Being a woman and a soldier in Mexico entails high risks of falling victim to the pervasive machismo-driven violence within the Army. There is no place where female soldiers can be completely safe. Abuse, harassment, and sexual assaults—including rape—occur in military barracks, schools, academies, hospitals, customs offices, air bases, administrative offices, and military public prosecutor agencies. Not even in their own dormitories, where surveillance cameras and signs have been installed to prohibit the entry of men, can they feel at ease.
Eugenia was in a military doctor’s office in Sonora; Adarely in the records archive of the 36th Military Zone barracks in Tapachula, Chiapas; Naybeth, in the office of the logistics platoon commander at the National Training Center in Santa Gertrudis, Chihuahua; the women from the engineering battalion were in their dormitory in the Jamay barracks in Jalisco; Sofía at the Military Service headquarters in Puebla; and a group of IT specialists at facilities of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA).
Their cases, along with many others from fellow soldiers, reveal that sexual assaults against female military personnel do not occur only in specific installations, or in a particular region, or as isolated incidents. The “pattern” is far broader: they are reported throughout the country, in any military installation, and on any day of the year.
Being part of the Mexican Army did not protect them. On the contrary, there was a common denominator in the attacks they suffered: in various forms and degrees, the rigid hierarchical structure facilitated the dismissal of a large percentage of their complaints and enabled the perpetrators to go unpunished.
A review of about fifty complaints and twenty criminal reports, as well as conversations and interviews with more than a dozen victims, uncovers a bleak and little-known picture of the gender-based violence endured by female soldiers and reveals the levels of aggression they face in facilities under the authority of the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena).
For example, according to case files, complaints, and interviews conducted by the author, male soldiers address women with demeaning or harassing terms like “baby,” “cutie,” or “sweetie.” They also use sexualized stereotypes and make comments about their bodies or share intimate photos or videos of them without consent.
During soccer matches, they are told to hike up their shorts so the men can look at their legs or are photographed from behind. They are cornered in areas without cameras to be forcibly kissed, asked to show their underwear, or groped. They are spied on when going to shower, grabbed by the shoulders under the pretense of massages, slapped on the buttocks if they resist, and in the most severe cases, drugged and physically overpowered to be abused and raped.
Some commanding officers summon them to their official quarters to discuss “work matters” or ask them to clean while wearing “sexy” clothing. Others enter their dormitories at night, even while drunk, and try to touch or caress them as they sleep.
This pattern of sexual aggression and crimes described in the case files is consistent with the high number of complaints and reports filed between 2013 and 2024 with the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the Internal Control Body, and the Sedena’s Office of Harassment and Sexual Abuse: 525, 314, and 509 cases, respectively.
In this last office, the main body for assisting victims, there were at least 37 generals and 120 commanders of various ranks who had been reported.
The vast majority remain in impunity—or result in laughable sanctions.
Generals Without Punishment
Help, please!
The subject line of the email could not have been more explicit: “Help, please!!!” A group of women from the 4th Combat Engineer Battalion in Jamay, Jalisco, wrote to General Salvador Cienfuegos, then Secretary of Defense, to the Equality Observatory, and to the Citizen Attention Office of the Ministry of Defense (Sedena).
In an email dated April 20, 2018, the group of women—who chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation—detailed the alleged abuses committed by Colonel José Francisco Sáenz and a group of commanders close to him.
In a single-page letter, they described how the commanding officer had imposed a “climate of terror” within the battalion: he forced them to bathe with cold water and woke them at 5:00 a.m. with carnival music to begin training. If they fainted during the activities, he would arrest them. They also reported being punished if they “did not sexually please him.”
Worse yet, at night he summoned them to cut his toenails, pluck his eyebrows, or apply a facial mask.
“We believed our activities would be the same as those of the men: military work, posts, guard duties, etc., but the true intention of the commanders in this battalion is to keep female personnel in the compound to sexually and professionally harass them.”
In the same email, they recounted that on the colonel’s birthday, he burst into the women’s dormitory in the middle of the night, waking them with shouts. He then ordered them to undress and sing “Las Mañanitas” to him. As he insulted them with vulgarities and called them “whores,” he ran a riding crop over their breasts and between their legs.
“When you (Secretary of Defense) opened the call for us Mexican women to join the Army as combat engineers, it was a great dream for us—to improve ourselves and grow professionally in the military field, under equal conditions as the men…”
“But,” they confessed to the Secretary of Defense, “that dream was shattered.”
They ended with a plea: “Please do something to help us… it even seems like you yourselves protect and enable this kind of behavior. Don’t be complicit in this.”
The letter from the women in the Jamay engineer battalion was just one among dozens of emails that female soldiers sent—often in desperation—to military authorities.
General Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, who had just completed a year as head of Sedena, also received another email complaint on December 9, 2020.
In that message, a group of women from the Procurement, Public Affairs, and Information Technology departments reported that Lieutenant Colonel Rodolfo Paz, who was assigned to the construction works of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), would organize midnight gatherings in his hangar accommodations two or three times a week. He would send his driver to collect the women, who were required to attend.
“One colleague doesn’t even want to talk about it… she experienced daily sexual harassment not only from the boss but from all the soldiers there. They would lock her in offices and wouldn’t let her out until she gave them a kiss or showed her underwear. She is scared, she has a little girl, and she doesn’t want to report it—but she has the messages they sent her,” the complaint read.
Please, they begged, “do something. We can’t take it anymore. We won’t give our names because we’ve been threatened. Please, we have children, we need to live. Help us. Do something.”
Their plea had no significant effect. On the contrary, nearly two years later, the lieutenant colonel was promoted for overseeing the construction of the airport terminal building. While he attended a ceremony to be appointed as a full colonel in November 2022, the women’s complaint was dismissed for being anonymous.
Threats and coercion—how they silence them
A review of about fifty complaints submitted to the Army’s Internal Control Body and about twenty judicial files against soldiers accused of various sexual assaults reveals the machinery of intimidation orchestrated by the military structure to pressure and threaten women who choose to report abuses committed against them.
The case files, carefully guarded in military courts, the offices of the Directorate General of Human Rights, and the Internal Control Body of Sedena, detail the mechanisms used to dissuade victims from speaking out, to retract their statements, to abandon their complaints, or, as many do, to desert.
Coercion can take many forms: sometimes it is subtle, and other times it is blatant and grotesque.
The reviewed case files and complaints show a wide range of coercive tactics. In some cases, when women informed their superiors of their intent to file a report, they faced obstacles—superiors asked them to “think it through carefully” or assigned them extra tasks to delay the process.
In other instances, other soldiers were sent to intimidate them, reminding them that the accused officer “had connections with high-ranking officials.” They were threatened with defamation using false testimonies from fellow soldiers claiming they were prostitutes or were accused of insubordination in order to justify their arrest.
There are also records of some sexual aggressors offering women money or to pay for psychological therapy in exchange for their silence.
A lieutenant who sexually assaulted a female military police soldier in July 2020 at a Military Police facility in Zacatlán, Puebla, offered her “damages compensation” to keep quiet, claiming the incident would hurt him and his family.
“I feel intimidated, as he has repeatedly told me by phone and in person not to report what happened, and that if necessary, he’ll offer me money or psychological support for what he did,” the young woman wrote in her complaint to the regional commander of that military security unit.
The assault on a military hairdresser
Naybeth Arzate had only been enlisted as a military hairdresser for four months at the National Training Center in Santa Gertrudis, Chihuahua. She was new to military life—just 18 years old—and eager to grow within the institution.
She never expected her plans to be completely derailed on the night of May 5, 2018. That evening, she and a fellow soldier were in the barbershop when Major Carmelo Patiño Nájera, commander of the logistics platoon, passed by.
Upon seeing him, both soldiers stood at attention. The officer told her not to do that, saying she shouldn’t “degrade herself” like that because he “was just a regular person.”
As he left the shop, the major brushed his hand across Naybeth’s lower abdomen. Five minutes later, he returned, placed a hand on her shoulder, told her “You’re very pretty,” and asked her to help carry some baskets and follow him to his office.
Naybeth obeyed but paused at the office door. He ordered her to enter, and when she refused, he shouted the command until she finally complied.
Once inside, Patiño Nájera opened the door to his quarters, located within the office, and asked Naybeth to sit. She sat on the edge of the bed, following orders. He left and returned shortly with beers. He offered her one, which she declined.
Naybeth tried to leave, explaining that she needed to attend the 9:00 p.m. roll call.
“Don’t you see who you’re talking to?” he snapped, showing her his military insignia, according to her testimony in case file TP4-005/2020.
She insisted, reminding him that she would be arrested if she missed roll call. He asked her to wait a moment and went into the bathroom. Sitting at the edge of the bed, she tried to text someone for help.
A few minutes later, the major emerged from the bathroom without his uniform shirt or undershirt and with his pants down to his boots—half-naked. When Naybeth saw him, she managed to scream “help,” tried to get up, and pushed him away, but he grabbed her wrists, threw her to the floor, and raped her, according to her account.
Dazed, she managed to stand and leave. The struggle left her with bruises on her arms, shoulder, knee, and shin. But those injuries were not medically documented because, when she reported the assault to the Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Francisco Camarena Hernández—then head of the National Training Center—he allegedly blocked her from accessing medical services.
The general also threatened her, making it clear that if she reported or took action, he would retaliate. In exchange for her silence, he offered to arrest the major as punishment for the attack and rape.
“He said that, if I wanted, I could name a price for my silence. That he would talk to the major and I could ask for whatever amount I wanted,” Naybeth testified before the Military Oral Trial Court—statements she confirmed to the reporter.
Naybeth understood the obstacles to filing a complaint and the offer of hush money had a background: the general who blocked her was under investigation by the Military Justice Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly sexually abusing a female office soldier a year earlier while stationed in Colima.
“That night I went to sleep, and the next day I tried to act normal with my family, as if nothing had happened. But I couldn’t—I had no appetite, no desire to sleep, and that went on for a long time,” Naybeth said during the hearing.
Intimidation of a Soldier and Office Worker
Sofía, an auxiliary soldier and office worker, was assigned to the Sixth Company of the National Military Service located in Puebla, where for more than a year she experienced constant sexual and workplace harassment. The alleged attacker was her superior, an infantry lieutenant.
According to Sofía in her testimony before the Internal Control Body, the lieutenant made phone calls in the early morning hours to invite her out or make indecent advances.
She tried to report the incident, but the first time the officer threatened to have her contract revoked and concluded the warning with a message: "Do whatever you want; a simple soldier can't do anything to a lieutenant," Sofía told the OIC officials.
The officer's harassment escalated. On another occasion, he hugged her around the waist, touched her breast, and tried to kiss her. She reacted by pushing him away. Angry, the lieutenant insulted her and then began assigning her late-night duties for no reason.
At the beginning of 2019, Sofía decided to stop tolerating the attacks. She says she reported what was happening to the captain who served as the company commander, but he responded dismissively: that it wasn't a big deal, that she shouldn't file a report, that it would generate supervision and harm all her colleagues.
Sofía, whose real name has been withheld, gave up, but her attacker didn't stop and subjected her to even more humiliating situations: in front of a couple of colleagues, the lieutenant grabbed her by the hair and threatened: "You'll give me the yes by fair means or foul."
She again informed the captain, who repeated his indifference: that he misinterpreted things, that the lieutenant "was playing," and that if he behaved this way, perhaps it was because Sofía "had given him permission."
She refused to budge and told her superior that there were witnesses to the latest assault. The commander then confronted her with her attacker and the witnesses. Crying, she asked the lieutenant why he was treating her this way and told him she couldn't stand it anymore and was thinking of requesting her discharge. In response, she received only mockery from her attacker and the witnesses.
The sexual harassment stopped, but then the workplace harassment began. The lieutenant accused her of forging her signature on an administrative procedure and ordered her to be arrested for 48 hours. Dissatisfied, she went to speak with the captain, who, instead of investigating, cut her off: "You're screwed, there's no way."
Outraged, she asked permission to go to the public prosecutor's office to file a complaint, but the commander wouldn't let her leave the office.
On the second day of her arrest, a soldier approached her and advised her to hurry up and file a complaint because the captain was a close friend of the deputy chief of staff of the 25th Military Zone. He was "going to give the lieutenant a hard time."
Furthermore, he warned her, they would surely ask for the "support" of some acquaintances to testify that she was engaged in prostitution, thus invalidating the harassment complaint.
They intended to silence her, according to her complaint to the OIC, but she wasn't willing to back down. And although the captain tried again to persuade her not to file a complaint, once her arrest was completed, she went to the military public prosecutor's office.
As a precautionary measure, they transferred her to another office. But after a few months, and with the investigation still ongoing, the captain requested that she be returned to her original post.
Fearful of what might happen, she decided to file a complaint with the OIC. And he sent the six pages included in file 61/2019 with all the details described here.
What Happens Behind Walls
Cornered by the rigid discipline and unquestioning obedience to superiors—core tenets of any military structure—women have been forced to endure not only sexual violence, but also tasks that degrade their professional roles. Often carried out under protest, these duties reduce them, at the whims or desires of their superiors, to mere companions—or as some describe themselves, “escorts.”
In a dozen cases reviewed for this investigation, women revealed that one of the “common practices” among military commanders was pulling them away from their regular assignments to accompany them on trips or daily activities, attend private parties, or perform cleaning duties.
This situation did not go unnoticed by senior officials at the Ministry of Defense, who attempted to discourage such conduct through administrative directives.
“Female personnel are strictly prohibited from serving as part of the security escorts for commanders (CMTES) of subordinate units,” stated a 2014 memorandum titled Directive for the Treatment and Management of Female Personnel, which aimed to prevent female military police from being exposed to abuse.
Eugenia, who worked as an auxiliary soldier for a year and a half in the Sonora military region, recounts in an interview that the commander of the military zone where she was assigned always sought out a woman, whom he would alternate between regular visits and activities.
“He was looking for a woman as a companion… then he started taking me out; at night, he would send me two-way messages, not direct ones, to see if I would accept. I ignored his messages, and the next day he treated me badly for not answering him,” recalls the former soldier, who has asked not to reveal her true identity.
One night, he summoned her to his bedroom, located inside his office; he was feeling ill and needed someone to care for him. Eugenia found him lying in bed, acting suspiciously. She was right. The commander was making sexual advances toward her.
“Then he started speaking to me directly, disgustingly. I didn't give in to what he wanted, and then he would say: 'Go to that nightstand, take out that jar, do this.' He gave me several instructions, which I followed, and when I approached the bed, he showed me his phone.”
In the images, she appeared opening doors and drawers, for example, in the military commander's room. “While I was doing these things, he had taken photos of me and practically told me: 'If you file a complaint, here are the photos of you in my room.'”
From then on, Eugenia says during the interview, “I couldn't do it anymore, but I never filed a complaint out of fear and immaturity, and I left instead. “Even if you file a complaint, nothing will happen. The commanders think they're gods; they know they're untouchable; they have a lot of power, and that makes them believe they can have everything.”
That was one of the acts of sexist violence she experienced, but it wasn't the first. In 2019, she was completing her entry procedures and was due for a medical checkup to certify her health status.
A doctor with the rank of major in the medical field welcomed her into his office and asked her to undress and put on a gown. She complied. It was a professional medical checkup, but at some point, the military commander began inappropriately groping her breasts.
"He stood in front of me and touched my breasts, squeezing each one. That's when I pulled away, told him to stop, and he threatened me: 'If you stop this medical checkup, you won't be discharged. It's up to you whether you want to continue or lose your right to join the Army,'" she recalls.
Eugenia managed to join the army and was assigned to the Durango military zone. There, she continued to witness and suffer sexist attacks until one day she realized that it was an abusive system that would never change, and she decided to resign.
“There, you're alone because the ones harassing you are the commanders. No one stops them, no one defends you,” she laments.
The military zone commander's intention that Eugenia be a kind of “lady in waiting” is just one more facet of violence against women in the barracks.
In fact, assaults such as sexual abuse and rape occur in the commanders' quarters, where they organize parties or meetings.
A complaint filed by a 24-year-old woman with the Office for the Attention to Sexual Harassment and Harassment (HAS) reveals the excesses committed in these spaces.
In her testimony, she said that in February 2022, she went with other colleagues to the facilities of the 25th Motorized Cavalry Regiment in Tamaulipas, where she provided administrative support. That day, a meeting had been organized between some commanders and officers, which she and other colleagues attended.
They were offered beer, and after taking just two sips, she lost consciousness. The next day, she woke up in a different room, half-naked, and with wet hair.
“I felt scared, weak, tired, dizzy, and my body was in pain.” Then, she went to her bedroom and asked her roommate about what had happened, but she didn't know anything.
She returned to the room where she had woken up to get her things and told her family what had happened. The young woman's mother tried to speak to the general in charge, but she wasn't allowed to see him.
Administrative file 285102-17 noted that the young woman was referred to the Comprehensive Care and Treatment Center with a Gender Perspective for “probable sexual assault.”
Just like that. Nothing more. Nothing different from what happens to other women. They are young, barely recruits. The hierarchical structure doesn't care much about these cases.
