From American Dream to American Nightmare

Six years have gone by since Jerónimo Martínez Ramírez, known as Agustín among the Trique¹ people, left his wife Victoria Hernández Flores and their three children in the community of Cruz Chiquita to go in search of the American dream. The dream lasted just a year before turning into a bitter nightmare that could end in Jerónimo’s execution in a Madera County jail in California. His wife recalls that Jerónimo started sending a remittance for their children’s education shortly after he reached the United States, just as they had agreed. After a year of hard agricultural labor at Greenfield, California, Jerónimo, a family man with strong community ties, was already making plans to return to his family. On the afternoon of May 25, 2010, he called his wife to tell her to expect him home the following week. But the longed-for moment never came. During the afternoon of May 30, Jerónimo called his wife from a jail in Madera County to tell her that he had been accused of the murder of two of his countrymen: Delfino Martínez, also from Cruz Chiquita, and Fidel García, from Unión de los Ángeles, Copala.

Jerónimo was tried for multiple homicide in a United States court. Madera County District Attorney Michael R. Keitz called for the death penalty against Jerónimo, and the process might have had him on death row by now had it not been for mitigating evidence presented by defense attorney Dhyana Fernández, among others. In December 2012, based on the findings of two psychological reports presented by the defense, the California State Court declared Jerónimo Martínez mentally incompetent to stand trial, leading to the suspension of the proceedings and Jerónimo’s placement in Atascadero State Hospital until a final decision on his mental state can determine whether to resume trial proceedings, where he faces the death penalty if convicted, or order an alternative to jail. Jerónimo’s defense attorney Fernández, said, “At the end of [October 2014], there will be a hearing to determine his psychological state and whether or not he is competent to stand trial. In the meantime, he will continue to be held in a hospital facility and not in jail.”*

Our² own investigation uncovered the fact that federal and state archives, as well as U.S. human rights organizations, have very little information on the Jerónimo Martínez case. Jerónimo’s family has been equally forgotten. Government officials have not made a single call to Jerónimo’s wife, whose only means of supporting her children is weaving and selling huipiles³ among her own Trique people.

Fernández, traveled to Mexico in 2012 hoping to substantiate her theory of the case by compiling a report on the sociocultural and political conditions in the accused’s home village of Cruz Chiquita. Her aim was to find mitigating evidence which could help promote a more favorable outcome for Jerónimo. However, during an initial interview with the head of the Oaxaca Migrant Support Institute, Rufino Domínguez advised her that it would not be safe for her to try to penetrate the Cruz Chiquita community, and the defense attorney was obliged to return to the United States without the report.

Another significant aspect of the case is that in Jerónimo’s first statement, he affirmed that he had found Delfino Martínez and Fidel García dead inside the house where they rented rooms on the day before he made the statement, Friday, May 28. The Madera County District Attorney’s interpretation of this statement — that it was a lie designed to cover the crime — begs the question: What sane person plans a murder, calmly kills two people one night, goes to work the next day, and then goes back to tell the landlord that there are two dead people in his rented room? When we first made contact with Jerónimo a couple of years ago, he told us that he could not remember very well what had happened. Now he affirms that it was he who committed the murders. But rather than indulge in mere speculation, let us hope that the competent Mexican authorities and human rights organizations return to the Jerónimo Martínez case, taking steps and initiating diplomatic measures which may help our compatriot to escape the death penalty, and even, in the best of scenarios, prove his innocence.

Editor’s note: ¹ The Trique are an indigenous people of the western part of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Editor’s note: ² Alternative Indigenous Movement (Movimiento Indígena Alterno)

Editor’s note: ³ Traditional garments worn by indigenous women from central Mexico to Central America.

*Editor’s note: The quotation, while accurately translated, could not be verified.