Latin American LGBTQ+ community rocked after Mexico's first non-binary magistrate found dead

Mexican police investigating the mysterious death of a magistrate judge and his partner, according to local media reports. Magistrate judge and LGBTQ+ activist Jesús Ociel Baena was found dead at his home on Monday.

Ociel Baena considered himself “non-binary” and was recognized as the first “non-binary” member of the Mexican judiciary. He was killed alongside a second person whom police believe was his partner.

The two victims were found in their residence on Monday in the central city of Aguascalientes.

Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez said the police were still not certain “if it was a homicide or ... some kind of accident.”

The confusion stems from the fact that police have so far not found any sign a third person broke in or even entered the house, according to a statement from the state attorney-general's office.

Police said a sharp object was found and that preliminary findings indicate the incident may have stemmed from a personal conflict the two were having.

LGBTQ+ rights groups are urging Mexican law enforcement agents to investigate the deaths and investigate the possibility of homicide or hate crimes.

Alejandro Brito, the director of LGBTQ+ rights group Letra Ese said that Baena, who referred to himself with they/them pronouns, was receiving “many hate messages, and even threats of violence and death,” according to a report filed by the Associated Press. 

Brito said that Baena’s death was a blow to the community because he was “breaking through the invisible barriers that closed in the nonbinary community.”

The 38-year-old was appointed as a magistrate for the Aguascalientes state electoral court in October 2022 and was recognized as the first non-binary person in Latin America to take up a judicial position. 

In June, he was the first individual to be issued a gender-neutral passport. 

“I am a non-binary person, I am not interested in seeing myself as a woman or a man,” Baena tweeted on X that month. “This is an identity, it is mine and for me, for no one else.”

LGBTQ+ activists held a vigil for Baena in Mexico City on Monday evening.

“We are heirs to a struggle that Ociel inherited from us,” one person told Reuters news agency. “We must not let Ociel's death pass in vain and we must carry on the legacy Ociel left us.”

Arturo Zaldivar, Mexico’s former chief justice wrote on social media he was distraught over the magistrate's mysterious death.

Zaldivar stepped down from his position last week to join President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s political movement to promote the “transformation of a fairer and more egalitarian Mexico.”

“We lost a strong voice for equality and the rights of LGBTQ+ people,” he said.

LGBT rights have expanded the past few years in Mexico.

A constitutional amendment was passed in 2011 amending Article 1 about discrimination to include prejudice against sexual orientation.

The country’s Supreme Court of the Nation ruled that same sex marriage was constitutionally protected in June 2015 and issued a similar ruling about same sex adoption in September 2016.

By Dec. 31, 2022 every state in Mexico legalized same sex marriage as protected by statute.