Corruption and Femicide in Ciudad Juarez

Since 1993, approximately 400 women, if not more by now, have been victims of violent mutilations and deaths (Lowe 1). Femicide is defined by the National Organization of Women as “the mass murder of women simply because they are women” (O’Neill 1). Mexican women working in the Maquiladoras factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico have been primary victims of these horrific events due to the daily work schedule that they are subjected to. Families of the victims try to speak out and get justice for their daughters’ murders, but still, nothing has been done about it. Activists have been struggling for years to have their voices heard, and the authorities respond with catching the wrong men responsible and imprisoning and torturing innocent people. The nonchalant attitude towards the deaths of these women and lack of motivation to apprehend the real rapists and murderers makes the women seem like they have no value on this earth and are just as good as garbage being tossed into the desert. There have been many human rights campaigns and feminist organizations that have protested in Mexico, fighting against the “political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government” (Wright 152). Corruption of the Mexican government on all levels seems to be a source of a growing problem that has taken the lives of hundreds of women since 1993.

            The first victim officially recorded was Alam Chavira Farel, although since “local disappearances exceed known homicides each year” (Newton 2) it’s hard to know for sure. In 1993, police acknowledged 16 murders following Farel’s of women in Ciudad Juarez (Newton 2). All of the cases recorded, including the ones after, involved strangulations, stabbings, mutilations, and rape. The police had several suspects but none of them were arrested (Newton 2).  Women working in the Maquiladoras factories are supposed to be ‘safe’ because they go from work to the bus stop. This is where a significant number of women have been abducted and murdered. In several of the cases it has been noted that the murderers are often the bus drivers themselves (Newton 7). In 1999, a 14-year-old girl escaped from being choked and assaulted by a maquiladoras bus driver named Jesus Guardado Marquez, but his nicknames were “El Dracula” and “El Tolteca” (Newton 7). These men were jailed but the murders continued. A female attorney was murdered which spurred a lot of publicity which is when President Vicente Fox finally stepped in to make a public announcement ordering a “new investigation by ‘federal crime specialists’” (Newton 9). This still doesn’t focus on the femicide as a whole – it just looks at isolated situations.

            The mothers of these women who have been murdered have become activists without even choosing to do so. Norma Andrada is the mother of the victim Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrada expresses her angst in the documentary, On the Edge, “They tell me I’m an activist. I don’t feel like an activist, I’m simply a mother, struggling for rights that my daughter had.”  Another mother, Ramona Morales, mother of the victim Silvia Morales, interviewed in On the Edge, recounts how her daughter disappeared on July 7^th, 1995, she went from school to work and then one day her daughter didn’t return home. Her husband and sons looked for her, but they couldn’t find her. She maintains that the main idea of why this continues is impunity. It gives men the right to do what they want to women in Juarez and they have no consequences. This documentary also mentions the fact that if you have money, you can get your perpetrators but it’s often the murderers who have the money to get out of being accused. These girls are being treated as if they have no value to society because of the ways that the authorities react to their deaths. A single mother was asked to come into the desert and identify her daughter’s body, as she reports through the documentary On the Edge, and it took all of her money to take a cab to get out there and then when she identified her daughter’s body, the police wouldn’t even give her a ride back to her home or back to town. So this mother who just had to identify her child’s body had to walk approximately 10 miles back to town because the authorities wouldn’t take her. This not only devalues the woman, who was slain, but the family and their grieving as well. The National Organization for Women states that “small advances in the struggle for justice are due to the perseverance of victims' families who cannot be silenced despite the efforts of state and federal authorities to keep them quiet” (O’Neill 1). It’s also adds to the horror, being in the United States, that these women are being murdered who are working for factories that export 90% of their goods to the United States (Newton 7).

            Many of the routines for interrogation in Ciudad Juarez involve torture. The bus drivers of the maquiladoras that have been apprehended and charged with legitimate charges of murder and assault, but many of the men interrogated are the ones closest to the women who are murdered. According to statements in On the Edge, because these men are tortured relentlessly, they end up confessing to murders that they did not commit and the real murderers and serial killers are still out there. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are protesters and human rights movements like the Ni Una Mas (Not one more) campaign who is fighting for the justice for that these women deserve. In the United States, Ni Una Mas is a campaign through Drexel University that is an art exhibit trying to raise awareness of gender violence and specifically raise awareness of the murders of the hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez. The students did an “Artmarch” wearing pink shirts to represent their solidarity with the victims (Timpane 1). Bringing awareness to this is one of the most important things that can be done nationally and internationally, because it brings significance to the lives lost, showing the Mexican government that these women have value and they should have justice. The art in the Drexel University art show was from women and men all over the world from Switzerland, to Norway, to England, and the United States (Timpane 1). This is one of the many things that is being done internationally to try to raise awareness to the horrific femicide, but what is done locally is possibly of even greater importance.

            In Mexico, “a caravan aimed at upholding women’s rights and stopping violence against women in Ciudad Juarez and Mexico is headed to the U.S. border” (Frontera Nortesur 1). They protested on November 10, 2009 and continued until they got to the U.S. border. The group that headed this was The Women in Black who are an international organization fighting against violence towards women and femicide. They worked with the group The Exodus for the Life of Women, who has a 10-point program which involves finding missing women and getting justice for murders (Frontera Nortesur 1). Their protests brought on a reactionary statement from the government claiming that they have “spent tens of millions of dollars from 1993 to 2009 in response to the women’s homicides,” yet, “according to the federal agency, the money went for special prosecutors, new institutions and related expenses” (Frontera Nortesur 1). This money was not going to support the authorities who were in charge of finding these serial killers/murderers, but it made the government look good and look like they were at least trying to solve these murders. They weren’t.

            It has been reported from human rights organizations that the body count had lowered in 2004, but in 2009 the women’s homicides have broken all of the records. It is presumed to be because of the ongoing narco-war between rival cartels that more women were being murdered in 2009. It is believed that gender violence and gang activities are going to be merging, causing an increase in the femicide (Frontera Nortesur 1). In late 2009, two young women who were in their late teens were “reportedly tortured and possibly sexually assaulted before being dragged outside of a house in Senderos de San Isidro neighborhood where a party had been underway and then set on fire” (Frontera Nortesur 1). The people who are thought to be responsible for these horrific murders were gang members. In the ‘90s, it was thought by some authorities and media that the slayings were due to one person, “the Juarez Ripper” (Newton 3), who was a serial killer targeting the young women of the maquiladoras, but it has become clear over the years that more and more men are responsible for taking the lives of over 400 women. Now it isn’t just the serial killers or bus drivers, but the gangs that roam Ciudad Juarez, who also have placed no value on the lives of each woman brutally assaulted and killed. The corrupt officers and officials also alleviate the gang members of any responsibility of the murders if they can be bought off or bribed with drug money.

Vicente Fox’s thoughts on NPR regarding the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez were absent. The interviewer asked him about the horrific situation and he tiptoed around the subject and then never actually answered her question. It’s incredibly unfortunate that it has become this way with the Mexican government, but it’s a trickledown effect of disinterest in finding these murderers in Ciudad Juarez, as well as Chihuahua, Mexico.

Looking at the effects that these murders have on the women’s families, as well as what is being done about it through protest as well as through authority brings significance to the femicide, not just for Ciudad Juarez, but for all over the world where violence against women is a problem.  If the change will happen, it needs to begin with the leaders of the nation of Mexico, to put a stop to these horrible murders and bring justice to the women who have been slain for the past 17 years.

                                                                                                  

Works Cited

            Frontera Nortesur. "Women in Black March on Ciudad Juarez." New America Media. 
            N.p., 21 Nov. 2009. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://news.newamericamedia.org/ 
            news/view_article.html?article_id=15b82db343fc06addc3bc6f24367293f>.

Lowe, Kathy. “Femicide in Latin America: A Tale of Two Cities.” International Viewpoint Sept. 2006: 1. Web. 17 May 2010. <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/?spip.php?article1134>.

Newton, Michael. "Ciudad Juarez:The Serial Killer's Playground." trutv.com. 
             Turner: A Time Warner Company, 2003. Web. 18 May 2010. 
            <http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/ 
             index.html>.

O'Neill, Terry. "Femicides of Juarez Fact Sheet." National Organization for Women. National Organization for Women, 2009. Web. 1 June 2010.  <http://www.now.org/issues/global/juarez/femicide.html>.

Timpane, John. “Art exhibit protests women’s mass murders in Mexico.” Philadelphia Inquirer  13 May 2010, PHLI ed.: D01. Web. 16 May 2010. <http://global.factiva.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/?ga/?default.aspx>.

"Vicente Fox on U.S. Immigration." Interviews. NPR: National Public Radio. NPR, 
     n.p., 28 May 2008. npr. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://www.npr.org/templates/ 
     story/story.php?storyId=90883427>.

Wright, Melissa W. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New 
     York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. Print.

Wright, Melissa W. “From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women’s Worth, and Ciudad Juárez Modernity.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94.2 (2004): 369-386. JSTOR. Web. 18 May 2010. <http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/?stable/?3693993?seq=1>.

On the Edge. Youtube. N.p., 2005. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/ 
     watch?v=RNIZvrGDPak&feature=channel>.