
You were and will be a daughter to me as I will always be your Papi , who maybe did not have the joy of seeing you born or watch you grow, but I ran with the happiness of you calling me Papa and loving you for it.
Forgive me because I could not defend you when you needed me most , for at that time I would have given everything to take you by my hand and never let you go, much less allow you to suffer and even less in the way you left me , my girl , but just as the day you arrived and asked me for a taco, asked me to give you clothes because you were cold, just as you came into my life , it was enough to look into your eyes and see the suffering, the tenderness, the nobility you carried and then without anyone asking you to, you called me Papa.
Now I will fight to the end and try to make justice happen and may no-one have to suffer again what you suffered my girl, my Lupita, always forever, I will be your Papi who loves that you are my girl.
My Lupita Girl
Alberto
