Update (7 August 2015): According to the police, the women (Nadia, 18-year-old Yesenia Quiroz Alfaro, a young Colombian woman, and a Mexican housekeeper whose identities have not been disclosed yet) showed signs of having been sexually abused before being killed.

Although she was originally from Comitán, Chiapas, anthropologist Nadia Vera Pérez, 32, had a precise diagnosis for the crisis of violence and impunity plaguing Veracruz, the state where she did her university studies and where she also lived.

“Here you are the merchandise,” she told the creators of “Veracruz: la fosa olvidada” (“Veracruz: The Forgotten Pit”), a November 2014 report produced by the internet television channel Rompeviento documenting the disappearances in the city of Xalapa  and aired in November 2014.

Translation:

“The human traffickers grab you as a woman, the hired killers if you’re a student. Here we are all the problem, disturbing the Government as well as the narcos; we’re faced with repression on two fronts, the legal and the illegal. Because the narcos are the government in this state. The narcos are the ones in power; the Zetas are literally the ones who manipulate this whole state, rule it; here they charge you use rights, there they charge you to operate a bar, they charge you just to have a job,” said the young University of Veracruz graduate who, up to the time of her death was cultural affairs promoter.

Vera’s body was found last Friday, July 31, together with those of other three women and photojournalist Rubén Espinosa, 31, in an apartment in Mexico City’s Narvarte section. Vera’s body showed signs of “a gunshot wound to the head and multiple abrasions.” Both Espinosa and Vera were well known in Veracruz for publicly denouncing the violence and out-of-control impunity in the city, especially after 2010, when Javier Duarte de Ochoa took the reins of the state government.

“And the context of who Javier Duarte de Ochoa was must be understood: You give a little power to an ignoramus and this is what occurs. Because he’s not even conscious of the political cost of anything. They killed Regina Martínez, and nothing happened. They also just killed Gregorio Jiménez, another journalist, and nothing has happened. So many journalists have been murdered, and nothing has happened,” Vera said in the interview.

With a scarf around her neck and sunglasses on her head, the anthropologist stood boldly before the camera and posed questions about the climate of violence that appears to have caught up with her and her friend Rubén in the Mexican capital.

Translation:

“How many advocates, activists, human rights defenders have been murdered, kidnapped, disappeared? Or maybe why we have a huge number of disappearances has something to do with the person we have governing us and still proclaiming this to be the safest state right now. I don’t think he has the least bit of shame,” she added.

Vera had recently denounced a June 5 machete attack in Xalapa against eight Humanities students and activists from the University of Veracruz who had gathered at a house in the Veracruz state capital. The academic community held the state’s Secretary of Public Security Arturo Bermúdez responsible.