Coridh: Calderón government, guilty of rape, torture and death of Ernestina Ascencio
Jared Laureles and Alexia Villaseñor
La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, December 17, 2025, p. 4
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Coridh) declared that the Mexican State is responsible for the “sexual rape, torture and death” of Ernestina Ascencio Rosario, perpetrated in February 2007 by soldiers in the Zongolica mountains, Veracruz. The events occurred during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and in the context of the so-called war against drug trafficking, undertaken by the PAN in the first year of his government, according to the ruling.
At the time, former President Calderón attributed the death to “chronic gastritis.” The National Human Rights Commission, then headed by José Luis Soberanes, explained that the death occurred for reasons similar to those indicated by the federal Executive.
Coridh pointed out that the investigation was closed “prematurely”, without having exhausted the lines of investigation; It was not conducted with an “intersectionality approach,” particularly relevant for being an older indigenous woman, nor did it incorporate gender perspectives.
The ruling, issued almost 19 years after the events, determined that the authorities at that time failed to fulfill their duty to investigate crimes with “due diligence” and to guarantee equal access to justice for their children; Furthermore, it established that the lack of timely and adequate medical care caused the death of the 73-year-old monolingual Nahuatl indigenous woman.
The international court “found that Ernestina Ascencio was raped by members of the Mexican Army on February 25, 2007,” within the framework of the fight against drug trafficking undertaken by Calderón since 2006.
On that date, the victim was found badly injured by family members in the vicinity of the 63rd Infantry Battalion, in the 26th Military Zone of Veracruz. “The soldiers came at me,” Ernestina, who died two days after the attack, told her daughter in the Nahuatl language.
In the sentence – which is final and irrevocable, so the Mexican government is obliged to comply with it – the Coridh also resolved that the State violated the rights to life, integrity and health; to non-discrimination, and access to justice, truth and judicial protection, established in international treaties.
Representatives of the Mexican State participated in the Court’s notification, including Víctor Sánchez Colín, ambassador to Costa Rica, and Rosalinda Salinas, director of international litigation cases at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the legal representatives of the victims.
For this case –at the time widely documented by The Day– Rodrigo Mudrovich, vice president of Coridh, pointed out that as reparation measures, the State was ordered to conduct an “exhaustive and serious criminal investigation, within a reasonable period of time, into the sexual rape, torture and death” of Ernestina Ascencio, to “identify, prosecute and, where appropriate, punish those materially and intellectually responsible.”
It also indicated that a public act of recognition of international responsibility must be carried out, as well as providing medical, psychological, psychiatric or psychosocial, culturally and linguistically appropriate and effective treatment to the children of the deceased.
The State will have one year, counting from yesterday, to submit a report on the measures adopted to comply with the ruling. “The Court will supervise full compliance with the sentence and the exercise of its powers established in the American Convention on Human Rights, and will conclude the present case once the State has fully complied with the provisions thereof,” he concluded.
