On 23 November, in Ocosingo, Chiapas, woman defender and searcher Yerli Yaritza was found dead in her home in the Guadalupe Pashilá neighborhood. At first, prior to gathering sufficient evidence, it was identified as a possible suicide; however, after gathering information at the scene and taking the necessary steps, it was confirmed that the woman defender was murdered.
Yerli Yaritza searched for her father, Hamilton Pérez Coutiño, who was disappeared on 17 April 2024 when he was driving a taxi and was last seen in the Lumiljá community in the municipality of Tila.
Yerli was 18 years old and a nursing student; she participated actively alongside her mother, Angélica, in the search for her father, and took on this task as an act of collective care and resistance in the face of violence and impunity.
The feminicide of Yerli Yaritza is a direct attack on searching women, and against the right of families to find their disappeared loved ones. It is important to note that on 7 October, members of the Municipal Police of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, attempted to evict and violently repressed seven women defenders who are members of the collective Madres en Resistencia Chiapas when they were holding a peaceful protest in front of the Chiapas State Prosecutor’s Office.
In this context, the collectives that search for disappeared persons in this country face a serious reality of attacks due to their role and their increasingly organized strength demanding justice, as seen in our report, “SEEKING TRUTH AND JUSTICE SHOULD NOT COST US OUR LIVES. 10+ years of attacks against women defenders of truth, justice and reparation in Mesoamerica (2012- June 2025)”. In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number and severity of attacks against women who search for disappeared persons; just between 2020 and the first half of 2025, we registered 1,495 attacks against women defenders of the right to truth and justice in Mexico.
In Mexico, searching women defenders face the highest risk of lethal violence. Including Yerli Yaritza, from 2020 to present day, we have documented the feminicide of 17 searching women who participated in different searching collectives throughout the country; four of them were killed in 2025. It is important to note that we have also registered attacks against family members of searching women defenders, this is a deliberate practice seeking to silence them in a context of structural violence that is increase in intensity and complexity.
The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico and IM-Defensoras condemn this crime and express our solidarity with woman defender Yerli’s family, and her sister defenders in the Madres Buscadoras de Chiapas collective.
Furthermore, we demand public recognition of Yerli’s work as a woman human rights defender and a searcher.
We demand that government authorities at all levels guarantee holistic protection and care measures for Yerli’s family and the Madres Buscadoras de Chiapas collective; and that they conduct an investigation with due diligence and a gender perspective, guaranteeing justice and truth.
We demand that the Mexican State comply with its responsibility to ensure safe conditions for those who defend human rights in contexts of disappearances.
Lastly, we call on the international community to remain vigilant regarding the serious situation in Mexico concerning disappeared persons and the violence faced by those, especially women, who – given the failure of State institutions – tirelessly search for them, and to embody support for them and their communities.