MARIANA LIMA BUENDÍA PUT THE COURT TO TEST - SinEmbargo MX
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
Between June 29, 2010 and March 25, 2015, 4 years, 8 months and 25 days will have elapsed. That is the time elapsed between Mariana's murder and the date – next Wednesday – on which the ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) will rule on the femicide that occurred in Chimalhuacán, State of Mexico.
The case of Mariana, the murdered daughter of Irinea and Lauro, parents in permanent mourning and demanding justice, exemplifies the main obstacles and problems faced by relatives of victims of femicide because, regardless of how the violent deaths of women occur, women, the authorities omit an investigation with due diligence and a gender perspective.
In September 2013, the SCJN brought up Mariana's case by considering the complaints based on the omissions committed by the Edomex law enforcement authorities to adequately and timely investigate the case well founded. It is not a minor fact for the thousands of women murdered in Mexico. On March 25, we Mexicans will have the historic opportunity for the Court to recognize the importance of carrying out the necessary procedures to investigate, with a gender perspective, the violent deaths of women and femicides, and set a precedent to establish these research criteria.
For the first time, the SCJN will be able to rule in the sense that the authorities in charge of procuring and administering justice consider certain actions with a gender perspective in terms of what is established by the "Cotton Field" ruling, issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The attraction of the case of Mariana Lima Buendía and the favorable ruling would show that the issue of violence against women is a matter of concern and a serious violation of human rights. The determination that is issued is transcendent, since it would contribute to the struggle of the victims of femicide for access to justice and the right to know the truth.
Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico, March 19 (However) .– Irinea Buendía takes a cord identical to the one that, according to the Mexiquense justice, her daughter used to hang herself. The woman with a dark face and white hair walks to the window of her living room, leans against the wall and takes the bow around her neck.
He drops his weight calculating not to fall, but with enough force to demonstrate two things: the mark that would be left by a hanging of that nature would be deep and would draw a "U", with the center of the shape in the part of greater contact with the trend to fade sideways and up.
But first she tries something else: that rope would not support the weight of an adult woman. Mariana Lima's mother has taken the test over and over again. A macramé thread like that yields at 14.5 kilos.
“We have always tried to see justice done; that asking and asking and demanding justice is simply and simply so that other women do not die. Regardless of what we do, my daughter will never come back, but I want the man who killed my daughter not to kill another woman," says Irinea Buendía in an interview a few years after Mariana Lima's death.
And we will see: the commander of the Judicial Police of the State of Mexico Julio César Hernández Ballinas is the perfect metaphor for the Mexican justice system with respect to women.
Irinea Buendía was born in 1952 in Tenextepango, Morelos, in the area of greatest influence of the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, in whose stories of justice and rebellion against opprobrium her childhood rode.
Not long after, her father died.
The Buendías visited her grave and made their way to Mexico City in the hope of finding treatment in the Mexican capital for the meningitis suffered by one of her younger sisters; the town doctor had made it clear that he would not get her through and that she needed hospitalization and specialized treatment. The whole family clung to the life of that girl.
Perhaps at that moment the deep sense of struggle for the lives of their women was kindled in them. It was 1968, Irinea remembers it well because Mexico City suffered from the ambiguity between the Olympic party and the student massacre.
Irinea dropped out of school looking for a job to help buy medicine for her sick sister. The effort was not in vain and the girl survived, but everyone's life changed forever. They did not return to Morelos but instead bought a piece of land in the El Sol neighborhood, in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a piece of territory that a short time ago had broken away from Chimalhuacán, the corpse of the paradise that was Lake Texcoco.
A few years later, Irinea broke the moral rule of that time and lived in free union with a man with whom she procreated her first two children, a boy and a girl. The couple broke up and she met José Lauro Ignacio Lima Cervantes, who one afternoon shined her shoes, ironed her shirt, and with the due ceremony that the matter demanded, he asked for Irinea's hand.
Lauro is a man with a small body, a very white head, peaceful humility and luminous intelligence that led him to discover books on his own. She was enthusiastic about Emilio Salgari to the point of having the audacity to name one of his sons Sandokan.
Irinea and Lauro continued their lives in Neza. He worked as an ice delivery inspector for Cervecería Modelo, a job that fills him with a candid pride that reaches its peak when he recounts the moments when, every Christmas, he himself brought a carton of Victoria beers to the owner of the company.
The couple bought a small juice and smoothie stand in the market, which Irinea ran. Life seemed simple: the two children studied at a nearby elementary school and waited for Lauro to eat; It was natural for him to raise the boys with whom his wife arrived.
The couple took advantage of an offer to buy the house where they live until now and where Mariana was born, exactly in the same place where Irinea now talks about her dead Marianita.
The girl was born on March 25, 1981, preceding Laura and Sandokan, the last of the children of Irinea and Lauro.
“In kindergarten she got along with everyone else; she always played, she never fought. Laurita, her youngest, once defended her: Marianita didn't like hitting and I never had any complaints about her, ever. Even when she grew up, she liked to dance a lot. La Flaquita played the flute in high school. She liked the “Pan Flute”, she learned it very well. ”
Mariana was skillful with her hands: she learned card making, embroidery and took a stylist course before entering the College of Sciences and Humanities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), campus Oriente. She was a girl with a fiery sense of justice inherited from Irinea and a persevering dedication to learning, for example from Lauro.
She managed to study Law at the highly sought after Faculty of Law, in Ciudad Universitaria. She believed with tender honesty that her work would make a difference, however modest, in a world defined by injustice.
The girl set herself the goal of pursuing a master's degree in Criminal Law and in 2006 she got a job at the Chimalhuacán Justice Center, in the eastern part of the metropolitan area of Mexico City and one of the places with the highest concentration of urban misery in the country.
Chimalhuacán has only had PRI governments and its layout was resolved by professional land invaders who sold each lot two or three times to low-income families who arrived mainly from southern Mexico. These hoarders became in a short time and until the present the owners of the economy and politics of the municipality, a place without trees, scarce water and swarms of carts pulled by horses and mules whose suffering is not even possible to imagine.
Perhaps Chimalhuacán, with 612,000 inhabitants in 2010, is the only place in Mexico City – made up of the Federal District and today mostly the State of Mexico – where barefoot children and elderly people are still seen on the streets.
The Attorney General's Office of the State of Mexico built a Justice Center in Chimalhuacán.
In that place, Mariana met a judicial police officer, the man of her life and, Irinea, her mother maintains, with clear evidence, the man of her death.
In 2008 Mariana finished her degree and her colleagues from the Attorney General's Office celebrated at the girl's house. The degree was still missing, but that was just around the corner. The agent from the Public Ministry, her secretary and other officials attended. Also Julio César Hernández Ballinas, a judicial police officer better known by his second surname; only Mariana addressed him by his two first names. She soon showed that she was the protagonist of the meeting.
Ballinas is tall, stocky, very dark, has a wide nose, is partially bald –when he didn't shave his head, he dyed the little hair blond–, he grows or grew a mustache and it was evident that he was several years older than Mariana: he was 45 and she was 29.
At that party he wore a white shirt and pants and black shoes; he sat on the headboard, unholstered his pistol and placed it on the table. He seemed vigilant and his position near the door of the house was a shocking display of his alertness to the parents.
Although he refrained from drinking alcohol that night, he drew attention with shouting and profanity; he only lowered his voice when he addressed, with whispers, the agent of the Public Ministry, his boss.
He didn't leave his place until Marianita came over.
"Come, I'm going to introduce you to my parents," the young woman asked Ballinas.
Irinea would remember, years later, her first impression of the judicial police officer: “When he introduced him to us, I immediately perceived a very arrogant guy, with a very big ego and who feels more than anyone else, who thinks he is the owner of the world, like that. I'm sorry; that all of them are boys and he sees us as if over his shoulder, I feel ”.
The guy avoided the handshake. His red eyes gleamed within drooping lids.
"Good afternoon, boss," she addressed Irinea.
Lauro, Mariana's father, had had some beers and was in a chatty mood.
Is he your boyfriend or your friend? Him, he asked Mariana.
"No, he's just my friend," the young woman blushed.
–Here you do have to walk very straight, because Marianita is the daughter of a family –warned the Public Ministry agent to the judicial police just to confirm the relationship.
Ballinas listened and watched. At the end of the meeting, Lauro gave a box of beers to his last guests and they said goodbye.
They dealt with Ballinas one more time before the judicial policeman, in a hurry and annoyance, went through the process of asking for Mariana's hand.
Irinea would describe her imminent son-in-law: "It was enough to look into his eyes to realize that he is like vipers: they are just waiting for the moment when someone fails for them to feel even more."
Is he your friend or is he your boyfriend? –Lauro found out as soon as he had a chance, subtly showing his dislike for that man whom he would describe years later:
Mariana was silent and Lauro, with her permanent affable attitude, sat down next to her daughter and told her how he had learned that the police are not trustworthy men.
Before marrying Irinea, he had a store in the Federal District, near the Basilica of Guadalupe.
"As a provincial, one has no malice," he chose the words with his daughter. Twice the thieves surprised me, I think they were sent by the same police.
Luckily for him, he met a judicial police officer with whom he began a certain friendship. That man introduced him to one of his brothers-in-law, who eventually appeared at Lauro's store and asked him for a loan, arguing that he needed a part for his vehicle, showing him a piece of greased iron as proof of his need.
"Well, I don't have any, my capital isn't much and what I get I use for merchandise," Lauro tried to justify himself.
–Look, lend me one hundred and fifty pesos – “money from forty-five years ago”, Lauro underlined in his story to clarify the amount of the loan, but he did not know how to resist and gave him 200.
"I'll bring it to you early tomorrow," promised the court's relative.
-I hope so, because you already know that money is never too much here.
The guy left and didn't come back. Two or three days later another subject arrived with a Texan hat, a leather jacket and brown shoes; he waited for Lauro to finish dispatching some children.
"Good morning," greeted the shopkeeper.
-Hello. Are you the owner of the store?
Yes, I'll take care of it here.
- Well, we have a complaint against you.
– Oh, darling! If I don't even get out of my changarro. Complaint? Why or from what?
–You are a buyer of chueco –that is what is said to what has been obtained illegally.
-Than?
-Yes, yes, you: what the thieves steal they come to sell to you. –The greasy snack shone in Lauro's memory–. We caught a car thief, the kind that dismantles cars and then sells the stuff they take, and you bought him a part of the water pump.
-No, I didn't buy it, look, it was like this -for the purpose of administering justice in Mexico, Lauro located himself circumstantially, any explanation didn't matter-: I know a guy who is a colleague of yours, an agent , has a brother-in-law and he came to ask me to lend him two hundred pesos to buy a piece of a broken down car.
-Yes, that's the way these sons of so-and-so are -Lauro avoided dirtying the language-, what happens is that we've already registered all of this, we already have everything we find, but we must communicate it to the headquarters and we can no longer push us back Come with me, let's go to the Public Ministry, or I warn you that you will go straight to jail for robbery.
–No, well, I have to attend to my business… How much is the fine, the infraction or whatever you call it? Laura implored.
–Give me fifteen hundred pesos and that's where he dies –the judicial franked.
Lauro handed over the money and went ahead with the business.
One of his main sales was the egg. The merchant bought at a large store until a man appeared with a yellow tricycle, one of those with a pair of tires on the front, and offered him the food at the price, at wholesale cost, without the need to make the complicated transfer through the product fragility.
Shortly after, he saw him again, this time in a car with other subjects. The vehicle slowed down in front of the miscellany enough for Lauro to greet him and thus undoubtedly establish his identity, after which the guy pretended to be beaten.
–Do you know him? –Raised his voice one of the vendor's companions, already inside the store and with a police attitude.
-Yes, I know him, because as a merchant I deal with many people.
– Well, yes, but you don't pay attention to who you deal with, you never ask for notes on what you buy.
"Yes, I have notes," Lauro tried to defend himself.
Do you have notes on all the egg cartons you buy?
–No, I don't have any of those; That's the only thing I don't have.
The routine continued with the display of two certificates drawn up for egg theft: one showed an alleged theft with a value greater than sixty thousand pesos, and the other was for seven thousand pesos.
–Look, this guy is cheating everyone, he steals an egg from a farm in Texcoco and he's surprising the merchants here, we've already caught several.
And they did it with him too: they took him to the police headquarters, in the center of the city, and kept him detained without further explanation or news for a day until one of his brothers showed up.
"Here is a complaint filed for sixty-odd thousand pesos and another for ten, twelve thousand pesos," an official explained to Lauro's brother.
"But my brother hasn't bought all that egg," he argued in favor of the detainee.
–No, we don't say that, but he is one of those who have bought.
As soon as there was an opportunity, Lauro asked his brother to look for the old acquaintance from the Judicial Police; he could undo the mess. And so it was: surely, with a serious accent, his friend slipped to the other side of the fence.
-Five thousand pesos are needed.
Lauro paid, closed the store forever, and also forever distrusted any judicial police that crossed his path. That was the moral of the story that he vainly tried to get his daughter Mariana to learn from him.
Mariana only said that she loved him and that her boyfriend simply survived a bad childhood, although she had seen many things that she did not like.
–But you are not the savior of him; Marianita, that type of men the first thing they do is make you feel sorry for them and you don't have to carry that burden –observed her mother.
"But I've fallen in love and you know that in the heart one doesn't rule," clung to the daughter.
From then on, the police prowled the house and avoided entering; when he passed by his girlfriend he stationed himself on the opposite sidewalk and from there he warned of her presence.
–Mariana! Mariana! Mariana! –She shouted.
-Shut up! –Lauro ran out–. Why are you screaming like that?
The court was silent and Mariana, running, left to avoid another third of shouting with her name.
One Sunday in late August 2008, Lauro and Irinea returned home from visiting a Mormon temple, stepped through the doorway, and found that the air in their living room was beer vapor rising from their chest, stomach, and every pore of their skin. Ballina skin. A narcocorrido flooded the rest of the house.
Mariana cooked a fish broth that she went to buy very early at the La Viga market; She took pains to cook it very spicy to return to the minimum necessary sobriety to the policeman who was rocking on the sofa with his chin buried in his chest.
-Marianita, Julius Caesar is very drunk -obviously Irinea.
"He's taken," Mariana clarified. I tell him not to do it anymore, but he is stubborn.
Soon the eldest of Irinea's sons arrived. Another of his sisters was also invited but she was out of town, so there would only be a few who would witness Mariana's request for Julius Caesar's hand that noon.
No one accompanied the suitor. This lack of etiquette only paid Lauro and Irinea the contempt and anguish that this man represented to them.
"I want to marry his daughter," Ballinas made an effort to say it in a rush, but, unintentionally, he turned his head in one direction and his gaze in another. We have a date for September 13; is what I want to talk to you.
–Is he asking for our hand or is he putting us before a fait accompli? It seems that nothing else comes to warn us -the mother-in-law started-, she is not taking us into account so as to ask for her hand. To begin with, I don't agree, because I'm not used to dealing with drunk people and even less for one of these things; This is serious and I would have liked her to at least bring her mom.
Ballinas or his drunken presence assumed that the refusal involved an insult and the simple insinuation of something similar made him explode.
"I'm too old to bring my mom, I already know what I decide," he thundered.
–It may be that you are old enough to feel grown up, but in something this important… For me it would have been more significant if you had asked for my daughter's hand in her trial and not the way you are. I don't even allow my children, who are my children, to drink intoxicating beverages in my house, why should you? It doesn't seem like that to me.
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–This is not the time to deal with an issue of this nature –Lauro interjected–, nor the state. I would like you to come aware of what you do and to be able to weigh your responsibility: getting married is not such a simple thing and a matter should not be treated so lightly.
Her brother, more gently, also chimed in in favor of her future brother-in-law showing up sober.
"I know what I'm doing, I'm aware of what I'm doing," Ballinas insisted.
Finally, the policeman plunged his spoon into the plate of fish and chili.
A week before the marriage, Ballinas drank himself to the skies; he staggered and reached for two more beers before asking Mariana and her best friend, Maricela, to go outside in Chimalhuacán.
"Come on, we're going to take a shot," he stammered, according to Maricela's account.
"Calm down, Julio, don't take out that weapon because it's very dangerous," Mariana asked.
-What will be dangerous! That's for assholes, but you know I'm not asshole. Yeah, let's go.
He took the gun and pulled the trigger twice.
"Calm down, because the neighbors can come," Mariana implored.
-I'm the dick and no one, no bastard is going to say anything to me, and let the sons of the bitch stand up on me.
"Give it to me, I'll keep it for you," Mariana begged and wept.
–Now, fucking old woman, let's go so you can stop screwing around.
Mariana Lima Buendía and Julio César Hernández Ballinas agreed to their wedding only by civil means on December 13, 2008 at the police house, on top of a hill in Chimalhuacán.
Ballinas was divorced and in his previous relationship he had also joined the Church, which prevented the Catholic rite.
The Law graduate would soon find out in the worst way that her predecessor lived beaten and humiliated by the man she was now joining.
She wanted a white dress, but Ballinas went ahead and presented her with a khaki tailored suit: her outfit was so distasteful to the girl that she was about to cancel the ceremony.
"Hurry up, it's late and you're not showing up," Ballinas hurried over the phone.
In his house, in Ciudad Neza, his friend Carmen noticed the doubts.
"Marianita, if you don't want to get married, don't get married," she exhorted.
-But my parents... -Mariana justified herself.
"No, daughter, don't do it for us," Irinea intervened hopefully. Don't feel like you have to do it just because he's here to talk.
"Yes, I will," she convinced herself.
-It's your decision.
They set out on the road to Chimalhuacán. On the journey, an hour by car, Ballinas did not stop dialing the phone to goad Mariana. He spoke so loudly that Lauro and Irinea heard the rudeness with which he addressed her girlfriend.
Mariana, in addition to relatives, only invited friends: unthinkable that she would meet a man. One of them, Maricela, had been close to him since childhood and she was also opposed to her relationship because it seemed to her that at any moment the prospect would clearly reveal himself as a misogynist individual.
On his part, only her mother attended the ceremony; the woman lived in the Campestre Guadalupana neighborhood, also in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl. Besides her there was only family contact with a sister, Maribel.
The other attendees were agents of the Public Ministry and judicial police who, as soon as the judge was silent, began the drunkenness led by Ballinas. As the party progressed, the distance to the bathroom seemed to multiply, so the cops urinated in the garage.
The couple made their home in his house in the Xochitenco neighborhood of Chimalhuacán, an unfinished two-story house.
One of Ballinas's first decisions was to demand that Mariana give up her job and become, from one day to the next, an accomplished housewife: the house had to look impeccable and everything had to take her place.
Before the first month of marriage, on January 10, 2009, Mariana spoke on the phone with her mother. As soon as she picked up Irinea, the girl burst into tears: Ballinas had hit her and run from the house.
The woman asked another of her sons-in-law to take her to Mariana. They got into the car and when they arrived at Xochitenco they found her sitting in the doorway with her hair standing on end in different directions and her face reddened.
- What happened, Marianita? What happened? Irinea asked as she entered the policeman's house, absent at the time.
–Julio César hit me because he didn't like how I made his steak or the juice; he wanted the meat three-quarters cooked and the juice well strained –he repeated the orders.
Her mother looked with concern at a baseball bat leaning against the wall.
"We are going to report him, Marianita," Irinea did not hesitate.
-No, because he already told me that if I report him he's going to kill me with that bat that's there: just one in the head he's going to hit me and he's going to put me in the cistern, because he says he's already put two or three old women –he cried, as his mother does now when repeating the dialogue.
"It doesn't matter, come on, nothing's going to happen," the mother insisted.
"No, mom, I'm not going.
Mariana only agreed to return to her parents' house in Ciudad Neza. Irinea and Ballinas began a duel to convince Mariana: her mother, to take the matter to the Public Ministry, and the husband to make his wife return to him.
"I'm going back with him, mom, I'm going to give him another chance," Mariana resolved with her mom.
–It can't be, it can't be, Marianita.
And she went to Chimalhuacán.
In February 2010 the work on the house got worse because Ballinas decided to restart the construction of the house, so all the time the place was covered by cement and plaster dust.
That same month, on a Sunday, the phone rang at Mariana's parents' house. Irinea picked up and heard the voice of her son-in-law. He sounded strange: not drunk, at least not like he had heard before. There was something missing in the tone, slow in the flow of the words.
"I'm going to kill Mariana," he threatened.
"Does he have shit on his head or what's wrong with him?!" The mother bristled.
On the other side, Mariana's arrival and a struggle over the phone were heard.
-Mamacita, what is she telling you? Mariana spoke.
-I'll explain later, Marianita, are you okay?
Two or three days later, outside his house, Irinea had the opportunity to confront Ballinas. It was a good time, because the policeman was sober.
-What happens to you? Why is he calling me on the phone to tell me that he is going to kill my daughter?
"Yes, I'm going to kill her," replied the other. Yes, I am going to kill her and put her in the cistern.
-Look, if you don't want my daughter, leave her here. It doesn't bother us, we have always loved Mariana; she was a desired child and you don't love her, you don't even respect her.
-No, boss, I'm already a grown-up for advice -the man began to retreat.
I'm not going to chase you, come here.
–I already told you that I'm too old for little advice –Ballinas turned around.
At the end of February, Mariana returned to Neza, beaten again, and coming and going, beaten and repentant, became a routine. According to Lauro and Irinea, the police officer's first justifications for hurting her daughter had to do with the fact that the girl did not perform housework correctly. She explained that she had spent her life in the classroom and not in the kitchen, but nothing mattered when it came to her: without excuse, they had to have exactly three egg whites without any yolk and be well scrambled.
-You just put two.
-No, I put all three.
- What do you think, that I'm an asshole? Do not! You are the asshole because I know perfectly well, my throat is capable of knowing how many egg whites you put in it.
And slapped. The defense infuriated him and the silence too. Irinea and Lauro remember that he once complained about her because she thought her clothes were poorly washed, and once more because he noticed she was overweight.
-Fat bitch! Do you think you're the only one? –Ballinas made things clear before slamming the door.
One day, while he was driving with his wife at his side, he abruptly stopped the car.
–You already turned to see that son of a bitch!
"I just turned around like that, I didn't turn around to see anyone," Mariana trembled.
But there was only one truth in the world and he hit her several times in the belly. Irinea tells the details because she Mariana shared every moment of her life in hell.
In the first months of 2010, Mariana stopped visiting her parents for a week; Irinea looked for a way to see her and her nephew agreed to take her to Chimalhuacán. They distinguished her sitting on a chair outside her house, she was holding a broomstick in her hands and one of her legs was bandaged, from her foot to her knee. Ballinas, Irinea assures, he had thrown her down the stairs. Mariana required medical attention, but the possibility that the matter would lead to the police being called to her account made her desist from visiting the doctor.
-Oh, Marianita, I really don't understand, why don't you leave it? Her mother insisted.
–He is going to change, he has to realize that I love him, that he is not going to find another woman who loves him like I do.
That same month, during Holy Week 2010, Ballinas beat one of his mistresses in the nearby municipality of Chalco. Mariana found out about it from her own husband, owner of a language with a life of its own when she drank. In the version shared with Irinea, the guy flew into a rage, threw the woman's cell phone against the wall and then hit her. Pero la amante se defendió, con una navaja alcanzó a cortar superficialmente al policía en el abdomen y luego huyó. Ballinas vivía mortificado desde ese momento porque la señora era una reputada bruja y el terriblemente supersticioso judicial mexiquense temía ser blanco de algún hechizo de magia negra.
Esta zozobra empeoró el ánimo del hombre, que se vengó de la situación con su esposa.
Ballinas tenía un amigo, judicial como él en el Distrito Federal, quien le prestaba su vehículo oficial al policía mexiquense; en una ocasión, Ballinas maniobró ese auto con la intención de atropellarla.
Junto a esto aseguraba que otra de sus mujeres, residente en ese tiempo en Tijuana, vendría a vivir al Estado de México. Humillación sobre vergüenza, ésa era su vida.
Mariana así lo entendió y dio por hecho que los incidentes de la escalera y el auto fueron en realidad intentos por asesinarla. A fines de junio de 2010 aseguró que estaba dispuesta a denunciar a su marido: se lo dijo a Irinea, a Lauro ya Carmen, su mejor amiga.
Y también se lo dijo al policía judicial Julio César Hernández Ballinas.
El 26 de junio de 2010 fue sábado. Ese día tocaba pagar a los trabajadores que continuaban la construcción de la casa del policía. Ballinas revisó donde guardaba el dinero, sitio que también conocía Mariana.
–Faltan dos mil pesos, ¿dónde están? –preguntó, ya con la furia en ascenso.
–No sé, tú debes de saber. Yo no agarro nada de ese dinero.
–Tú tienes que saber dónde está. Yo llevo mis cuentas perfectamente.
–Yo no he tomado ningún dinero de ahí –Mariana supo que en cualquier momento le caería un manotazo.
Ballinas lanzó una metralla de insultos y frente a los albañiles empujó a Mariana por una escalera provisional instalada afuera de la casa; ella se alcanzó a detener y, mientras recuperaba el equilibrio, recibió un zapatazo en la espalda lanzado por su marido. La mujer tomó su teléfono celular antes de salir a la carrera, segura de que la tunda sería implacable.
–¡Mamá, me acabo de salir y vengo corriendo por unas calles escondiéndome de Julio César, porque si me ve me va a pegar!
–Cuando salgas a la avenida toma un taxi –pidió Irinea.
–¡No, mamá, no traigo dinero!
–No importa, tú toma el taxi, yo aquí lo pago.
Mariana buscó a Maricela, su amiga de la infancia, también avecindada en Chimalhuacán; le pidió veinte pesos prestados, desde ahí se comunicó nuevamente con su madre y le aseguró que iría hacia allá, pero no llegó.
Irinea la buscó al día siguiente, domingo 27 de junio.
–¿Qué pasó, hija? ¡Te estuve esperando!
–Julio César me encontró en la avenida, me subió al coche y me trajo a la casa. Nomás me pegó –Irinea recalca el “nomás”–. Ya desayunó y ya se largó.
A la mañana siguiente, Ballinas estacionó su auto afuera de la casa de Irinea; su esposa bajó con los ojos hinchados por el llanto. A solas con su madre, Mariana repitió el diálogo de los minutos anteriores:
–No sirves para lavar, no sirves para planchar, no sirves para hacer la comida, no sabes ni barrer, no sabes hacer nada, bueno, no sirves ni para la cama.
Pero esta ocasión, por primera vez la mujer respondió: Irinea piensa que esta defensa escaló el ánimo violento de él a un nuevo nivel.
–El que no sirve para la cama eres tú y creo que ya deberías de haberte dado cuenta. Siempre me estás acusando de que no sirvo para lavar ni para planchar; puede ser que no sepa hacerlo como a ti te gusta, pero pongo mi mayor esfuerzo. Y tú no sirves para nada.
–Al rato que lleguemos a la casa vas a ver, hija de la chingada –amenazó él, desconcertado al tiempo que dejaba a su esposa con sus suegros.
Algo había cambiado en Mariana.
–Ya no lo aguanto, mamá, ahora sí ya no lo aguanto –continuó con su madre.
–Marianita, lo has aguantado porque has querido. Tu papá y yo te hemos dicho que te apoyamos, que en lo que tú quieras hacer nosotros estamos contigo, y finalmente lo único que quieres es estar con él aunque te pegue –Irinea avivó la rebelión.
–Ya no, mamá. Ya decidí que ahora sí lo voy a dejar y no hay vuelta de hoja.
-It's okay.
–Nomás eso te quería decir.
–Muy bien, vamos a desayunar, hija.
Mariana sólo tomó leche: el líquido blanco y frío parecía desintoxicarla. La muchacha miraba sus uñas largas pintadas de rojo.
–Mamá, préstame dinero; mañana me voy a comprar ropa interior. Ahorita voy a ir a preparar mis cosas ya presentar una denuncia de hechos –aseguró la exempleada del Ministerio Público–. Y también mañana me quisiera comprar unos trajecitos, ¿me acompañas? –propuso a su madre.
–Y de pasada te compras unos zapatitos –se ilusionó Irinea: el fin de la relación con Ballinas estaba, como nunca, a la vista y las señales de renovación eran claras en la concentrada planificación de la muchacha.
–Yo te pago, siempre te he pagado. Voy a visitar a la licenciada para ver si me da trabajo –dijo en referencia a una abogada con la que antes de su matrimonio hizo labores de pasantía.Mariana observó el reloj. Eran las doce y media del lunes 28 de junio de 2010.
–Se me va a hacer más tarde, me voy directamente al Centro de Justicia para levantar la denuncia e inmediatamente paso a la casa, hago mis maletas y me vengo. Estoy de vuelta a las tres de la tarde.
–¿Quieres que vaya contigo? Te acompaño.
–No, mamá, yo voy sola. Yo lo voy a arreglar sola –la joven se llenó de aplomo.
Por primera vez en varios meses Irinea escuchó contenta a Mariana.
Atardeció e Irinea no tuvo noticias de su hija. No tenía manera de llamar a su teléfono celular porque su teléfono de casa estaba restringido para hacer llamadas a móviles. Decepcionada, la madre concluyó que su hija había otorgado otra oportunidad más al marido golpeador.
Esta conclusión y la ansiedad por regresar el tiempo a este momento y gritar a su hija que ya no fuera a la casa de Chimalhuacán, que se quedara con ella y juntas le cerraran la puerta en la cara al policía, se convertirían en una idea agitada alrededor de la cabeza de la mujer, como un insecto que se golpea una y otra vez contra el vidrio de un foco.
–MAÑANA SEGUNDA Y ÚLTIMA PARTE.
