The family of Pedro Cesar Carrizales, The Mijis, has identified this Wednesday the lifeless body of the activist in the SEMEFO of Ciudad Victoria, in Tamaulipas. After days of waiting and hypotheses, his relatives have confirmed that he is the former deputy from San Luis Potosí. His wife, Miriam Martínez, had gone to Tamaulipas since Friday, after being notified by the Prosecutor’s Office. The investigation by the authorities concludes that El Mijis, 42, had a car accident at dawn on February 3. Carrizales had been missing since January 31.
The reconstruction of the last steps of the Mijis begins at the Las Fuentes hotel, in Saltillo (Coahuila). There he arrived with his wife, with whom he had a nine-month-old baby and a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. They had left from San Luis Potosí and the final destination was Monterrey (Nuevo León), where the activist was carrying out a migrant routes project. Before the long car journey, the family decided to rest. “He spent the entire day of January 31. He started playing with my child at the hotel, he took him to the pool, to the slides, ”Miriam Martínez tells EL PAÍS, devastated, a few days before his identification. There, he wanted to continue on his way, but she was still exhausted. “He told me: I finish, I come and go. Before 1 in the morning I am here and we return. I didn’t even extend the hotel nights.”
He heard from him again in the early hours of February 1. She needed the key to one of his two phones. “I passed it to her and she told me: ‘There is a detail, they arrested me. But wait for me, right now I’ll tell you and right now I’ll mark you “. From there to the next communication more than 24 hours passed. At 11:18 p.m. on February 2, Martínez received a voice message. “My love, I’m going there, thank God they’ve already released me, the police had me, the GAFES [agentes de las fuerzas especiales], they thought it was one of the bad guys, but I’m going there, don’t worry, I love you”, El Mijis said. When asked by Martínez, the activist replies that he cannot call her, because he was driving on the highway: “I keep marking you on the road mijaI can’t talk because they had me detained and what I want is to get out of here now”.
After that, just silence. Miriam Martínez waited for two more days. Locked up, scared without daring to leave the hotel. “I didn’t want to move from there. Because I don’t know the city of Saltillo, it scared me”. On day 4 she decided to return to San Luis Potosí to notify the family of the disappearance. The next day she went to the Prosecutor’s Office to file the complaint. “They didn’t want to take it from me because it wasn’t the events in San Luis Potosí, but I asked one of his advisers to help. And finally they began collaborating with the other Prosecutors’ Offices.” For this reason, he explains, it took so many days to make it public that the popular activist was missing.
In a joint statement from the Prosecutor’s Offices of San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, the authorities reported yesterday that on February 3 at approximately one in the morning, a car accident was recorded at kilometer 27 of the Piedras Negras-Nuevo Laredo highway, on the border between the two states. “I didn’t know anything about Tamaulipas, it wasn’t on the road,” Martínez said.
According to a source close to the family, the version of the prosecution maintains that after a crash, the red Mijis van left the road, the dry grass caught fire from the friction sparks and the vehicle ended up on fire. The family has issued a statement in which they refuse to make any further comments in the face of the situation of extreme pain.
a history of struggle
The face of that short, dark-haired man full of tattoos had been a reference in the social struggle in Mexico for years. A member of the gangs in his youth and a deputy in San Luis Potosí in 2018, his story became an example. The Mijis was harshly attacked for his image when he was elected, he even had to deny that he had a criminal record. “I have been told naco, cholo, brayan, they have swept me with their eyes because of my appearance, ”he told this newspaper after being elected. He focused his political discourse precisely on making visible the demands of the most disadvantaged sectors of the country, on poverty, exclusion, racism and violence.
Stubborn and brave, he endlessly pursued every cause he believed to be unjust. He went on a hunger strike for the illegal imprisonment of a rural teacher, he used his loudspeaker for each disappeared person, he put his image next to the victims of femicides.
This visibility in a deadly country for activists put him on many occasions in the target. In 2019, he survived an attack when he was still a deputy. His car was shot six times from a motorcycle. He was unharmed. He acknowledged that he had received previous threats: “Due to the seriousness and intentions of certain groups, I fear for my safety and that of my family,” he assured then on his Twitter profile. Just four months ago he was kidnapped for 12 hours. He was located by the National Guard in the municipality of Zaragoza, in San Luis Potosí, beaten but alive.
“I know that if I were in his place, he would have looked for me everywhere. But I couldn’t get into those dangerous places so far away. Here in San Luis Potosí I wouldn’t have cared where to go, ”said Miriam Martínez, who hadn’t eaten since January 31, without sleeping, waiting for a message, a call. “But he doesn’t come.”
subscribe here to newsletter of EL PAÍS Mexico and receive all the informative keys of the news of this country
#family #identifies #lifeless #body #Pedro #Carrizales #Mijis #Tamaulipas