On October 11, 2017, the fourth criminal judge of the Judicial Power of the State of Oaxaca issued the first sentence for femicide after five years of criminalizing the entity. The Dafne Carreño Bengochea case became the hope for dozens of mothers seeking justice; however, sentences for femicide concerning the number of women murdered since that year, do not represent even 10 percent. Procrastination, investigation of the crime without adherence to protocols, poor integration of files by the public ministries, lack of empathy with the victims, and even corruption. The obstacles in this long and tortuous way to achieve a sentence, even if its small, it doesn't guarantee justice, and it does not represent the end of the legal fight for mothers of the victims. The calvary of the Carreño Bengochea family achieving a sentence of 78 years and four months in prison against Alejandro Enrique Rivera López for the murder in April 2013 of Dafne Carreño Bengochea, was not the end for Zoila Bengochea Espitia mother of the then 21-year-old girl.
Her life continues immersed in visits to courts and disburse money in claims that prevent the reduction of time prison for the feminicide. "It is difficult and hard to make the pilgrimage, all this struggle, fatigue, and pain, unfortunately, we see that criminals have more guarantees than victims." There is nothing of the damage fixed at 145 thousand 470 pesos.
Dafne Carreño Bengochea, was killed by seven stab wounds in her department. Rivera López was arrested when he tried to flee.
Until now, the sentence in the Dafne case is one with the highest penalty assigned to a feminicide. Zoila Bengochea points out that it wouldn't have been done without pressure from the media.
Sentences without any perspective
The sanctions in different sentences for femicide issued do not have the same penalty, because, despite the cruelty with which they are committed, it becomes similar to each other. Thus, for example, the most recent one issued, in January of this 2020, was only 45 years against the murderer of a teenager from Candelaria Loxicha, on September 17, 2018.
The victim was intercepted by Elías "N." After raping her, murdered her with machetes in different parts of the body.
Many women murdered, a few sentences of femicide.
If the benchmark for determining the degree of feminicide violence in Oaxaca were based on the number of sentences issued, the crime in the entity would practically be non-existent. According to the Superior Court of Justice of the State in 2019, no punishment for femicide was issued; from previous years, they indicated that they were working on obtaining the figure.
The numbers of the Oaxaca Attorney General's Office do not offer a real scenario of the violence experienced by women in the state because although they acknowledge that between 2017 and 2019, there are 402 murdered women, only in 125 cases were they typified as femicides.
According to the prosecution, of the 29 cases typified as femicides in 2018, 80 percent were prosecuted, and of the 29 of 2019, 60 percent were prosecuted.