The crusade of the Mexican woman who helps women without a sentence in Santa Marta Acatitla: from being in jail to a lawyer for impossible causes

The Mexican Cristina Gamero was 35 years old and was a director of a multinational company when she was arrested in Mexico City, kept inside a patrol car driving around the entire capital for more than eight hours and when, finally, they took her directly to the women’s prison from Santa Martha Acatitla, she knew the reason why everything was happening. She had been accused of a fraud for 33 million pesos (about two million dollars). Moments before she arrived, late at night, she still believed that she was there because of a debit on her credit card; nothing else was going through her head, she did not understand what was happening. In the dark and with the inconsolable crying of her mother and the rest of her family, she looked at that gigantic, gray metal door and thought to herself: “I hope all this is because of the card.”

It was in 2008. In Mexico then there was talk of a “political alternation” that until recently had seemed impossible. The hegemonic party, the most powerful political force at the time, the PRI, had been defeated in the 2000 presidential elections, when Vicente Fox Quesada, the standard-bearer of the National Action Party (PAN), won the presidency. Not only did a new path begin in the democratic life of the country, almost as something symptomatic, a security policy was also inaugurated that marked the line in the following six-year terms. Mexico City was the scene of a very particular way of operating by the police corporations and in the blink of an eye television was filled with live arrests, broadcasts of operations and other shows that were far from what they repeated. ad nauseam on the screens: justice.

Gamero was at the peak of her career, she was a very young woman who held a managerial position in the multinational company where she worked, she traveled to various cities around the world constantly and felt “all powerful”, she mentions with a certain humor. Her until she was no longer. For more than a year, in her company – which was merging with another – they kept her on the sidelines of her while they investigated an alleged embezzlement of which she, she says, had no knowledge. She was so sure that nothing would happen and of her innocence, that she did not worry too much and she did not consult with lawyers or with someone who would offer her guidance.

His case is full of irregularities and violations of due process. While she was inside the patrol car, for example, she remembers hearing one of the men who were guarding her say by phone that she was not on duty and that she was “doing a little job” (a job). The police officers did not show her an arrest warrant either —she would later discover that they did not have it at the time of the arrest and that was why they had her touring the city for hours—, and she did not go through a Public Ministry either, her case was so “extraordinary ” who took her directly to the Santa Martha Acatitla Women’s Social Reintegration Center, without being shown. Perhaps the most emblematic memory of this way of acting by the Mexican authorities is in the case of the French citizen Florence Cassez, accused of kidnapping along with her partner, the Mexican Israel Vallarta, and whose arrest was broadcast live on television. mexican.

Cristina Gamero at the anniversary of MGE Systems. Courtesy

“There is always a man behind every woman imprisoned in Santa Martha”

Cristina Gamero remembers that since her arrival at the prison it rained every day. Don’t forget it, it’s impossible. The rain and the night still bring back to her the feeling of loneliness, helplessness and despair that she experienced when she was arrested. During the time that she remained incarcerated, Gamero, who had been a student with excellent grades and an exemplary career since she was very young, once again took refuge in books and began studying law only a few months after being admitted. Her cases began to come into her hands as if she were already a working attorney. Her companions in her prison soon found out about her and thus she was able to see the files of many women who had been imprisoned for years, even decades, without even having received a sentence.

This is how he learned the testimonies of many women with whom he lived every day and realized that the vast majority of them were unjustly imprisoned or had been judged without a gender perspective. “There is always a man behind every woman who is imprisoned in Santa Martha, always, without fear of being wrong. In all the cases that I have seen in these almost 13 years, the common denominator is a man: the husband, the father, the friend, who forced them to commit crimes, even indirectly”, he assures. “I am not saying that some of them are not criminals, but the vast majority are there because they had an unfair process.”

The lawyer, who is now around 50 years old, recounts just a few of the cases that exemplify what she says: the case of María Catalina, one of the first that came to her when she had just received her professional degree, already out of jail, and the one who achieved acquittal. Then, the case of Betty, which came into his hands through the Mexican filmmaker Diana Garay, who had made the documentary My friend Betty, from 2013, about a woman sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of her mother, all because of a process full —also— of irregularities and violations of their rights. Or the testimonies of two indigenous women also imprisoned in Santa Martha, Angélica and Reina, who do not speak Spanish and yet never had an interpreter from the start. Both women had been arrested and were tried for crimes that their partners had committed.

He also received the testimony of Cristina Flores, who was accused of kidnapping for being in the wrong place and at the wrong time. She was instructed by a close friend to go to an address where, unknowingly, they were holding a kidnapped person. Flores, she remained in jail despite the fact that it was found that the circumstances surrounding the crime of which she was accused exonerated her of all responsibility.

In addition to women, Santa Martha Actitla, like so many prisons and prisons in Mexico, are full of people without economic resources: “women are abandoned by their husbands, by their children… They have no money, they do whatever it takes to get ahead . It seems to me that in Mexico good lawyers are needed to defend people who have no money. There must also be justice for them,” says Gamero.

Like when she was very little, the lawyer, who already had a degree in Business Administration, had once again taken refuge in her studies and in all the academic activities she could. That led her to develop in the future, and when she perhaps needed it most, an alternate career that she now pursues as a compromise. “Studying law for me meant a path to personal and moral freedom, a path to freedom of thought and spirituality, and a way to help people who don’t have the resources to get a good defense,” she says. For this reason, Gamero created the civil society Firmeza y Justicia SC, “so that people can feel confident that they will have an adequate defense, a criminal defense that will not cost them dearly and that will be effective.”

All the cases of the women in prison that came into the hands of Cristina Gamero, such as those of María Catalina, Betty, Angélica and Reina, were handled by her when she began her career as a lawyer, as pro bono, that is, she did not charge anything for get them out of jail.

Lawyer Cristina Gamero.Courtesy

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