On 10th April 2017, human rights defender Miriam Rodriguez Martinez was killed by a group of unknown assailants in her house in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

When Miriam’s daughter Karen vanished in 2012, she began a search that lasted two years, until her daughter’s body was discovered in an unmarked grave. Afterwards, she told the authorities who she believed was responsible for the murder, which resulted in them being arrested and put on trial. Some of the men who had been arrested in her daughter’s case escaped from prison just prior to the killing. Ms. Rodríguez had said in interviews that she had received death threats from criminal organizations and that the local authorities did not protect her.

As well as looking for her own daughter she organised efforts to help other parents whose children had disappeared, and she became the director of the organization Colectivo de Desaparecidos de San Fernando.