‘She stood up to men with machetes’: Sandra Domínguez fought against femicide in Mexico – then became a victim herself

Her disappearance shocked a country where such cases are all too common. Now Domínguez’s family are fighting to stop yet another woman’s death being written off as ‘collateral damage’

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n 4 October 2024, as a storm lashed the town of María Lombardo de Caso, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Sandra Domínguez stopped answering her family’s messages. After three days, Kisha Domínguez, her sister, knew something was wrong. She made the eight-hour car journey with their mother, Aracely Martínez Villanueva, from the city of Oaxaca. When they arrived, they found Sandra’s home empty, her car abandoned. Her husband had also disappeared.

Six months later, on 24 April, their bodies were found on a ranch 21 miles from María Lombardo.

Sandra and her husband, Alexander Hernández, might have gone down as two more victims of the violence that grips Mexico, where roughly 30,000 people are murdered each year. But this time the case shot to national attention.