Herminio, Isauro and Abimael were killed in a field in Phoenix, Arizona, and the accused were two men from the same town in Oaxaca. The crime shook Santo Domingo Tepuxtepec, a small indigenous town in the Sierra Mixe, and revealed the deep cracks in Mexican migration to the United States. To the perversity of the murder of the three young people – they were 16, 21 and 28 years old – was added the escape of one of the alleged culprits and his presence again in the community, which triggered the threats and mistrust. During the early hours of this Friday Jhonas Domínguez, alias El Chivo, has been arrested and made available to the authorities.
Three months after the triple homicide, justice has reached Domínguez. The arrest took place in San Pedro Quiatoni, a Zapotec community, 40 kilometers from Tepuxtepec, where the defendant tried to enter with a truck and long weapons. The community police surveillance posts at the entrance to the town stopped the vehicle in which El Chivo and another individual, identified as Kleber, were traveling. Upon verifying that they were carrying weapons for the exclusive use of the Army, they decided not to let them enter the town. “The subjects refused and threatened, which increased the reaction of the community much more. The entire town met and together they were able to subdue them,” a source familiar with the case told EL PAÍS.
After the arrest, the people called an assembly —an instrument used in indigenous communities— and decided to notify the authorities. Several units of the National Guard and the Oaxaca Prosecutor’s Office traveled to San Pedro, who verified that Domínguez was accused of the Phoenix crime. “The community agreed to release them due to the commitment of the agents to consign them to the local and federal authorities. If there had not been a lynching situation, ”explains this same source. The detainees are already in Oaxaca de Juárez, the state capital, waiting for the next step in the process.
Domínguez’s arrest gives a reprieve to a community gripped for months. The brutal murder of the three young indigenous people on the other side of the border left this part of the sierra paralyzed. Abimael Jiménez and Isauro Martínez were assassinated when they had only been on US soil for a couple of days. Herminio Martínez, the eldest of the group and who had already been living in the US for 11 years, was in charge of picking them up in Los Angeles on February 19. They had to get to Milwaukee (Wisconsin), where the three young people had families, but they made a stop in Phoenix. There Herminio met with the two accused of the murder.
The reconstruction made by EL PAÍS indicates that Martínez had collaborated with the two alleged aggressors on some occasions to transport migrants in the US. But at a certain point he separated from those two coyotes and went to work for another. “They threatened him with death. They said that Herminio chapulinó [saltó de un grupo a otro rival], that if I didn’t work with them, I didn’t work with anyone”, recounted a woman, who was also threatened. On February 20, Phoenix agents found the butchered bodies of the youths.
The concise police report states that they received bullet wounds, that Herminio had a mark on his left wrist —it seemed that he had been tied up— and that he had a strong blow to the head. The faces that arrived at Tepuxtepec had to be reconstructed to hide the wounds and bruises before being placed under the glass of the coffins.
On March 2, US police arrested Juan Manuel Vargas, a 22-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant, as the main suspect in the crime. Both the Mexican consul in Phoenix, Jorge Mendoza, and the evidence pointed to the participation of more people. Expert reports confirmed that two weapons were used that night. The other individual escaped and not only returned to Mexico, but to his hometown, the same town as his victims.
In the weeks that followed the crime, activists in the area had warned that Jhonas Domínguez had installed his human, arms and drug trafficking network in the quiet Sierra Mixe. This irruption had brought violence, a homicide and many threats to those who tried to oppose the installation of the criminal cell. Now while the connection of the case with the Arizona police is awaited, the arrest of the main ringleader gives hope that calm will return to the mountains.
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