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On July 1, Ivonne Álvarez, a 32-year-old trans woman, was tortured and murdered at her beauty salon in Iztapalapa, a borough located east of Mexico City. According to information from the Mexico City Attorney General's Office, her murder is being investigated under the femicide protocol, and a man allegedly involved in the crime was arrested.

In an interview with Presentes, Silvia, Ivonne's sister, blurted out, "I feel bad. I can't believe this because she left for work, she had to get back, I waited for her like every day when she arrived in her truck with the music loud and honking. I still think she's going to come back, that I'll see her getting ready, putting on her wig, and she'd say to me, 'How do I look?' Oh, I'd say, 'Pretty.' Because I always thought she was pretty. But the truth is, I have to accept that no, I won't see her anymore."

Ivonne was originally from Nezahualcóyotl (State of Mexico) but worked 13 kilometers away, in Iztapalapa (Mexico City). She enjoyed eating tacos and smoothies, dancing, and listening to electro house and pop music at full volume. In March of this year, she opened her own business, a beauty salon and barber shop .

To open her beauty salon, Ivonne had to sell a car and do sex work. “There were few customers because of the situation, right? And so, to make money and be able to eat, she also sold desserts and worked as a sex worker because she couldn't make ends meet. But she opened the beauty salon to stop doing that (sex work),” Silvia explains.

She was murdered in her beauty salon

At nine o'clock at night on Wednesday, June 30, family and friends lost contact with Ivonne. "She was one of those people who called someone all day long, she was on calls with her friends, with me all day long, we never lost track of her, you see? But her cell phone was already going to voicemail," Silvia said in an interview.

On the morning of July 1, Silvia went looking for Ivonne at her house but couldn't find her or her truck. Silvia felt strange and contacted a couple of Ivonne's friends to find out if they had seen her at her salon. "One of them told me she saw her go into the salon with a guy, and when she returned, the curtain (a metal mesh door) was closed and her truck wasn't there." 

After receiving this information, Silvia became even more alarmed and decided to go look for her sister. Her calls kept going straight to voicemail. 

On the trip from Neza to Iztapalapa, a friend of Ivonne's told her she noticed something "strange" about the curtain: the curtain was closed with two of its three locks. "Her friend called me and said she was going to look out the window. She had to borrow a ladder to get out, and she said, 'I see someone wearing green over there.'" Silvia knew Ivonne had worn green when she asked about her.

When Silvia arrived at the beauty salon, there were already police in the area, and in her anguish, she demanded to see Ivonne. "I saw her, I saw her tied by the feet, by the hands, taped, and with a rag over her head. The cause of death they gave us was asphyxiation by strangulation," she recounts. 

So far this year, 16 trans women have been murdered in Mexico, according to the National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBT people .

“We want justice and nothing else”

Ivonne's truck was located by the police ten minutes from her beauty salon. A man was on board with a woman. Silvia recounted in an interview, "When the police arrived, he spilled the beans. They didn't even ask him anything, and he blurted out, 'I've screwed up, I've screwed up,' and said he did it with a friend." 

Silvia is convinced that there is at least one person at large, as she believes that one person alone is not capable of carrying out all the violence that Ivonne experienced.

On July 5, the Mexico City Attorney General's Office issued a statement indicating that investigative police detectives attached to the Prosecutor's Office for the Investigation of Femicide had arrested a man who had allegedly been with Ivonne at the beauty salon the night she was murdered. The detainee is currently being held by a supervisory judge at the Eastern Men's Preventive Prison.

"We don't want anything more than justice for my sister because those men can't just walk around like nothing happened. If that's what they did to her, what else can they do to other people, to other women? We want justice and nothing else," Silvia maintains.

In Mexico, the crime of transfemicide is not defined, nor has the State made any efforts to develop a diagnosis that would allow us to understand the specific experiences and needs of trans populations in Mexico. According to Rocío Suárez, a human rights defender and member of the Center for Support of Trans Identities (CAIT), this remains "one of the major outstanding issues at the national and state levels."

In Mexico City, the CAIT conducted a survey last year, and one of the "major confirmations" was that "recognition of gender identity is not serving, in most cases, to enable trans people, and especially women, to improve their living conditions in terms of health, work, security, and justice," says Rocío Suárez, director of the CAIT. 

According to this survey, around 80% of trans people perceive a high level of discrimination in Mexico City. Furthermore, the violence they experience occurs in close settings such as family, partners, and the community.

Information leak 

Various media outlets have picked up on information from a reporter who revealed the names and faces of three men allegedly responsible for Ivonne's murder. Additionally, various reports revealed that two 18-year-old men were arrested but charged with drug dealing, prompting a backlash from LGBT communities on social media. 

One of them was María Clemente, a trans activist and newly elected federal deputy, who demanded justice and urged the Mexico City Attorney General's Office to "investigate Ivonne's trans femicide as the crime of greatest legal responsibility and that drug possession be considered an aggravating factor and not the first offense." 

Regarding information circulating in the media about the arrest of two people possibly involved in drug possession, the Attorney General's Office has not yet released any information confirming this or otherwise.   

"I believe that when this information is leaked, the Prosecutor's Office should also be very clear and provide information on how the people allegedly arrested in cases like these are charged," emphasizes Rocío Suárez.

For her part, Silvia told Presentes that there were two arrests, but, "They have nothing to do with my sister's murder because when they caught the boy in the van, family and friends attacked the police. I think they intended to stop them from taking him away, right? But in that commotion, they arrested some people and people started saying they found drugs on them, but they have nothing to do with it," she says. 

And she returns convinced, “All we want is justice for my sister, nothing more.”