Indigenous activist's disappearance and killing cause outcry in Mexico's Oaxaca state
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal
May 4, 2025 3 AM PT
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.
— Joaquín Galván, an attorney, on death of Sandra Estéfana Domínguez Martínez
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.
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.
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