6 November 2003 Edition
Families of murdered Mexican women demand justice
Mothers, sisters and friends of the more than 300 women murdered and over 500 women who have disappeared in Chihuahua, North Mexico, since 1993, took to the streets this week. The demonstration, called Operation Digna, was called to demand a proper investigation and justice for these women and their families.
Since 1993, 370 women have been murdered in the Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. At least one-third of these women were sexually abused before being murdered. Seventy-five bodies have still not been identified. Until now, local and national authorities have showed little interest in investigating the crimes: According to a press release from Amnesty International from August of this year, "the majority of these crimes have not yet been resolved. According to local human rights organisations, another 400 women have "disappeared" without a trace. Many of the victims worked in factories near the US/Mexican border, where they were being exploited by foreign companies in search of cheap labour."
Many of the victims worked in maquila factories, assembly plants where large US or Japanese corporations carry out the most work intensive phases of their production, as in is the case of the textile industry. The Mexican Government considers the maquilas an important economic advance because foreign investment is brought in and new jobs are created. For those forced to work in the maquilas, this is a highly questionable analysis. The wages paid are miserable, and the work conditions are precarious. And as the maquilas are found within the so-called 'free trade zones', the rights they are afforded are minimal: it is prohibited to organise a union within the maquilas, and the working regulations are so harsh that few workers even get to know one another. The isolation, poverty and work shifts, many of which end in the middle of the night, make the potential murder of these women easy.
The killings are also a matter of low priority. The police only opened investigations after Amnesty International did an on-site investigation this summer in order to document the unsolved cases and begin a campaign directed against the Mexican Government.
The organisation Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (Bring Back Our Daughters) has denounced how the authorities ignored the women's murders and disappearances for so long. "Every week at least one woman disappears from Ciudad Juarez, and then nothing is ever heard from her again, unless her kidnappers decide to leave her dead body somewhere to be found. The remains always show how the women were brutally tortured and murdered, cruelly raped, and sometimes their bodies are mutilated or burned," said the organisation in a press release.
One of the many cases is that of Alejandra García. Around 10:15pm on 19 February, 2001, the neighbours of a shanty town near a maquila in Ciudad Juárez called the local emergency number in order to inform the police that a naked woman was being beaten and raped by two men. No police were sent out to investigate the alleged rape. Following a second phone call, a police car was sent out, but it didn't arrive to the scene of the crime until 11:25pm, too late to do anything. The culprits had already disappeared.
Just four days earlier, the mother of 17-year-old Alejandra García had registered her child as missing. Alejandra, mother of an infant and a three-year-old boy, worked in the Maquiladora Servicios Plásticos y Ensambles (Maquila Assembly and Plastic Services). At around 7:30pm on the night of her abduction, Alejandra's colleagues saw her walking away into an unlighted area near the factory. She used to walk that route each night to get the bus that would take her home. But that night, Alejandra would never to return home.
On 21 February, the corpse of a young woman was found in wasteland, very near to where the emergency calls to the police were made. She was wrapped in a blanket and her body showed clear signs of physical and sexual violence. The autopsy revealed that the cause of death was strangulation. The body of the young woman was identified as Alejandra by her parents. The autopsy and investigation came to the conclusion that she had died a day and a half before being found and that she was held captive at least five days prior to her murder.
The police report on the night of that 19 February when the phone calls denouncing the beating and rape of an unknown woman simply read "nothing to report".
The identity of the woman attacked on this day was never determined, and no attempt was made to investigate whether there was a connection between this woman and the abduction and murder of Alejandra or, for that matter, any other cases. Furthermore, no investigation was carried out by the authorities to determine why no follow-up was made to the emergency services from Ciudad Juarez. The area around the maquila remains to this day unlighted. A small cross bears witness at the place where the corpse was found.
Diana Washington Valdez has investigated the murders for five years for a local newspaper. She has gone on the record about the killers' identities. In her book, Harvest of Women, Washington exposes the underworld of Ciudad Juarez drug-traffickers. "The girls are carefully selected. They are disposable women..., young and poor." The victims are young to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, and the poor background guarantees that the police will not be very interested in investigating their murders.
Washington maintains that the women are kidnapped by middle men to be taken to rich men with political connections reaching as far as Mexican President Fox.
Washington's investigations are based on leaks from Mexican police and the FBI. In March 2003, she says, the FBI informed Mexican police of the locations to which the abducted women were taken. The FBI believes the Mexican police failed to act, even though they had been informed of plans to capture another four girls.