The murder of Mexico’s first non-binary magistrate alarms the LGBTQ community

Jesús Ociel Baena made history a year ago when they were sworn in as the first openly non-binary person to take up a judicial post in Mexico.

On Monday, Mx. Baena, who uses the same pronouns, and their partner were found dead in their home, prompting calls from Mexico’s LGBTQ community to determine whether the magistrate was targeted for promoting the rights of non-binary people.

Authorities in the state of Aguascalientes, where Mx. Baena, 38, a magistrate at the electoral court, has said their 37-year-old partner, Dorian Herrera, appeared to have killed them with a razor blade before killing themselves.

But LGBTQ leaders in Mexico question whether such a snap assessment fits with what they say is a pattern by authorities of effectively portraying gruesome killings involving LGBTQ people as crimes of passion.

MX. Baena, often dressed in skirts and heels while wearing makeup, said they had received death threats because of their prominence as one of Mexico’s most visible LGBTQ figures.

“Yesterday it felt like the whole community was in shock,” said Alex Orué, a non-binary activist in Mérida, the capital of Yucatán state.

Marches were organized across Mexico on Monday evening to demand that authorities conduct a thorough investigation.

“We form community in the face of tragedy,” Mx said. Orué, who attended a meeting in Mérida.

Any attack or hate crime against members of the LGBTQ community shocks people and sows fear, Mx. Orue added. But the death of Mx. Baena and their partner were even more painful.

“If someone with that level of visibility, with that public position as a magistrate, and also with the protection of the state because he was living under threat, this were to happen to him, what can the rest of us expect?” MX. Orue said.

Jesús Figueroa Ortega, the attorney general of Aguascalientes, said in an interview with a radio program on Tuesday morning that an investigation so far showed that Mx. Baena and their partner began arguing in an upstairs bedroom, where investigators found blood stains and drips leading downstairs.

According to Mr. Figueroa Ortega, investigators found twenty wounds on Mx. Baena’s body caused by a razor blade. A CCTV video shows the couple entering their home around 1 a.m. on Sunday. No one else was seen entering afterward.

Mr. Figueroa Ortega said that Mx. Baena’s partner, Mr. Herrera, then allegedly used another razor blade to cause a wide and fatal wound to the neck. “We could say that this is the conclusion we have so far based on the expert information,” Mr. Figueroa Ortega said, although he noted that the investigation was still ongoing.

Cristian González Cabrera, an LGBTQ rights researcher who focuses on Latin America for Human Rights Watch, said it was “disappointingly common” in Mexico for prosecutors to share information before an investigation is completed.

“It’s dangerous in the sense that it starts to shape the narrative around the case without all the facts,” he said.

In Latin America, Mexico is second only to Brazil in having the highest number of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community, according to advocates.

MX. Baena was a groundbreaking non-binary figure who influenced changes in Mexican society, including the way many people in the country describe themselves in official documents and how they speak and write Spanish.

This year Mx. Baena was one of the first people in Mexico to receive a passport describing them as non-binary. And in May, when they succeeded in getting described as non-binary on their birth certificates, Mx. Baena said it was the first time anyone had done this in their home state of Coahuila.

“Get started with it!” she Posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

MX. Baena insisted on being referred to in Spanish by the gender-neutral title “le magistrade” instead of “el magistrado,” underscoring efforts to relax rules in a Romance language where nouns are often categorized as masculine or feminine. A few weeks ago, Mx. Baena was also the first person in Mexico to receive the gender-neutral certificate title from “maestre” (instead of “maestro”) in the electoral law.

“If anything positive could come from this terrible incident, expanding the recognition of gender identity throughout Mexico would be a very important outcome and certainly honor their legacy,” said Mr. González Cabrera.

MX. Orué added that Mx. Baena seemingly lived without fear, despite the number of threats and insults she received.

“Ociel always tried to listen, to have dialogues,” said Mx. Orue said. “Their intention was always to get to that point of equality for everyone, but especially for the non-binary community.”