The story of Margarita López Gómez, an indigenous woman from Chiapas, Mexico is heartbreaking. She married Juan Velasco López at the age of twelve. Velasco López had paid López Gómez's father ten bottle of alcohol to arrange the marriage a year earlier. Velasco López took Margarita to a different town where they lived together in a rented room. Two months later, she returned to her home village where she complained to the village authorities that her husband beat her daily. They told her that Velasco Gómez "was her husband and she should put up with it."   

Later Velasco López bought himself a new wife, Juana, who he brought to live in the family home. Both wives had six children each. Velasco Gómez continued to be violent on a daily basis and often came home drunk. Soon López Gómez also became an alcoholic. He also raped one of Margarita’s daughters, Sonia, repeatedly from the age of eight and at twelve, she became pregnant twice as a result.

In 2005, aged fifteen with two children as a result of her father’s sexual violence, Sonia killed her father one night as he lay drunk with her mother. She and her mother, her sisters, brothers and her own children fled back to Margarita López Gómez’s home village. They lived there for two months until Juana arrived with her six children. She had no money and decided to visit Margarita to see if Juan Velasco had left her any money. The presence of Juana in the village raised questions and the manner of Juan’s death became known.

Juana, Margarita and Sonia were arrested. Sonia spent two and half years in juvenile detention before being released. Juana was imprisoned for two years for helping cover up the murder. Margarita was sentenced to 15 years in prison for murder as the judge refused to accept that she was drunk at the time and believed her to be the principle culprit. She was convicted based on a confession allegedly obtained during her interrogation, which was conducted in Spanish, a language she did not understand. This is illegal; by law she should have been given access to a translator. She later repudiated this confession repeatedly. 

Margarita was imprisoned in a male prison in Venustiano Carranza and, to keep her from the other prisoners, was kept in a cage in solitary confinement for nearly four years. In 2008 she was transferred to a prison in San Cristobal de las Casas, the capital of Chiapas. Thanks to the intervention of the Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Mujer de Chiapas (Women’s Human Rights Centre in Chiapas) and the work of her lawyer, her sentence was reduced to eleven years eight months. Finally, after much more hard work, Rosa López Santis, lawyer for the Women’s Human Right Centre, was able to secure her release on a suspended sentence on 10 February 2012.

However, the suffering the state of Chiapas has imposed on Margarita appears never ending. The the terms of Margarita’s release include the requirement to go to the state capital, San Cristobal de las Casas each month to sign a report in the local prison. She must also send a monthly report of her work activities via registered mail every month. These conditions are not due to expire until 2016. This might seem a small price to pay for her freedom, however Margarita lives in a small village many hours away from the state capital. She has a very ill mother and young children to care for and no settled means of income. Paying to go to San Cristobal each month is practically impossible for her, and makes it very likely she will be unable to meet the terms of her sentence.

Margarita López Gómez spent seven years in prison for a crime she did not commit. She spent four years in a cage in a male prison, where she was raped and became pregnant with her youngest child, who she was never allowed to care for. Now, with this suspended sentence it appears that the authorities continue to unfairly punish Margarita and her family and aim to return her to prison. This is scandalous and unacceptable. Please join with the Centro de derechos de la mujer de Chiapas (The Women's Rights Centre of Chiapas) in asking Chief Judge Juan Gabriel Coutiño Gómez of Chiapas' Supreme Court, to grant immediate liberty without conditions to Margarita.