Fifteen years of femicide in Ciudad Juarez
The story that I want to tell you from a far country, famous for "Margarita" in the Aztec temples, its language is so musical and the sad legacy Marshall left by Diaz.
I've never been to Mexico but inside I've always thought of as a happy land, rich in mines of gold and silver, with its "campesinos" who wear their unique sombrero, a land full of music and color, but also of silence and long, dusty roads. A twisted country, austere yet playful and magical.
The romantic image I had in me has been erased from a photograph showing a large cross with nails driven 500. Each of those spikes is a missing girl and then found in the desert, raped, mutilated and killed.
Now I see a country that limps to achieve a future of American factories and pubs of the red light where women work to try to give meaning to their lives, to feed their children, to a day cross the border and arrive in the United States, so close yet so far away. A country where the rule of law to the contrary and where the degree of impunity is equal to 100%. A country where the police protect the criminals and where the innocent are tortured to confess to crimes they never committed. A country that hopes to grow and does it with the sweat, strength, tears and screams of women.
My story begins in a border town, Ciudad Juarez, hell begins. This city is located in the state of Chihuahua: a wall of the containment area created in the late 60's to block Mexican emigration. You have moved to the people who were unable or unwilling to cross the frontier of hope. "
In Ciudad Juarez delivered daily from the country's hundreds of girls looking for a job. Girls alone, helpless, who often become victims of one of the stories on gender violence more horrible and unheard of today.
" The murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, continue. Already more than 460 women murdered and more than 600 disappearances from 1993 . " 1
Most victims are between 15 and 25. They are migrant women in Ciudad Juarez to work in maquilladoras, industrial assembly of hundreds of American companies located along the border. These companies assume preferably young women, often minors, because they are considered docile labor, less aware of their rights and less willing to rely on them as best suited to tolerate the meticulous work, boring and alienating, and to settle for very low wages. As if this situation of marginalization and discrimination are not enough, the girls must take a risk everyday to be kidnapped, raped, killed during the endless journey that run going or returning from the factory.
The term femicide to describe this Gender genocide perpetrated on the grounds that they are women and have no power in society.
Feminicide is the expression of a wider range of concerns that a border town involved in phenomena such as the passage of migrants, drug trafficking, worker exploitation and neglect of the institutions. Gender violence is part of a social, political and cultural miserable. Women, once again pay the highest price, in this world of differences and discrimination to the extreme even to be deprived of life!
work, a fundamental right for all men and women, becomes a death trap. Many, many, and especially young people, thought they could find a glimmer of hope for an impoverished existence in the encountering instead maquilladoras violence, almost always atrocious torture and finally death.
maquilladoras in wages do not exceed an average of four dollars a day for ten hours of work, a classic example of a globalized city, where it is not surprising that many girls vanish at dawn or at night, all 'out of work and even in broad daylight without anyone who wishes to account and take charge because nothing in that city is intended to meet the basic needs of the individual, but only to ensure a profit.
are poor, uneducated, poorly paid. Sun, with no safety net and totally unprepared for life in a metropolis, so different from the small villages where they were born, they become perfect victims.
Ciudad is one of the most dangerous places in the world for women, why Mexicans have nicknamed "the city that kills women" for 17 years has been the scene of hundreds of feminicides and do not know the names of the culprits.
The script followed by these killers is repeated in a pattern and precise macabre: kidnapping, torture, rape, mutilation, strangling and abandonment in landfills or was. Are continually being discovered, in the poorest neighborhoods and city blocks, naked bodies, mangled and disfigured teen and girls. The budget, shocking, is two victims per month. In 2007 alone, 70 murders were recorded. Not to mention the more than 800 women still missing and never found.
There are several hypotheses on the identity of the killers. There was talk of drugs, satanic rituals, the organ trade, U.S. nationals sent to Mexico under the semi freedom. Some argue that girls are victims of amateur porn videos ending with the death of the protagonist ( snuff movies ).
Since 1993, there were ten arrests and 18 convictions, but no lack of release, and you are not sure of the guilt of those arrested. The watchwords are impunity, discrimination and indifference. In Mexico, violence against women is considered a normal, and 400 murders of young girls have more or less important than in Italy could have the poisoning of 400 stray dogs.
The carnage continues, but that the Mexican authorities able (or willing?) to identify those responsible. Investigations are superficial and inadequate. Often they resort to torture to extract confessions to innocent people, or to secure the support of the people and disguise the obvious shortcomings.
Some cases have been carefully stowed away into oblivion, leaving families in the illusion of a possible return of her daughter.
authorities point the finger at the young women accused, unfairly, of instigating the killers with their low-cut dresses and makeup provocative.
The unwillingness of the authorities, both the state government of Chihuahua and the Federal authorities, to assume full responsibility to recognize the dimensions of these murders has left the population of this country without proper protection.
Marcela Viviana Rayas's body was discovered on May 28, 2003 in an uninhabited area and outskirts of the city of Chihuahua. According to information gathered, the girl was seen for the last time on March 16 of that year in the city. The family members tried unsuccessfully since day one. Complain to the Attorney General of the Justice of the State of Chihuahua denouncing the case as a kidnapping. For the authorities do not there was no evidence of an actual abduction of the girl and abandoned the case. The family asked for an explanation to the state but got no explanation and no information about it. Nearly three months after Marcela was found dead.
This is just one of 400 stories. It 's just an example of ignorance and carelessness of the Mexican state. Unfortunately all the stories are alike, and no family ever get justice.
The inability of authorities to provide answers to meaningful questions, because of the violence so fierce and misunderstood, brings families of victims to justice DIY. A tragic and dramatic solution that does not give peace, because digging in the sand of the desert and find the bones and clothes of women increases their anxiety and desire for justice.
The lack of an adequate record of the circumstances of the deaths highlight all the negative aspects of government, which refuses to recognize the true dimension of this femicide.
A former member of the Legal Service of Ciudad Juarez has confessed that:
" In cases of sexual violence have not been made all the necessary analysis of organic compounds. This is frustrating because you deny the evidence and conceal the evidence. "
Cecilia Covarrubias, 16, disappeared in Ciudad Juarez on November 14, 1995. His body was found two days later in Loma Blanca, a desert area on the outskirts of the city. Although the autopsy with the authorities found traces of clear sexual violence, declared that it was a violent death due to a stroke of a firearm. A common murder.
Recently the number of discoveries has declined, but it is likely that attention have led these international criminals to get rid of the corpses in more definitive ways, dissolve in a liquid composed of acid and lime. What matters is clear. Frustrate even the story of this terrible story.
Amnesty International and other NGOs, for over a decade have given way to a campaign to focus global attention on the serial killings of women in Mexico and called on Mexican authorities to immediately stop these crimes. They do not want to leave alone women's associations and mothers of the victims, who daily risk their lives for their activities. Everything that happens in Ciudad Juarez is an insult human rights, is shameful and grotesque.
Juarez where the rule of the law of violence. Juarez and his long nights at red lights. Juarez and the drug gangs. Juarez and the unhealthy relationship between police and the assassins. Juarez is the last stop before reaching the green dream of the dollar. Juarez ... it's night there ... and a girl will not return home. Juarez ... it's morning over there ... and a mother finds her daughter's empty bed.
Juarez ... a vain cry rises from the sand, oblivion of the desert: a mass Ni ... never more than one!
Ilaria Biancacci
1 are the first words one reads the opening page of www.mujeresdejuarez.org, site organization "Nuestras Hijas de setback at home", founded in early 2001 by relatives and friends of the young women "desaparecidas" or murdered in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to report the dramatic reality of the facts and demand authorities a clear answer to their demand for justice.
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