Lucrecia: A Murder in Madrid (Lucrecia: Un crimen de odio)

MADRID NOVEMBER 13, 1992

NIGHTCLUB

That day,

Lucrecia and I were making soup

when someone started pounding on the door,

kicking it hard.

The candle fell. It was dark.

And then the shooting started.

Lucrecia was lying in bed.

"She's dead! She's dead! She's dead!"

There were some masked boys

with something on their noses and mouths.

Then I heard four gunshots. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

I saw those four people fire those four shots.

I saw the four murderers get in the car and leave.

But were they young? Very young?

They were young.

The hardest moment to forget was hearing Lucrecia's words.

She didn't know she'd come here to Spain to die.

At the time, I was vice president of the country.

I was informed of the murder of Lucrecia Pérez.

And that meant that the Ministry of the Interior thought it was serious.

I felt this was the first seed of a huge problem.

Hatred towards immigrants.

A MURDER IN MADRID

- The Police and Civil Guard believe that the four masked men

were young neo-Nazis.

The ambassador has asked Dominicans

to avoid walking through the streets of Aravaca.

When my mom was killed,

I was six years old.

You're too young to react or understand what happened.

It still hurts.

"You'll get over it."

People say you'll get over it.

But I don't think you do.

You don't get over it. You resign yourself to it.

She emigrated because she wanted to make a home for me.

She wanted me to study.

That was her dream.

I have a photo of her.

That's why I can remember her face.

It's the same photo they always show on TV.

We don't have any other photos of my mom.

That's the only photo of her.

Lucrecia Pérez represents a lot of women who've emigrated to Spain.

Women who are alone.

Poor.

In this case, her name was Lucrecia, but she could've been anyone.

Lucrecia was no exception. She was one of them.

VICENTE NOBLE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Lucrecia wanted a better life.

At that time, we were living in a house made of wood.

Covered in palm leaves.

We had rented a room

and another woman and her husband lived in the other room.

Lucrecia and I had been friends since we were little.

We were neighbors.

She followed me everywhere.

She was very shy, but she was a good person.

She was a poor woman.

MARIOLENNY LUCRECIA'S NEIGHBOR

Lucrecia was one of the poorest.

She made a living selling things from her house.

She sold cigarettes, charcoal, coconuts...

She took her daughter everywhere.

She never left her alone. She was very attached to her daughter.

She was nervous and afraid

because she had lost two children before Kenia.

They died very young.

They were born with and died from anemia.

-And where is your mom? - In Spain.

In Spain.

In Spain.

In Spain.

The last time I saw my mom was the day she had to come here

to Spain.

She had everything ready.

They called her and said she had to leave right away.

She only said goodbye to me because my dad was working.

She didn't say goodbye to me.

We didn't say goodbye.

SPAIN

SPAIN 1992

It was a time of splendor and big parties.

Happy Birthday

And at the time, this society considered itself to be open, liberal, tolerant...

All of a sudden, we were prosperous.

We had joined the privileged world.

In '92, the government was very concerned

with terrorism.

We wanted to stop ETA from attacking the Olympic Games

or the Seville Expo.

OLYMPIC AREA

When a threat is so clear and so powerful,

you don't give priority to other threats.

We are probably facing

one of Spain's most serious problems.

An illegal immigrant, who is in Spain illegally

may appear in the media

demanding immigration law be changed.

You know what? That bothers me.

And I'm sure it bothers many other Spaniards, too.

They can stay here as long as they have their papers in order.

They can't come here to take jobs away from the poorest and most unfortunate.

I think what's happening is unfair.

People say they come here to steal our jobs,

but they're doing work people don't want to do.

They want easy money.

It's only natural for people to be a bit racist.

Well, I'm not a racist.

What I don't like is seeing people here that shouldn't be here.

There's already a lot of sorrow here.

For more sorrow to come from abroad is unpleasant.

Seeing people like that makes me sad.

I'd like them to be prosperous in their own country.

In November 1992,

I was the head of Instruction Court Number 15 in Madrid.

CRIMINAL IMMIGRANT Resistance

The number of immigrants had increased...

BURN THE SMALL BOATS

...and we were starting to see xenophobic reactions...

...with skinheads

supporting xenophobic and racist ideologies.

Franco! Franco! Franco! Franco! Franco!

NOVEMBER 13, 1992 NIGHT OF THE CRIME

POLICE

They called us and said

four hooded young men had fired shots

in the abandoned Four Roses nightclub.

A woman and a man had been taken to La Zarzuela clinic.

The woman was DOA and the man was wounded.

The scene was one of depravation.

The building was in ruins

and Dominicans were squatting there.

They were distributed in various rooms.

They weren't actually rooms, but living quarters.

It was, in some way, a criminal environment.

You go in with reservations, right?

It was dark, so the Civil Guard had set up spotlights to work

and look for the bullet shells, which was very important.

I got the autopsy information right away.

It said they'd shot the body directly,

and were absolutely certain they were shooting at people.

They'd shot to kill.

It could be a settling of scores, robbery with intimidation...

For example, maybe drugs were sold there and someone went there to steal them.

But one witness told us that five days earlier,

five young men with shaved heads had been there knocking on doors.

Five Spaniards told me, "We don't want Blacks here."

So, we opened a third line of investigation

on groups of violent young men with radical tendencies.

This has been happening for some time due to racism.

It's the same people that attack us in Aravaca.

I mean, they hate us. They hate us because they're racist.

We knew there were problems with the locals there.

Indeed, this could be a xenophobic crime.

We had gotten home from a meeting.

And the phone rang and we were told that a Dominican woman had been murdered.

Nothing could hurt me more than that did.

We worked so hard to try and prevent something we knew would happen.

We warned you.

It was the chronicle of a death foretold.

It's freezing. My gosh, it's cold!

I'm suffocating. It's freezing out! I don't know how to warm my hands up.

1 MONTH BEFORE

Lucrecia was trafficked.

All the women were trafficked and had to pay a very high price.

They were giving all their family's money to the mafia.

I was already in Spain.

We got a bit of money from a house I had there.

We used the mortgage.

Part of the money was money I had sent to them from Spain.

Lucrecia stayed with me when she arrived.

She'd say,

"Oh my God. What is this? It's freezing!"

Lucrecia started working as a live-in housekeeper like we all did.

Like many other women,

Lucrecia didn't know how to use a washing machine

or how to use some of the appliances.

We don't have those things there.

Me, Lucrecia, and many other women who came here had never had a washing machine.

They were tough times.

A lot of houses didn't feed us well.

They practically gave us leftovers.

You wouldn't want to know what I've been through here.

"You have a ten o'clock curfew."

If I arrived a little late because the bus was late,

the woman of the house punished me

by making me iron clothes at 2:00 a.m. while I cried.

Not all of them were like that.

I've met good people here in Spain.

I didn't like feeling locked up.

I felt like I was in prison.

KATY FRIEND OF LUCRECIA

Lucrecia would say,

"Oh, Mari. I don't think I'll last long at this job."

She didn't feel comfortable.

And I'd say, "Let's go to the Aravaca park for a bit."

That's where everyone went. All the Dominicans would meet up there.