Prosecutor’s remarks alarm advocates, family of slain Mexican magistrate

Jesús Ociel Baena, Mexico’s first nonbinary magistrate, and their partner, Dorian Daniel Nieves, were both found dead in their home in central Mexico on Monday morning.

Baena had reported receiving death threats and had taken security measures that included a state protection order in July, ABC News reported. “They were a person who received many hate messages, and even threats of violence and death, and you can’t ignore that in these investigations,” Alejandro Brito, director of the LGBTQ rights group Letra S, told The Associated Press.

As a magistrate, Baena had campaigned for reforms around gender identity recognition, the publication Them reported. They also challenged public officials who made derogatory remarks about gender nonconforming people. Baena was unapologetically proud of their identity and frequently used TikTok to share the work that they were doing.

Mexico’s LGBTQ community has responded to Baena’s and Nieves’ deaths with grief and anger. And although an investigation is underway, some advocates are worried that local authorities may try to sweep the probe under the rug. As the AP reports, “Some homicides in Mexico have a history of being quickly minimized by authorities as crimes of passion.”

Public comments from state prosecutor Jesús Figueroa have underscored advocates’ concerns. Figueroa said the pair appeared to have wounds from a sharp object and that there were no signs of forced entry, according to Al Jazeera. He also said that some forensic evidence suggests Nieves may have been responsible for Baena’s death, Reuters reported — a theory that their family has strongly rejected. “It’s not true,” said Baena’s father, Juan, at the couple’s funeral on Tuesday.

LGBTQ advocates have criticized the prosecutor for speculating on the cause of death while the investigation remains ongoing, a practice that is “disappointingly common” among prosecutors in Mexico, said Cristian González Cabrera, who researches LGBTQ rights in Latin America for Human Rights Watch. “It’s dangerous in the sense that it begins to shape the narrative around the case without all the facts,” Cabrera told the New York Times.