A HUMAN rights lawyer and activist who has been missing for nearly a week in southern Mexico regularly received threats related to her work, a colleague has revealed.

Sandra Estefana Dominguez Martinez and her husband were last seen on October 4 in Maria Lombardo de Caso, a town in eastern Oaxaca on the border with Veracruz.

The prominent feminist activist and defender of the Mixe indigenous people, native to Oaxaca’s eastern highlands, is herself of Mixe descent.

“Sandra has always handled delicate cases. If it wasn’t cases involving femicides, it was cases involving rape and so on,” said Oaxacan activist Joaquin Galvan, a close friend of Ms Dominguez, on Thursday. “She was always exposed to threats.”

He said that government officials or members of organised crime were often involved in those cases.

In 2020, Ms Dominguez denounced several state government officials for allegedly participating in misogynist group chats online. She said they had shared images of indigenous women and included degrading commentary. Since then, Ms Dominguez had faced ongoing threats, Mr Galvan said.

The Oaxaca State Prosecutor's Office said it was conducting an investigation and searching for Ms Dominguez and her husband Alexander Hernandez Hernandez. Their family members reported them missing on October 8.

The couple’s car was later found abandoned in Veracruz.

Mr Galvan believes that Ms Dominguez’s disappearance is related to her work and persistent complaints against state officials. In Mexico, an average of 10 women or girls are killed every day.

“I think it’s important to consider every one of these situations she was exposed to,” he said. “To understand what happened, what is happening and to be able to find her.”

Mr Galvan had encouraged Ms Dominguez to request protection under a federal protection programme for human rights defenders and journalists known as “the mechanism.”

He is enrolled in the scheme, but he said that Ms Dominguez was not at the time of her disappearance.