Around 3 p.m. on Jan. 2, nine shots were fired into the air. The perpetrators withdrew, leaving behind a button-down shirt with the cuffs tied to two lone trees in the cornfield. Machetes had hacked the shirt and cut a thick cross into one of the tree trunks at chest height. A bullet case was embedded at the center of the cross.

Putting their personal lives on hold, women in the Mexican state of Oaxaca helped shut down the government, took over a TV station, and stood up to police violence.