Sustainable fisheries group El Centro Desarrollo y Pesca Sustentable (CeDePesca) is beseeching Mexico’s law enforcement agencies to do more to find and punish the killer of Minerva Pérez Castro, the chair of the Baja California branch of the National Chamber of Fishing and Aquaculture Industry (CANAINPESCA).
Pérez Castro was murdered on 8 July as she left the offices of Atenea del Mar, her seafood company, by three men who fired 36 bullets at her car, hitting her several times in the chest and head, ZETA Investigations reported. The Baja California State Attorney General's Office continues to investigate, but has not released additional information since 10 July, when it released a list of four possible motives for the crime, according to El Sol de Tijuana.
“Two months with no one in prison,” CeDePesca Executive Director Ernesto Godelman said in a statement. “Impunity cannot be allowed to win. It is unacceptable that citizens who live and work honestly are prisoners of fear while the murderers walk free.”
Godelman said his organization will continue to make a public demand for justice on the eighth day of every month to “not let anyone forget this vile murder and the need for it to be punished in an exemplary manner.”
“Once again, we call on Mexican authorities and representations at all levels to be proactive in the enquiry and to produce results, to find those responsible for this brutal crime and put them in prison,” he said.
Pérez Castro was shot dead in Ensenada, Mexico, hours after publicly decrying increasingly common incidents of extortion and attempts by organized criminal gangs to charge illegal fees in exchange for “protection.”
Pérez Castro had also been outspoken in calling on Mexican authorities to do more to stop illegal fishing.
“Federal and state authorities cannot surrender to these criminal gangs and must reestablish state power, protecting people who want to work and live decently,” Godelman said.
A plethora of seafood industry leaders have joined the call for justice and are pushing the U.S. seafood industry to demand greater transparency and due diligence for seafood originating from the Baja California region of Mexico.
Several of Castro’s colleagues in Mexico’s seafood industry told SeafoodSource they are doubtful her murder will be solved but said they hope that her story will bring more attention to the problems she called out that are impacting the industry and the livelihoods of seafood producers, processors, and suppliers in Mexico.
Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Supply Chain Roundtables Director Megan Westmeyer said, ultimately, it will be up to the Mexican government to solve the problems highlighted by Pérez Castro prior to her death.
“The real solution – not an easy one but the only real one – is for Mexico's new administration to first root out the corrupt actors within their own government and then truly start fighting back against organized crime.” Westmeyer said.
