Julieta Inés Hernández Martínez. Image: Background art with photo from social media. Image Freepik.

This article was written by Dominique Maia and originally published on MigraMundo's website on October 15, 2024. An edited version is republished here on Global Voices under a partnership agreement. 

In January 2024, the body of Venezuelan artist Julieta Inés Hernández Martínez was found in the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo, 124 km (77 miles) from Manaus, in Brazil’s northern Amazonas state.

Missing since December 23, 2023, Hernández had been seen for the last time when she told her family that she would spend the night in the city before continuing on to Rorainópolis, in the neighboring state of Roraima.

The disappearance sparked searches and investigations that later led to the arrest of a couple of suspects, subsequently charged by the Amazonas Police. The case shocked Brazil and Venezuela, and had a big impact online and among artistic organizations — Hernández was an active figure in social and cultural groups.

Her death still raises questions about gender violence in the Amazon region, while the struggle for the recognition of the case as femicide continues.

Who was Julieta?

A circus artist and feminist, Hernández arrived in Brazil in 2015 and, over the course of eight years, transformed her life into a real journey of movement and creativity. On social media, she presented herself as a ”nomadic migrant, doll maker, clown, and bicycle traveller.”

She also played the clown Miss Jujuba, traveling to various places in Brazil with the play “The bike journey of a single clown … alone?” Alongside her performing, Hernández also produced handicrafts, made dolls to order, and offered art workshops for children, encouraging creativity and imagination in new generations.

Part of the circus group Red Foot, which brought together artists and bike travellers, Hernández used the bicycle as a means of transport to travel around Brazil and connect with different communities.

The crime

Amazonas State Police began investigations shortly after Hernández's disappearance was reported in early January. From the information about her last known whereabouts, searches were carried out in guesthouses in the region of Presidente Figueiredo, a town of 30,668 people.

On the morning of January 5, police spoke to Thiago Agles da Silva at a shelter in the region; he stated that Hernández had spent the night there before continuing her journey. However, on the same day, a local resident found parts of the missing woman's bicycle, prompting police to question Silva, who then tried to flee.

During questioning, he and his companion, Deliomara dos Anjos Santos, gave contradictory versions of what happened until finally admitting to the crime. According to the official Valdinei Silva, Silva said he had attacked Julieta while she was sleeping to steal her phone. According to the outlet G1, after a physical struggle, the man sexually assaulted her.

During questioning, his partner confessed that she became jealous while witnessing the scene, threw alcohol on them both and set them on fire. Hernández was allegedly strangled and buried in a shallow grave. At the time, police said they suspected she may have been buried alive.

The couple were arrested on January 5. With the help of the Amazonas Military Fire Department and their sniffer dogs, Hernández's body was found in a grave in the shelter's yard, along with some belongings.

Why femicide?

Hernández's family is pushing for Brazil’s courts to recognize the crime as femicide, arguing that the violence suffered by her shows the misogynistic and xenophobic nature of the crime, given that she was a Venezuelan woman and migrant.

These efforts are being carried out in collaboration with the Brazilian Union of Women (UBM), and they highlight problems in the investigation of the case, which Amazonas’ Public Prosecutor’s Office framed as armed robbery, rape, and concealment of a corpse.

During a plenary session in Amazonas State's Legislative Assembly in June, Sophia Hernández, Julieta's sister, said that the case was closed quickly without a thorough investigation, and she questioned its classification as armed robbery resulting in death or serious harm.

She stressed that Julieta's belongings were not stolen or sold but were instead hidden to cover up the crime, which further supported their call for the courts to recognize the misogynistic and xenophobic motives behind the crime.

“Firstly, because when it is armed robbery resulting in death, it carries a lower sentence; secondly, and more importantly, it is because it was a femicide, and we cannot call a gendered crime by any other name. Julieta died as a result of being a woman, a migrant, and living a life in freedom, as we women should live,” Sophia told the outlet Amazônia Real at the time.

Denise Motta Dau, National Secretary for Fighting Violence Against Women, from the Ministry for Women, who also attended the session, said, “This crime had nothing to do with theft, but there was sexual violence, there was torture, there was cruelty, which are very explicit signs of hatred, misogyny, and xenophobia.”

In a note released on June 6, the Ministry for Women expressed support for the family's action. It stated that the ministry “recognizes the concern of Julieta's relatives and lawyers about the absence of due legal treatment of the case as a serious violation of the human rights of women and migrants.”

The ministry also said that “this reinforces the belief of Brazilian institutions that this case and those of all women who come to the justice system should not go unpunished, for [the sake of] their lives and for the right to memory.”

Brazilian law

Lawyer Carlos Nicodemos, who represents the family, also argued that there are elements in the crime that support it being characterized as femicide. “There was evidence there regarding the intention of assaulting, raping, [and] practising misogyny and xenophobia. Under our criminal legislation this is clearly a crime of femicide, which was not effectively presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office, nor accepted by the courts,” he told the media.

Nicodemos also highlighted that the case violated international human rights treaties, such as the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence Against Women, known as the “Convention of Belém do Pará” (1994), of which Brazil is a signatory.

The classification of a crime as femicide is not only a semantic or legal issue; it is about recognizing the specificity of gender violence and the social context in which it occurs.

In Brazil, since 2015, the penal code was amended by a law that defined the crime of femicide. In October of 2024, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva passed a new law that increased the sentence for such cases to up to 40 years.

In many cases, such as Hernández's, gender violence is shaped by the discrimination and inequality that affect women, while migrants also suffer from xenophobia.

For migrant women, the struggle to have a femicide recognized as such can be even more complex. This is because they are often on the margins of systems of protection, often without access to support networks, and face more difficulties in accessing justice due to their migratory status, language barriers, and a lack of information about their rights.

Recognizing Juliet Hernández Martínez's murder as femicide could set an important precedent for dealing with other similar cases.