Despite the pandemic and the murderous violence of the cartels, Mexico is still a popular holiday destination: You don't need a negative PCR test to enter the country there is no more corruption in Mexico ”. The country recorded around 250,000 deaths at the height of the third wave in August and is classified by Germany as a high-risk area. Nevertheless, millions of international tourists fled to the beaches of Cancún or Tulum in the past year before the Corona measures in their home countries: The borders remain open, life is cheap, the sun is burning from the sky, and the turquoise sea offers the perfect backdrop for the next Instagram post.Just a look at the local daily newspaper could tarnish the idyll.

Ariadna Lobo, twenty-nine years old and an investigative journalist for the daily Reforma, does not notice much of the heavenly side of her home country. She works up to twelve hours a day on violence against women. In January 2020 she published a report on a case of domestic violence in Mexico City. A man had abused his wife for years and even shot her repeatedly. The mentally ill perpetrator begins to threaten Ariadna, first with charges of defamation, then he searches for her phone number and address. Ariadna gets scared, also for her family and her editorial team. She files a complaint and receives police protection. The offender's wife, who is still in acute danger of death, remains without state support.As a result, Ariadna herself successfully exerts pressure on the public prosecutor's office, which had not responded to two reports by the woman, by threatening her with articles about the inaction of the authorities.

Ariadna herself is accompanied by police officers for eight months. For her, this is a massive invasion of her privacy and extremely isolating: her friends no longer want to meet her, not because of Corona, but also because of the distrust of the Mexican police. Then her complaint against the perpetrator is dropped, reports come to the conclusion that she has not suffered any lasting psychological damage. According to her own statements, Ariadna can no longer concentrate on her work and only sleeps after taking medication.

Her newspaper uses the case as a figurehead and declares her the new gender officer, albeit without her consent.

Soon the burden will be too much for her.

She falls out with her superior, she quits.

Not only the specific attacks on her person have left traces in her soul: Anyone who writes about violence against women in Mexico speaks every day with desperate mothers who are looking for their daughters, is not only confronted with victims of sexual violence, but also with unprecedented atrocities, to which quartered and then disposed of female bodies in the garbage on the roadside belong.

With images like this in her head, Ariadna has to go to sleep.