Content note: this article contains details of graphic violence.
Police in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico have reported the gruesome murder of a lesbian couple on Sunday, sending shockwaves through the local LGBTQ+ community.
According to the Mexican newspaper El Diario, 28-year-olds Julissa Ramírez and Nohemí Medina Martínez, a lesbian couple living in Texas who had been married since 2021, were murdered over the weekend. Their bodies had been dismembered after the two were shot to death, and the pieces placed into plastic bags and scattered along the side of a highway. Relatives confirmed their identities on Monday.
Authorities have yet to publicly reveal any suspects in the case, but Chihuahua Attorney General Roberto Fierro has denied widespread speculation that the murders were a hate crime, insinuating instead that both women were killed because of their involvment in drug trafficking — or, to use his euphemistic language, “the economic activity that both victims were engaged in.”
Ramírez and Martínez’s deaths mark two of the nine femicides in Ciudad Juárez and Valle de Juárez in 2022 alone, a rate of one murder roughly every 45 hours. The area has become infamous over the years for its high murder rate, particularly of murdered women, although killings have decreased overall in recent years. (Some analysts have pointed out that American cities such as Houston report higher rates of deadly violence against women, and that anti-Latine racism plays a part in Juárez’s infamy.)
“People of sexual diversity are questioned, including their existence through heteronormative discourse,” said LGBTQ+ advocacy group Comité de la Diversidad Sexual de Chihuahua in a statement (originally in Spanish) released Wednesday. “They have the right to a life free of violence in which they exercise all their rights, in addition to living without fear or fear of rejection and aggressions that can unfortunately escalate to hate crimes.”
Other local activist groups including Personas de las Diversidades Afectivo Sexuales organized a protest on Thursday mourning Ramírez and Martínez and calling on officials to take action in stemming violence against queer women. “The authorities are blind towards what is happening,” said one marcher, as reported by Border Report. “In addition to the widespread violence from drug trafficking, there’s also violence against LGBT people for being LGBT.”
We at them. mourn Ramírez and Martínez’s memories, and hope their families find swift justice and peace.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
