The narrative of the La Mataviejitas case seems to have no end. to the documentary The Lady of Silence —of Netflix—and the chapter 'The Two Lives of Juana Barraza'—from the documentary series Ashes of Glory, from Vix—who last year relived the criminal story that shook Mexican society between the late 1990s and early 2000s, due to the murders of women between 70 and 90 years old in their own homes in Ciudad de Mexico, now joins the position of the main defendant in the case, Juana Barraza Samperio. In an almost hour-long interview with a public television channel, Channel 14, She exempts herself from being responsible for the 17 crimes for which she was sentenced to 759 years in prison and denounces “injustices” in her judicial process. Meanwhile, Araceli Vázquez García, detained as a suspect in 2004—two years before Barraza in a judicial procedure plagued by irregularities—also remains in jail.
“I was already sentenced, I was already here [en el penal de Santa Martha Acatitla], it had been two years and they continued killing women. “So, where is it that I am the serial murderer?” asks Juana Barraza. When she talks about the moment of her arrest her mouth goes dry. She narrates that she defended her innocence before the police: “Forgive me but I have always worked alone and I am a fighter, I am not a murderer, and I have the evidence and I have told you, let them prove to me that they caught me dressed as a nurse.” However, she confirms that in the judicial process she admitted her guilt:
—Do you plead guilty? the interviewer asks..
—Yes, when they made me sign the papers and when they showed me the photos of my children, that's when I collapsed. [Me dijeron] that if I didn't sign those papers, the ones who were going to pay the price were my children, so I stayed and said: 'My children.'
A childhood marked by violence
During the first minutes of the interview, Juana Barraza describes the environment of violence in which she lived her childhood. Through tears, she tells how her mother beat her and that on one occasion she threw a knife at her that left a mark on her right hand. “I didn't have a nice childhood, because my mother hit me a lot. She always insulted me. I remember one time she threw me to the ground, she kicked me and she told me that she was cursing the time I was born. […] If I ate it was when my stepfather was there, because that's when he saw that we had to eat, but if he wasn't there my mother would feed me pure chopped chayote with salt. She called my dad, because I always called her dad, and she hit me very badly. The proof is like this [muestra su mano derecha cerrada]that here he threw a knife at me and I stopped my hand like that and here he stuck it into me and since then I have this scar and every time I see it I remember it.”
She describes that when she was 11, her mother “sold” her to a man in exchange for a few beers. “At 12 I had the child, who killed me, the young man. At first I didn't want him because I didn't know how to take care of him, I didn't know what it was like to have a baby. […] and they sent for this man and he said: 'He's mine […]”I'm going to have it in my house.” She says that she lived locked in a room with her son and that her eyes were constantly swollen from the blows he gave her, because she resisted him “grabbing” her. She was free from it until her uncle and aunt came to rescue her from it. She put up some partitions and some boats and went with the child to their house.
Report rape, extortion and torture
Juana Barraza points out that she was a victim of rape after her capture and that she was also beaten. “When they gave me the papers to sign [en el juzgado]I didn't sign anything […] I told them: If I sign these papers it is like accepting my responsibility and I did not do it, but in the Attorney General's Office [de Ciudad de México] I did it because they tormented me, beat me, raped me and threatened me with my children, otherwise I wouldn't have signed them either. 'Do you think that beatings don't hurt? Rape doesn't hurt? So much filthy, so much slimy,' I tell him. Nothing more because they have daughters and they believe that they will never go through pain like that and they will feel what I felt, and that is my pain that I carry, nothing more than that is my pain. “It's not so much jail.”
Barraza claims that initially they asked him for 200,000 pesos to set her free. “Here the one who leaves is the rich because the poor stays. Since I couldn't pay the money they asked of me… Since they arrested me, they told me: 'Give me 200,000 pesos and leave, ma'am.' I stared at them and started laughing. Yes, I made fun and told them: 'Do you think that if I had that money I would continue working for my children?'
At the end of March 2008, Juana Barraza Samperio was sentenced in Court 67 of the Santa Marta Acatitla Women's Prison to 759 years in prison. She narrates that she brought a Bible with her and that at one point she made him laugh. “Since I didn't do anything, I took it as a normal day, calm,” she says.
He says that the agreements secretary who read the sentence was a young man who started crying at the moment. “I told him: 'Why are you crying if the one they are sentencing is me?', and he says: 'No, ma'am, I admire your courage. Another in its place would have collapsed.' I told him: 'Look, first time, I didn't collapse because I didn't do anything. Secondly, if I had done it, I would say, well, I would even be happy to pay it, and I would start crying because it is a very long sentence, but I didn't do anything. How do you want me to explain it to you? “I didn't do anything,” he says in the interview with Channel 14.
He also states that he addressed the media to tell them “the truth,” but that they did not publish his message: “[Les dije] that the real murderers are on the streets, not us, and why they had attacked me. Now, if you weren't so sure, why was the Public Ministry buying people to come testify so that they could blame me?
Tests
One of the evidence that the Attorney General's Office of the Mexican capital had against Araceli Vázquez García became evidence against Juana Barraza. It is the fingerprint on a glass at the crime scene of one of the victims, Gloria Enedina Rizo Ramírez, 81, committed in 2003. The then deputy prosecutor Renato Sales said that it turned out to be Barraza's and that is why Vázquez never cared. could attribute that crime, according to the investigation of the documentary The Lady of Silence.
One more trace of Barraza appeared at the scene of the murder of another of the victims, María Guadalupe González Juanbelz, for which Jorge Mario Tablas Silva had already been sentenced. Tablas was prosecuted for four homicides of older adults, two of which fell to the Attorney General's Office, and died in prison, according to the same investigation..
The impact of the La Mataviejitas case had a new boost in the middle of last year, with the premiere of the documentary The Lady of Silence: the Mataviejitas case, on Netflix. The film, based on an exhaustive investigation, presents the story of Araceli Vázquez García, arrested two years before Juana Barraza Samperio as allegedly responsible for the crimes of elderly women and who has been in prison for 19 years waiting for Justice. Mexican review your case.
The documentary reveals that, more than 17 years after the case was closed, the judicial files declassified for the first time of Barraza and Vázquez show sloppiness, manipulation and opacity in the official investigation, also marked by dozens of arbitrary arrests.
The longing of Juana Barraza
If he could get out of prison, Barraza's wish is to be with his grandchildren and one of his daughters. “That is what I ask for the most, before society it is what I ask for the most,” she says. “If I didn't do evil before, even less so now, since I'm older and sicker. For what? So that my sugar and blood pressure go up? No, thanks. “If I have already saved her many times, this time I don't think I saved her.” promises.
He says that it is time for “the truth” to be known and points again to the media. “The media is to blame because they were the ones who gave me the nickname. “Let them leave me alone, they already gave me a sentence.”
“Here I am paying for a crime that I did not even [cometí], but then no way. I am here for a reason,” she says.
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