Mexico: Defenders Spied By Authorities

San Fernando is a municipality in the state of Tamaulipas located on the northern border of Mexico, where the criminal groups known as Zetas and Gulf Cartel have been reported to be present, and where migrants, asylum seekers and victims of forced displacement transit on their way to the United States. In August 2010, the bodies of 72 migrants, mainly from Central and South America, were found in an open field in the vicinity of this municipality. According to Mexican authorities, the victims were kidnapped by the Zetas cartel and held on a ranch. When they refused to work for the group, they were killed and their bodies tied by the hands and left out in the open. In the same locality, in April 2011, members of the army found 196 bodies of people of various nationalities in 48 clandestine graves which, according to an official investigation, belonged to people who had been disappeared, murdered and placed in clandestine graves, possibly by the same cartel of Los Zetas in collusion with municipal police.  

Ana Lorena Delgadillo is the founder of the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law (FJEDD), an organization that legally represents the families affected by the massacre; Marcela Turati is one of the leading journalists covering those events; and Mercedes Doretti was the independent expert and founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team which was analyzing remains found in the clandestine graves. The three women were prosecuted by the Attorney General´s Office (SEIDO of the PGR). Within the criminal investigation of the massacre of migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, they were investigated and placed under surveillance to obtain their personal information of, including their phone records and other private information.   

The criminalization of these three human rights defenders has a chilling effect that deters people from defending human rights.

In the report Persecuted: Criminalization of Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico published in May 2024, Amnesty International documented how SEIDO staff of the PGR diverted resources from the investigation of one of the most serious human rights violations, known as "the graves of San Fernando" or "San Fernando II", to carry out targeted surveillance against Ana Lorena, Marcela and Mercedes. In doing so, the Mexican state violated the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination and due process, as well as the right to defend human rights.