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The trial for the "indigenous femicide" of Nancy Fernández, a member of the Qom Yecthakay community, will begin today in the Seventh Criminal Court of San Isidro. The woman was murdered in 2014, a year after her 14-year-old daughter, Micaela, was found dead while demanding justice and denouncing trafficking networks in the Buenos Aires municipality of Tigre.

Judge María Cohelo and Judges Marcelo Gaig and Alejandro Lago, of the San Isidro Criminal Court (TOC 7) , will be in charge of the trial, with Juan Carlos Corvalán as the sole defendant. He was a fugitive until his capture in June of last year. He is charged with double aggravated homicide due to his relationship with the court and gender-based violence (femicide) and theft.

The trial will run from September 3 to 6. Hearings will begin at 10:00 a.m. at the courthouse, located at 460 Centenario Avenue. Indigenous, feminist, social, and political organizations will gather outside the courthouse for the four days, along with family members of victims of femicide, transfemicide, and human trafficking from the northern region of Greater Buenos Aires, including the families of Luna Ortiz, Viviana Altamirano, and Sofía Fernández .

“For what I've been fighting for so long, and for what my grandfather and my mother fought for, I hope for justice,” Lisette Fernández, 23, daughter and sister of Nancy and Micaela, told Presentes as she prepared to address the first hearing.

“ I'm very scared because I know how justice is handled. I'm afraid of being mistreated, of being revictimized, of being spoken about badly, of reliving things. I find it hard to talk about it, to see photos of them. These things break you. It's very difficult to move on after so much,” she shared. Following the events she experienced, Lisette was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. People close to her maintain the Instagram account @la_loz_de_mica , where they share the latest developments in both cases.

In February 2013, Micaela Fernández, Nancy's daughter, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in Dante "Pato" Cenizo's home. "The last time I saw Mica was on my birthday; I was turning 12. We shared a lovely day, and later that evening, a car came looking for her. That's when she said she had to go. I asked her to stay a little longer. She said she'd be back that week. I never saw her again," Lisette told Presentes . 

The tests

For her and her lawyer, Paula Alvarado Mamani, both cases—Micaela's, classified as "suicide," and her mother's, as "homicide"—should be consolidated. "There is ample evidence," she believes, to establish that both deaths were murders linked to a trafficking ring.

“My sister was kidnapped in 2013. I heard from her that he (Dante Cenizo) was prostituting her, that they forced her to sell drugs. I saw my mother beaten when she went to report the kidnapping. They locked her up and beat her. I also witnessed the injustice, the complicity of the police. For fear that something would happen to me, my mother sent me to live with an aunt,” Lisette said.

When Micaela disappeared in 2013, her mother, Nancy, went to the Sixth Police Station in El Talar to report the incident. They called her "crazy" and didn't take her report, Lisette recalled. Days later, Micaela reappeared, beaten, with facial injuries and her hair brutally cut. She said she had been taken to a house where she was abused by several men. At that time, Nancy again sought to file a complaint, but ended up arrested. In February of that year, Micaela was found dead in Cenizo's house. A year after her death, on May 2, 2014, Nancy was found dead in her home. A homicide case was opened to investigate this crime, which is currently in court.

Nancy's father, Eugenio Fernández, founder of the Qom Yecthakay community of Tigre, led the fight to demand justice for Nancy and Micaela's deaths. "Sometimes we are abandoned because, as Indigenous people, it's as if we're in second place. I want this to come to light and for the perpetrators to be arrested," Eugenio had pleaded during an interview . After his death, Lisette took charge of the legacy and, upon reaching the age of majority, was able to access the files.

To talk about what happened to her mother and sister, Lisette uses the term "indigenous femicide" because she believes it is also linked to racism. "We are at a heightened vulnerability. The traffickers know who they're targeting: the most vulnerable girls. They know that when we go to demand justice, they don't listen to us, they discriminate against us," she explained. She knows this, among other things, from her mother's experience. "'Shut up, you fucking Indian,' they told me. 'You're not going to talk,'" Nancy said in an interview with Public TV . She also publicly denounced abuse by the police when she went to file a complaint.

“The only thing I hope for is justice. I know it doesn't end here because they want to dismiss my mother's case as an isolated case from my sister's, and that's not the case. They're ignoring the entire context in which my mother's murder occurred, which is a context of human trafficking, drug trafficking, and racism,” Lisette concluded.