GUATEMALA CITY - An indigenous migrant who was accused of kidnapping and jailed in a northern Mexico border city returned to her homeland of Guatemala on Sunday after spending more than seven years in prison without a trial.
A Mexican court ordered the immediate release of Juana Alonzo SantizoAlonzo Santizo, 35, on Saturday.
The court ruled there was no consistent evidence against her, said Netza Sandoval, head of Mexico's federal defenders office.
Sandoval, whose office took over defending Alonzo in 2021, contends she was tortured and forced to sign a confession that she did not understand because she couldn't speak Spanish. In 2014, the Mayan Chuj woman left her village, San Mateo Ixtat n, in order to migrate to the United States, he said. She was detained by immigration officials while she was in Reynosa, a Mexican border city in McAllen, Texas, and one of the main smuggling points in Tamaulipas state.
Sandoval said the police accused her of kidnapping and put her in jail. He said the charges were not translated into her Chuj language until this year.
She was never convicted, having never been tried, and was held in pre-trial detention for almost a year. An advocacy campaign for her freedom was supported by national and international groups and by Mexican President Andr s Manuel L pez Obrador, and the Tamaulipas prosecutor office withdrew the charges against her.
Sandoval said that it was an absolutely unavoidable case. She is a woman, she is an indigenous person, she is a migrant, she is poor, and she didn't speak Spanish. An emotional Alonzo was greeted by her family at the Guatemala City airport on Sunday, and collapsed into her father's arms and her uncle's arms. Her relatives helped her change from jeans to traditional regional clothes.
It is easy to go to prison, but it is hard to get out of it, Alonzo said in halting Spanish, which she learned while in prison.
We are not stones, we are not plastic things. She added.
Pedro Alonzo, an uncle, said she had migrated in hopes of helping her family.
Who is going to pay for that scar? He said something.
According to statistics from Mexico's federal government, 43% of the people held in the country's prisons have not been convicted or sentenced.