Ultimate Indignity

In an interview with human-rights activist Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Ochoa recalled her first case, in 1988, defending several peasants who had been illegally detained by judicial police officers. Ochoa said she ignored several warnings to drop the case and was kidnapped for 30 days, tortured by police with electric shocks and with “Tehuacanazos,” a slang word for having shaken mineral water flushed up her nose. She managed to get hold of a kidnapper’s gun and escape, she told Cuomo. She went into hiding for weeks until she “reappeared” with the help of human-rights activists.

Convinced that her work now placed her family in jeopardy, Ochoa handed the case to other lawyers and moved to Mexico City, where in 1988 she joined the Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez, a human-rights center run by the Jesuits. There, with the help of a priest, she found her calling as a nun.

In 1992, she began training with the order of the Dominican Sisters of the Incarnate Word, a Mexico City–based congregation established in 1935, said Paola Clarat, a nun who worked with Ochoa. The congregation takes on social causes, and many of its members are professional women. The order dropped its habits after the Vatican II council and required that Ochoa wear a white outfit only during prayers at one of the members’ homes. She spent the required two years as a novice before taking her preliminary vows. “She was always very dedicated,” Clarat said of Ochoa.

The order encourages its members to work in their chosen professions and to preach by example, Clarat said. So by 1995, Ochoa was back full time to work at the Jesuit center, better known as “El Pro” — and once again at odds with authorities.

A petite, unassuming woman of Mexican Indian origin, Ochoa often deliberately shocked foes to get her points across, Cuomo said. In a country where women are known for their shyness, Ochoa would shout at soldiers or assume a karate position during confrontations. It was all a pose meant to achieve her aims, Ochoa told Cuomo. The only martial arts she knew were from what she saw in the movies, and as for her fearlessness, she was mustering up all the courage she could. “At work, even though I give the appearance of seriousness and resolve, I’m trembling inside,” she told Cuomo. “Sometimes I want to cry, but I know that I can’t, because that makes me vulnerable.”

Her fears were more than justified. In 1996, Ochoa and her friend and fellow lawyer Pilar Noriega received death threats for defending alleged members of the Zapatista army who were accused of carrying illegal weapons and of being terrorists. Three years later, she was accosted and blindfolded in her home twice by masked men who questioned her about her ties to Mexican rebel forces. Her office was ransacked several times by unknown perpetrators who left threatening notes. At the time, authorities sent officers to protect Ochoa and the El Pro center, but the lawyers there said most of the officers were inexperienced and out of shape.

Aware that next time she could be killed and that her co-workers at El Pro were endangered if she stayed, Ochoa left the Dominican Sisters and moved to Washington, D.C., in September 2000 for an internship with Cejil, an international human-rights organization that specializes in Latin American cases, said Cejil social worker Tamaryn Nelson, who worked with the ex-nun during her seven-month stay there.

Ochoa had trouble adjusting to her new city and longed to return to Mexico. She moved back to Mexico City in March, and it “was probably the happiest month of her life,” Nelson recalled. No longer bound by the rules of the Dominican order, Ochoa began dating Juan Jose Vera, a man she had met on the Internet two months after her move back to Mexico, investigators said.

She also had returned to her legal work. The day she was killed, Ochoa was preparing to travel to Guerrero to check on the status of the case against Montiel and Cabrera, the environmentalists who had opposed the Boise Cascade logging. That afternoon, as most of Mexico City’s upper class — including the Foxes — were planning to attend an Elton John benefit concert, her law partner Gerardo Gonzales found her body around 6 p.m.

Ochoa’s death is a grim reminder of the risks undertaken by those who work in the human-rights community, Cuomo said. Her legacy will live on. “We should all strive to live a life like she did: We should all try to imitate her.”