She awoke to a gun in her face. What happened next would change Mexican law

She awoke to a gun in her face. What happened next would change Mexican law

Alina Narciso says she found herself facing decades in prison after she killed her abusive boyfriend in self-defence.


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Alina Narciso alleges that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly abused her in the lead-up to their fatal confrontation [Alicia Fabregas/Al Jazeera]
By Alícia Fàbregas
Published On 8 Sep 20238 Sep 2023

Tijuana, Mexico – On the evening of December 12, 2019, as Alina Narciso was falling asleep in her home in Tijuana, Mexico, she remembers hearing her boyfriend Luis Rodrigo Juarez snorting cocaine. Hours later, she was awoken by a gun to her head. It was Juarez, asking her if she “was going to leave him again”. “One hand was enough for him to beat me in strength, and drunk and drugged, I thought: I don’t have a chance against him,” Narciso, now 28, told Al Jazeera. What happened next would raise questions about self-defence law in Mexico — and reshape how the criminal justice system in the state of Baja California assesses gender-based violence.

Both Narciso and Juarez were police officers: They met through work when Narciso was only 22. But from the very beginning, Narciso said Juarez was extremely controlling: “He wanted us to be together all the time.” He also could be violent: According to Narciso, he had sexually abused her and threatened her life on multiple occasions. Narciso had tried to leave several times, but Juarez always promised to change. He would stop drinking and seek psychological help, she remembers him telling her in a bid to make her stay. She said they had been discussing those broken promises on December 12. To avoid an argument, Narciso decided to go to sleep. Juarez had been drinking for hours that day. But the barrel of the gun jolted her awake. Narciso said she tried to escape, but Juarez would not let her. He holstered his weapon and began to beat her furiously, pulling her hair, smashing her face against a door frame and grabbing her by the neck. In the struggle, Narciso said she managed to grab the firearm. “There was no chance of me getting out of there alive,” she remembers thinking. As Juarez came towards her, she closed her eyes and fired six shots.

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Demonstrators in Chihuahua, Mexico, march for International Women’s Day on March 8, with signs that read, ‘I believe you’ and ‘If tomorrow it’s me, hug my mom’ [File: Adriana Esquivel/AP Photo]
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Demonstrators march on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Mexico City, Mexico, on November 25, 2022 [File: Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters]
‘A circle of violence’
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Alina Narciso’s family campaigned for her freedom after she was convicted of homicide in the death of her boyfriend [Karen Castaneda/Al Jazeera]
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In May, Alina Narciso was freed from Tijuana’s La Mesa prison in Mexico after an appeals court reversed her conviction [Karen Castaneda/Al Jazeera]

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But there is still a long way to go to combat stereotypes around intimate partner violence, according to Miguel Mora, the president of the Human Rights Commission of Baja California. “We cannot yet speak of a process of institution building, nor the application of justice, with a true gender perspective,” Mora said.
He believes a more holistic reform is required to address bias throughout the criminal justice system: from the police on the street up to the highest judges. As for Narciso and her family, they are still recovering from the trauma of their ordeal. “The state caused us irreversible damage,” Tehuaxtle said. “We are still suffering the consequences.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/8/she-awoke-to-a-gun-in-her-face-what-happened-next-would-change-mexican-law