Irma Hernández: Why the extortion and murder of the retired and taxi driver has had so much impact on Mexico, a country fed up with violence

Irma Hernandez Cruz — Photo foot, Irma's family has kept silent and asked not to cover the funeral. This photo, taken from their social networks, is the little that is known about it.

- Author, Daniel Pardo
- Author's title, BBC World correspondent in Mexico
4 hours

Cases such as his occur almost every day in Mexico, but that of Irma Hernández Cruz, the retired teacher turned into a taxi driver who was extorted and killed in Veracruz, moved the Mexicans.

For her age of 62, for her past as a teacher, for the video in which she appears handcuffed, kneeling, with a dozen armed and hooded men asking their “taxi drivers” to “pay their fee or will end like me.”

Hernández disappeared on July 18 and six days later was found dead with body injuries.

“Finish” like her, implies in the video, would be dead to refuse to pay the extortion – known as “right to floor” – that armed groups charge not only the taxi drivers of Álamo, the municipality of Norte de Veracruz where Irma was, but to merchants, carriers and other local workers

Perhaps, also, the shock occurred because many Mexicans were identified with Irma.

But it could have been the case of Abel Hernández Parada, a 44 -year -old taxi driver who killed in March bullets in the street of Tuxpan, north of Veracruz. Or also that of Óscar Jiménez, 22, whose body was found beheaded near his taxi in Las Choapas.

At least seven taxi drivers have been killed this year in Veracruz. But there are states, such as Guerrero, where 25 similar cases have been registered only this year.

According to official figures, extortion has increased 6% this year, with a record of almost 6,000 complaints of a crime that, in general, people fear communicating to the authorities for the risk that implies.

The case of Hernández Cruz is one among thousands. One that reached the high spheres of politics and the press. One that reveals the delicate security situation that Mexico is experiencing.

Irma Hernandez's video photo — Photo foot, Photo of the video in which Irma Hernandez appeared.

The authorities cannot with extortion

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, acknowledges that extortion is one of the crimes – together with the disappearances – that its ambitious security strategy has failed to contain.

“It is a crime that we still cannot decrease, it continues to increase,” he said in July, when he launched an antiextory strategy: they created specialized units, increased resources for the complaint line and launched a prevention campaign, among other measures.

On the case of Hernández, the president regretted the facts, promised zero impunity, highlighted the three arrests related by the local prosecution and supported the governor, Rocío Nahle García, a companion in the coalition of Morena.

Garcia generated controversy when he stressed that Hernández Cruz had died from a heart attack, implying that he had not been killed.

Protest in Mexico — Photo foot, The carriers in Mexico are among the most affected by extortion and have come to block roads in protest.

Then he clarified: “It is miserable (with) a snack family to take it to scandal levels, but here is the doctor who made the necropsy of law, here is, teacher Irma Hernández was violated and after being violated, after being violated unfortunately suffered a heart attack.”

The doctor, in effect, confirmed that the body had multiple external injuries that possibly compromised his heart.

Sheinbaum, although he did not denied the infarction version, described the case of “homicide.”

For many Mexicans, in any case, García's statement served as proof of the alleged negligence of the authorities. In Mexico, 90% of homicides are not stirred and only 2% of extortion complaints – according to Mexico's figures, evaluate a study center – translate into convictions.

Taxi in Veracruz — Photo foot, Taxi drivers in Veracruz are forced by armed groups A, among others, carry migrants.

The structural power of the groups

David Saucedo, one of the most cited security experts in the country, explains that the case not only reveals the inability of the authorities, but “a vicious circle that finds it functional to them, to launch great campaigns, announce arrests, but in the end continue in the inability to resolve the underlying issue.”

The consultant also ensures that the Veracruz State Police is “very weak” and the municipal police of the North are “co -opted by organized crime, which also controls the area, finances political campaigns and acts at will because it has no opposition.”

Veracruz is a key state for criminal gangs, because it has a long coast in the Gulf of Mexico that functions as a narcotics, fuels and migrant people traffic corridor.

Although homicide rates fell this year, extortion has increased and the rates of disappearances – more than 6,000 to May 2025, according to Network magnifying glass – are among the highest in the country.

The local press has reported that the national and local authorities handle the version that in the northern Veracruz the Jalisco Nueva Generación poster, one of the largest in the country, is at war against the shadow group, a faction of the gulf poster, for the control of extortion collection networks.

And the latter, under the flag of an emerging set called Mafia Veracruzana, is the one indicated in the case of Hernández.

“To the north of Veracruz, taxi drivers are forced to trade drugs, make hawk (surveillance), and it is a stable business that has hired mercenaries. To eliminate resistances, they select someone who opposes the right of floor and kill him, and with that message of death they achieve payments,” says Saucedo.

A moved country

Although there are studies that have reported some normalization of violence in Mexico, every so often, perhaps, cases such as Hernández that move the country.

“Talking about what happened is to talk about the structural debt that exists towards older women, with pensioners, who do not have a safe place to age,” said lawyer Melissa Ayala in El Universal.

The analyst Ricardo Raphael published in Millennium a letter addressed to Irma: “Teacher, I beg because the life that remains for others reaches one day to turn the page of an era painful for the cowardice of a few and the paralyzing fright of the majority.”

And the journalist Salvador Camarena wrote in the country: “Where the failure of the State is systemic, the extortion is enthroned as a perfect crime. It is a crime of crimes and, in the case of Mexico, the palmaria finding that in this country the threat of criminals is more credible than the promise of institutions.”

Behind the case, then, not only are the armed hooded ones who forced Irma to record that raw message.

Behind, also, there is a hostile world that limits free traffic, which violates women in alarming figures and that requires retirees to work, because 60% receive a subsidy – not a pension – only US $ 150 per month.

Behind Irma there is a fed up the crime and the inability of the State. A country, then, that asks for the end of violence.