Four police officers in the Mexican resort city of Tulum have been charged with femicide after a Salvadoran woman died while being restrained.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador flatly described the incident as “murder”, telling reporters on Monday. Mexico’s president said: “She was brutally treated and murdered … It is an event that fills us with pain and shame.”
Social media users posted videos of the incident on Saturday night, in which a female officer knelt on Victoria Salazar’s back while she was being arrested. The footage shows three other officers are seen standing around her motionless and facedown body, chatting casually. Later, three officers lift her still handcuffed body into the back of a police pickup truck and drive away.
Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales, the attorney general of Quintana Roo state, said on Monday that four municipal police officers – three men and one woman – had been charged with femicide after an autopsy concluded that Salazar’s neck was broken.
“The police restraint technique was applied with a disproportionate and excessive force,” said Montes de Oca.
The scenes drew comparisons with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee against his neck.
Salazar had been living in Mexico for some years on a “humanitarian visa”, said Nayib Bukele. “She was brutally murdered by Tulum police officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico,” El Salvador’s president wrote.
El Salvador’s foreign ministry said Salazar was a Salvadoran citizen.
“There will be no impunity for those who participated in the death of the victim, and all the force of the law will be brought to bear to bring those responsible to trial,” said the state attorney general’s office.
Salazar had been living in Mexico for some years on a “humanitarian visa,” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said. “She was brutally murdered by Tulum police officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico,” the president wrote. He said the government would support Salazar’s two daughters.
“I see thousands of outraged Mexicans, demanding justice for our compatriot,” Bukele said. “They are as outraged as we are. Let us not forget that it was not the Mexican people who committed this crime, but rather some criminals in the Tulum police.”
The woman’s death seemed likely to ignite tensions in Quintana Roo, where police used live ammunition to ward off a throng of about 100 demonstrators in Cancun in November.
The protesters were demonstrating against the killings of women and some smashed windows and burned documents outside the city hall, while others tried to tear down a plywood barrier at an entrance.
Police fired into the air, but people were injured when protesters rushed to escape as the shots rang out. The state’s governor condemned the use of force and the state police chief was forced out.
On Monday, a small potted plant and a couple candles sat outside the convenience store where Salazar was killed. Someone wrote “Here they killed Victoria” in large purple letters on the pavement.
Salazar left Sonsonate, about an hour west of San Salvador, five years ago to look for better opportunities and escape the area’s street violence, said her mother Rosibel Emerita Arriaza. She was a single mother of two daughters.
On Monday, Arriaza was working with Salvadoran authorities on getting her daughter’s body repatriated. She also planned to travel to Mexico to be reunited with her granddaughters
“I want justice for my daughter, because it isn’t fair what they did to her,” Arriaza said. “She was a woman who wasn’t armed, just for being a woman and I don’t know what happened.”
Tulum has suffered growing pains from its rapid development, land disputes and gang activity that has begun to mar its reputation as a low-key, peaceful contrast to busier resorts like Cancún and Playa del Carmen.