The Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office has arrested Arturo N, accused of the transfeminicide of Paola Buenrostro, a 25-year-old trans sex worker, in September 2016. Arturo N was captured this Monday in the municipality of Nicolás Romero, in the neighboring State of Mexico. Buenrostro’s murder propelled the movement that led to the recognition of the specific crime of transfeminicide in the Mexico City Penal Code. The head of the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office, Bertha Alcalde, stated that the arrest of Arturo N is “a decisive step for Paola’s case to advance before the courts.” “We recognize the struggle of her social family and the trans community, who kept the demand for justice alive. At the CDMX Prosecutor’s Office, we will handle this case with rigor and a gender perspective,” she promised.
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In the early hours of September 30, 2016, Buenrostro got into Arturo N’s vehicle. “Moments later, she called for help from her companions and immediately two shots were heard. Her companions approached the car, where they found Paola unconscious in the passenger seat and the accused with a firearm in his hand. Paola lost her life due to gunshot wounds,” the Prosecutor’s Office detailed.
Buenrostro’s companions detained the aggressor and handed him over to the authorities. Initially, a local judge ordered the release of Arturo N because, supposedly, there was not enough evidence to link him to the crime. Buenrostro’s companions — her social family — and collectives accused impunity and launched a movement that led to the Paola Buenrostro Law, thanks to which, in 2024, the crime of transfeminicide was codified in the capital’s Penal Code.
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The struggle was not easy and justice barely appears, a decade later. Buenrostro’s case was the first recognized as transfeminicide by the Mexico City Human Rights Commission in 2019. The body issued a recommendation to the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office after documenting deficiencies in the initial investigation, that Buenrostro’s gender identity as a trans woman was not recognized, and that Kenya Cuevas, Buenrostro’s friend and witness to her murder, was improperly excluded by the authorities, who did not recognize her as part of the social family and an indirect victim, which limited her right to know and participate in the investigation. In 2021, the Prosecutor’s Office issued a public apology to the memory and social family of Buenrostro.
Cuevas was not only a witness to her friend’s transfeminicide. Arturo N also tried to kill her, but his weapon jammed. After that experience, Cuevas became one of the most visible trans activists, founding the first house to provide shelter and education to trans women in street situations. She also promoted the construction of a mausoleum to give a dignified burial to trans women whose bodies are not claimed by their relatives. “Now they will have a beautiful, striking, impressive place where their presence will be respected after all they have gone through in life,” the activist said in an interview with this newspaper in 2023.
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