A decade after the death of Paola Buenrostro, a 25-year-old sex worker, justice has yet to be served. The arrest this Monday in the State of Mexico of Arturo N, her killer, has brought the case back to the headlines and has shown the strength of a movement that has been fighting for years. Trans collectives took over the facilities of the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office this Tuesday after the first hearing against the alleged perpetrator in protest of the classification of the crime as homicide and not as femicide. “Ten years thrown away if in the end it was named as they wanted,” said Kenya Cuevas, Buenrostro’s friend and the main face of this crusade.
On September 30, 2016, Buenrostro got into the vehicle of Arturo N, a potential client. Moments later, her screams were heard followed by gunshots. When her companions approached, they found their friend unconscious in the passenger seat and her attacker with a firearm in hand. Although they detained the culprit to hand him over to the authorities, a judge ordered his release due to insufficient evidence to link him to the crime. What followed was a long and tortuous path in which Buenrostro and Cuevas were constantly re-victimized by institutions that refused to recognize their gender identity. The latter, who witnessed her friend’s murder and whom Arturo N also tried to kill, was initially not considered a member of the social family nor an indirect victim, which limited her right to know about and participate in the investigation.
After Tuesday’s hearing, Cuevas criticized Brenda Bazán, the femicide prosecutor in the capital: “It had been agreed five years ago with Brenda, and then coordinator Sayuri (Herrera), that it would be classified as femicide. However, that work was never done for years. I was never notified about anything in the case file during the last five years. And today they appeared before a judge calling me by my male name at all times and the previous one I had before my identity change, the male name of Paola and all the witnesses referring to sex workers.”
Among broken glass and disorder inside the Prosecutor’s Office facilities, dozens of protesters stayed until night demanding Bazán’s resignation and justice in Buenrostro’s case. “We are not seeking it to be classified as transfemicide, but at least femicide, as it was already in the criminal type that existed at that time,” proclaimed Cuevas. Transfemicide was classified as a crime in Mexico City only in 2024, in the so-called Paola Buenrostro Law, thanks to the push and pressure from trans collectives after the young woman’s death. “It cannot be possible that this same Prosecutor’s Office, being the representative, continues making these omissions 10 years after we have built protocols, guidelines, manuals, and laws together with them,” accused Buenrostro’s friend.
In response, the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement Tuesday night assuring that “the legal classification of the case is not closed” and that there is “the possibility of reclassifying it as femicide in later stages.” In the text, the authorities stated that the arrest warrant was executed for homicide because the process, initiated in 2016, was for that same crime, which was applicable according to the legal framework at that time. “The grounds to prove femicide were more restrictive and the crime of transfemicide did not yet exist,” they explained, although they have not responded to the collectives’ questions about the prior work they had done to have the case investigated as femicide.
In the fight and search for justice for Buenrostro’s death, trans activists obtained a historic recommendation from the Mexico City Human Rights Commission in 2019, which pointed out multiple omissions and deficiencies in the initial investigation. As a result of that resolution, the Prosecutor’s Office issued a public apology in 2021 to the memory and social family of Buenrostro.
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