Indigenous activist’s disappearance and killing cause outcry in Mexico’s Oaxaca state

MEXICO CITY — She was a fearless advocate for her Mixe Indigenous community, a lawyer and mother who denounced violence against women — while also exposing misogynist chat groups among politicians in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state.

Her high-profile activism led to death threats, colleagues say, but Sandra Estéfana Domínguez Martínez wasn’t one to back down. Now her many admirers say that defiance cost Domínguez her life.

Domínguez and her husband were last seen Oct. 4 in her home region in eastern Oaxaca’s Mixe heartland.

On Monday, prosecutors confirmed the discovery of the couple’s remains in shallow graves in neighboring Veracruz state. Both had execution-style gunshot wounds to their heads.

Their slayings, amid swirling charges of an official cover-up, have sparked outrage in Oaxaca, which has a large Indigenous population and is among Mexico’s poorest states — while also a fast-growing tourist destination.

The government’s actions point to “an institutional operation” to conceal official involvement, said Joaquín Galván, another Oaxaca attorney and activist who worked closely with Domínguez.

“It was a very orchestrated job,” Galván said.

Despite global renown for its culture, cuisine, Pacific beaches and mezcal-drenched party scene, Oaxaca is also the site of often-bloody clashes — sometimes involving organized crime — centering on contentious disputes about land rights, development schemes and the trafficking of drugs and migrants, among other issues. The kidnap-murder of the couple stands as the latest in a disturbing slew of killings.

In November, assassins on a motorcycle in the colonial-era state capital of Oaxaca City gunned down two sisters who were well-known advocates for their Indigenous Triqui community.

And in February, separate shooting attacks in rural areas killed four community leaders who had opposed development projects both along the coast and in the state’s interior.

Meantime, in March, Oaxaca’s spate of violence made international headlines: Police reported the grisly discovery of the dismembered, bullet-riddled remains of nine young Mexican men and women inside and next to an abandoned Volkswagen sedan along a highway in adjoining Puebla state. The bloodied victims, mostly in their 20s, had been visiting Oaxaca’s beaches. Prosecutors blamed organized crime, but provided few details.

The violence has exposed a dark side to the tourist mecca, a disturbing look that Mexican officials aren’t especially keen to talk about.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who assumed office last October vowing to stamp out a national epidemic of feminicides — the murder of women because of their gender — has largely ignored the slaying of Domínguez and her husband in her daily news briefings.

Advocates blame a sinister partnership of organized crime and crooked politicians for the killing of Domínguez, 38. They accuse the Oaxaca state government — dominated by Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena bloc — of brushing off any connection between the lawyer’s murder and her long history of advocacy.

Authorities “have tried to smear Sandra and said her work has nothing to do with what happened to her,” said Yésica Sánchez Maya, a fellow human rights activist in Oaxaca. “But, in fact, there are a lot of reasons why some people would not want Sandra alive.”

Domínguez had amassed a long ledger of enemies, notably powerful male politicos whom she publicly shamed as sexist abusers in a state that has been slow to shed a legacy of crude machismo and fiat rule in the countryside by caciques, or dictatorial regional bosses.

State prosecutors have explicitly dismissed any link between Domínguez’s activism and her fate. The lawyer was a “collateral” victim in an organized-crime turf battle that actually targeted her husband, Alexander Hernández, according to the Oaxaca attorney general, José Bernardo Rodríguez.

Hernández, 46, was involved in “illicit activities, arms trafficking, people trafficking [and] extortions,” Rodríguez told Mexico’s Milenio news outlet.

Relatives and allies of Domínguez say the accusations left them stunned: Hernández, they say, was never publicly linked to organized crime — until he and his wife were executed.

“The easiest thing for state authorities is to say this had nothing to do with Sandra’s work — that this was all about her husband,” said Sánchez, who was Domínguez’s longtime colleague and a fellow lawyer.

World & Nation

Mexico’s top lawman: Ranch in Jalisco was a cartel training site, not a crematorium

Mexico’s attorney general said a forensic investigation found ‘not a shred of proof’ that corpses were burned at a ranch that was used as a training camp by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

April 29, 2025

The government’s actions point to “an institutional operation” to conceal official involvement, said Joaquín Galván, another Oaxaca attorney and activist who worked closely with Domínguez.

“It was a very orchestrated job,” Galván said. “There was collaboration between organized crime and officials of the Oaxaca government to disappear and assassinate Sandra.”

Domínguez was a legend in Oaxaca’s extensive activist circles. Her passion was assisting vulnerable women, particularly those from the mostly impoverished Mixe ethnic group, also known as the Ayuuk. She was tireless, say family and friends, in pursuing the truth in instances of disappeared and abused women whose victimization was ignored by corrupt local authorities.

“As an Ayuuk woman, she embraced the defense of her people and of all the Indigenous women who suffered violence and discrimination,” her sister, Kisha Domínguez, said in a Facebook homage. “When a woman came to her seeking help, Sandra always responded. She never hesitated to accompany someone, to assist them, to raise her voice when others were silent.”

In one well-known case, Domínguez successfully pushed authorities to investigate feminicide in the death of Fanny Guadalupe López, a Mixe teenager whose death in 2021 was initially ruled a suicide. Activists and relatives argued that Fanny, 16, was murdered after years of abuse by her much older boyfriend and a local official.

Domínguez’s most provocative action was her bombshell public disclosure, starting in 2021, of online chat groups sharing images of Indigenous women, accompanied by sexist banter. The chats — dubbed “Sierra XXX” and “Mega Peda” — circulated among scores of prominent Oaxacan lawmakers and power brokers. A Morena political candidate had to drop out of the state legislature race when linked to the sneering commentary.

Prominently implicated in the misogynist online clique was Donato Vargas, who holds the title of Oaxaca’s state “peace” coordinator, a kind of community liaison. Feminists demanded the ouster of Vargas, who also faced allegations of physical abuse from a former female companion. Oaxaca officials defended Vargas.

When Domínguez went missing more than six months ago, her supporters called on Oaxaca Gov. Salamón Jara to investigate Vargas, a politically powerful figure who they say potentially had a grudge against Domínguez.

The governor, speaking to reporters in late October, told reporters that he would ask his “friend” Vargas to take a “few days” leave and speak with prosecutors.

“We have no reason to protect anyone,” Jara said.

Vargas did not respond to requests for comment from the Los Angeles Times.

From almost the moment that Domínguez was reported missing on Oct. 8, supporters accused Oaxacan authorities of slow-walking the inquiry. International organizations, including the United Nations and Amnesty International, called on Mexican authorities to step it up. Federal officers were directed to aid in the hunt.

The search focused on an area of Veracruz state, just across the line from Oaxaca and the couple’s home in the remote and sweltering agricultural burg of María Lombardo de Caso, about 200 miles from Oaxaca City.

Authorities soon found the couple’s abandoned vehicle and Dominguez’s cellphone. Leads brought police to an isolated ranch called El Capricho — The Whim — where a gun battle on Jan. 29 left four dead — an officer and three confederates of a “criminal cell” tied to the kidnapping, authorities said.

Still, the search dragged on, an emotional journey for Domínguez’s loved ones, who held on to fading hopes that she may still be alive — despite steep odds in a country where forced disappearances seldom yield happy endings.

All hope was dashed on April 24. That’s when police found the corpses buried in two ditches along a dirt road, some 30 miles from the couple’s home. The discovery was announced publicly four days later.

At least two other suspects, including a woman, were in custody, according to the Oaxaca prosecutor, who didn’t provide further details.

“Justicia!” was the chant of distraught and outraged mourners last week at a memorial service in Oaxaca City. Domínguez’s coffin was draped in purple fabric, a testament to her feminist credo. Her mother, Aracely Martínez, peered into the flower-bedecked grave, the anguish of 206 days of torment waiting to learn of her daughter’s fate etched in her face.

“There are no words for what they did to you,” the mother said, sobbing. “The state killed you, my daughter.”

McDonnell is a Times staff writer. Sánchez Vidal is a special correspondent.