Ochoa, Digna (1964–2001)

Digna Ochoa y Plácido was a Mexican human-rights lawyer and activist known for her struggle against impunity and her personal commitment to social justice. She was involved in the defense of peasants and other marginalized Mexicans and won many international awards in recognition of her work. On October 19, 2001, Digna was found dead in her Mexico City office with two bullet wounds and several marks on her body from a beating.

Originally from the state of Veracruz, Digna came from a poor family of 12 children. During her childhood, her father, a union leader, was imprisoned, tortured, and disappeared for his political activism. Digna later became a lawyer to provide poor Mexicans with the legal support they lacked in a highly stratified society.

As a lawyer, Digna worked at the Human Rights Center Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez from 1988 to 2000. She was involved in the defense case of two peasants and environmental activists from the state of Guerrero, who were incarcerated, tortured, and wrongly accused of belonging to the guerrilla movement Ejército Popular Revolucionario (Revolutionary Popular Army, EPR) for opposing the deforestation of their lands by a transnational corporation. In 1995, colleagues began receiving death threats for representing Zapatista prisoners and for denouncing the existence of a dirty war in Mexico. The personal attacks on Digna started in 1996, consisting of anonymous threat letters, phone calls, and a kidnapping and a murder attempt in 1999 from which she was able to escape.

In 2000, out of fear for her safety, Digna fled to Washington, D.C., to work at the Center for Justice and International Law. Upon her return to Mexico in March 2001, Digna continued her defense work but this time in a different office and among a new team of lawyers. The death threats persisted until a few days before her assassination in October.

In the early stages of the investigation, authorities treated the assassination as a political crime. That hypothesis changed 7 months later when, on the basis of speculations about her mental health and manipulated forensic evidence taken from the crime scene, investigators claimed that Digna had committed suicide. People close to Digna immediately rejected their claim. International human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, also questioned the hypothesis and expressed their concerns over the continuing violation of human rights in Mexico.

All those who had hoped that Digna's case would serve as an opportunity to fight more openly under the newly elected center-left government of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party, PRD) in Mexico City, received the suicide hypothesis with suspicion, anger, and disappointment. The lack of professionalism, transparency, and political will on the part of Mexican authorities is, for Mexican and international human rights observers, a clear sign that little has changed in the country since the election of an opposition candidate in the presidential elections of 2000.

The investigation was reopened in early 2005, but at the time of writing, no one had been prosecuted for Digna Ochoa y Plácido's death.