Project Steev

New Light on Mexico Femicides

I'm reprinting here an important story just out by Kent Paterson of Frontera NorteSur concerning the Juarez femicide. Frontera NorteSur, based at the University of New Mexico, is a great service for anyone wanting news and analysis of border-related issues. However, the only way to get their reports in a timely way is via email (information at the end about how to subscribe.) - I think they should also be posting to a blog, but they're about 7 years behind at getting stories onto their website.

March 30, 2009

Women’s/Human Rights News

Stars Cast New Light on Mexico Femicides

Internationally-known music and film celebrities are casting new public
attention on the unsolved murders of women in Ciudad Juarez and the state
of Chihuahua. In a March 27 meeting in Mexico City, a trio of English and
Mexican celebrities conveyed their concerns for justice during a personal
conversation with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Attending the meeting were legendary English rocker Peter Gabriel, Saul
Hernandez, front man for the popular Mexican rock group Jaguares; and
acclaimed Mexican actor Diego Luna, who had a role in the recent Hollywood
biography of the assassinated US politician and pioneer gay rights
activist Harvey Milk.

Also in attendance at the unusual encounter were Tamaryn Nelson, director
of the Latin American and Caribbean desk for Gabriel’s pro-human rights
organization Witness, and Patricia Cervantes, mother of 2003 Chihuahua
City femicide victim Neyra Azucena Cervantes.

In a press conference prior to the meeting with President Calderon,
Gabriel appealed to the Mexican government to support the justice campaign
for murdered women.

“We know that Felipe Calderon confronts many challenges in many areas of
his government,” Gabriel said. “We hope to inspire him to invest money,
muscle and interest in this campaign.”

Released after the meeting, an official statement from the Mexican White
House affirmed that President Calderon pledged that he will combat abuses
of authority, promote reparations of damages to the relatives of femicide
victims and struggle against impunity. Mexico’s president agreed to give
special attention to cases like the Cervantes murder via a joint Internet
page with Witness. Working together with local officials, federal forces
are attempting to clear up the femicides, President Calderon reportedly
told his guests.

Recognizing the work of human rights defenders, President Calderon said
that the conviction and participation of activists motivated the three
levels of the Mexican government to do a better job, according to the
statement from the presidential office.

The meeting between President Calderon and the international celebrities
came just weeks after a new fictional movie about the Ciudad Juarez
femicides, “Backyard,” premiered in major theaters in Mexico. The meeting
also took place one month before Mexico is scheduled to go on trial in the
Inter-American Court for Human Rights for alleged human rights violations
committed during the “investigations” of the slayings of three women found
murdered along with five others in a Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001.

As a member state of the Inter-American Court, Mexico will be bound to
follow the verdicts issued by judges.

Despite numerous high-level pronouncements by various officials from
different branches of government over the years, the murder of women
continues to be a grave problem in Ciudad Juarez and other parts of
Mexico.

Perhaps it will never be known with one-hundred degree certainty how many
women were murdered in Ciudad Juarez in recent years. Based on press
reports and information from prominent Ciudad Juarez women’s activist
Esther Chavez Cano, the US-based Mexico Solidarity Network reported 508
women were slain in Ciudad Juarez from 1993 to mid-December 2008.

A comprehensive list compiled by El Paso-based journalist and author Diana
Washington Valdez reported 440 women were murdered for varied reasons in
Ciudad Juarez from 1993 to 2004. If subsequent press stories are added to
Washington Valdez’s total, then at least 622 women were slain in Ciudad
Juarez between 1993 and most of March 2009.

The bloodiest year was 2008, when at least 86 women were murdered,
according to a recent blog posting by Washington Valdez. In addition to
domestic and sex-related violence as being leading causes of women’s
murders, narco-violence is now a major reason for the high rate of women’s
homicides. Ciudad Juarez press accounts signaled that the majority of last
year’s female murder victims, 55, were killed because of the gangland war
that raged in Ciudad Juarez.

Some officials downplay the violence, contending Ciudad Juarez is getting
a bad rap in the media. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, for
example, was recently quoted in a maquiladora industry trade publication
as saying his city now had a distorted image it could not shake because of
negative publicity over the femicides.

“Something that was not precisely real and significant was left to grow
like a snowball,” Mayor Reyes Ferriz said.

A recent report from the latest incarnation of the Mexican Chamber of
Deputies’ femicide commission revealed that at least 2,232 women were
killed in all of Mexico during 2006-07, mostly due to domestic violence.
While the country’s main population center of Mexico City and the
adjoining state of Mexico accounted for the majority of women’s homicides
(543), the much more sparsely-populated state of Chihuahua, which includes
Ciudad Juarez, registered 84 slayings in the time period covered by the
study. The official report concluded that gender violence is keeping women
in a subordinate position in Mexican society.

“Violence against women, for the sole fact of being women, puts them in a
relationship of inequality, oppression, exclusion, subordination,
discrimination, and marginality,” the report stated.

Other Mexican states where women’s murders reached alarming levels during
2006-07 included Michoacan (202), Guerrero (129) and Baja California
(105), suggesting that where narco-violence was at an extreme so were
crimes against women.

The Chamber of Deputies’ report also noted a national pattern of
governmental indifference and denial of justice for the family members of
slain women.

In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, disappearances of young women who fit the
profile of earlier femicide victims also continue unimpeded. In one of the
most recent cases, a young mother, 22-year-old Marisela Avila Hernandez,
vanished March 18 after going to a Bancomer bank branch where she had an
account to process an unemployment claim. The bank is located near the San
Lorenzo Curve, a section of the city where crimes against both women and
men have been frequent. On March 27, friends and relatives of a young
woman reported missing six months ago, 17-year-old Rubi Marisol Frayre
Escobedo, joined Chihuahua state law enforcement authorities in a search
for traces of their loved one.

Speaking to the Mexican press late last year, feminist activist and Casa
Amiga co-founder Esther Chavez assessed the situation for women in Ciudad
Juarez 15 years after Chavez helped alert the public to the rising tide of
femicides. For Chavez, generalized impunity and rampant police corruption
resulted in the creation of a monster that eventually reared its head
against the entire society. “Now we can’t control it,” Chavez said.

Nonetheless, activists like Esther Chavez, Patricia Cervantes, Peter
Gabriel and others keep up the fight to corral and vanquish the loose
dragon.

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, March 28, 2009. Article by Luz del Carmen
Sosa. Presidencia.gob.mx, March 27, 2009. Press release. Lapolaka.com,
March 27, 2009. Norte, March 21 and 24, 2009. Articles by Arturo Chacon
and Pablo Hernandez Batista. La Jornada/Notimex, March 14 and 27, 2009.
Cimacnoticias.com, March 4, 2009. Article by Sandra Torres Pastrana.
Juarez-El Paso Now, March 2009. Dianawashingtonvaldez.blogspot.com,
January 26, 2009. El Universal/EFE, December 6, 2008. Cosecha de Mujeres,
Diana Washington Valdez (Oceana 2005).

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

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