RW ONLINE: The Disappearing Women of Juarez\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Disappearing Women of Juarez\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1166, September 15, 2002<\/i>, posted at rwor.org<\/p>\r\n
It is called the Labyrinth of Silence, this piece of brittle desert. Here, \r\ntheir screams scrape against the crisp air, then shatter into a thousand shards \r\nof silence. Their cries are captured by dust devils that dance across the desert \r\nfloor, then are plucked in mid-step by thorny scrub bushes and ripped to shreds. \r\nThey wail in pain and terror, but no one hears them. These are the voices \r\nwithout echoes, voices of women of Juarez-- over 450, murdered in the last 10 \r\nyears.<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, stares across the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas, only \r\n200 yards away. It has been said that Juarez is a laboratory of modernization \r\nand globalization, a \"City of the Future.\" Whose future?<\/p>\r\n
This is the backdrop for the horror that is happening to the women of \r\nJuarez.<\/p>\r\n
More than 400 maquiladoras stab the border here like a barbed wire fence. \r\nThese are foreign-owned assembly factories--mainly U.S. corporations like Ford, \r\nAlcoa, RCA, General Motors, General Electric, DuPont, 3M, Amway--lured by the \r\npromise of no taxes or tariffs, no environmental or safety laws, and a seemingly \r\nendless supply of cheap labor. In this City of the Future, these models of \r\nglobalization generate revenues of $16 billion <\/i>per year--in the year \r\n2000, they paid only $1.5 million in taxes.<\/p>\r\n
Every day, buses filled with migrants arrive in Juarez from all over Mexico. \r\nThe city's population has grown to over two million, making it Mexico's \r\nfourth-largest city. U.S. domination of the country's economy, heightened since \r\nNAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was implemented in 1994, has \r\nbrought deepening misery to the people here. Literally millions of impoverished \r\nindigenas and campesinos have been forced from lands and villages where their \r\nfamilies have lived for generations. Tens of thousands have been beckoned by the \r\ngrim promise of $3- to $4-a-day jobs in the maquiladoras in this City of the \r\nFuture.<\/p>\r\n
Young women from rural villages, most between the ages of 16 and 24 and some \r\nas young as 11, make up 70% of the maquiladora work force. In the time it takes \r\nto ride a bus from the countryside to the city, these women are wrenched across \r\nhundreds of years of history. They leave behind a world of feudal forms of \r\npatriarchy where fathers, brothers and husbands are lords and masters, where \r\nwomen live in forced docility and obedience to men--and they are thrown into the \r\nworld of modern capitalism where sexual harassment and spousal rape are legally \r\nignored and socially sanctioned, where employers interrogate them about their \r\nsexual practices, require them to show bloody tampons for three consecutive \r\nmonths to prove they're not pregnant, allow only five minutes for bathroom \r\nbreaks, ten minutes for breakfast, and a half- hour for lunch.<\/p>\r\n
In this so-called City of the Future, where threads of the social fabric are \r\nbeing forcibly unraveled, thousands of women have tumbled out of oppressive \r\nfeudal social relations into the oppressive social relations of imperialism.<\/p>\r\n
The new immigrants coming into Juarez fall into communities that seem to \r\nspring overnight from the scraps of the assembly industry. Across the river in \r\nEl Paso, neat bungalows nestle on tidy streets, and electric lights make windows \r\nglow like bright eyes in the night. But in the City of the Future, houses are \r\nconstructed from wooden pallets and cardboard boxes discarded by the \r\nmaquiladoras. Roofs are covered in tarpaper or scraps of tin and held down by \r\nrocks, bricks and old tires. There is no plumbing, and human waste runs \r\nuntreated in the Rio Grande. Chemical dumping from factories poisons the water, \r\nand birth defects exceed national averages. Streets are dusty paths that die in \r\nthe desert. Across the river in El Paso, there is enough water to quench the \r\nthirst of countless manicured lawns. But in the shantytowns on this side of the \r\nriver, there is no clean water to drink, and children die of dysentery.<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
No one can say for sure when the murders began, but more than 450 women are \r\nmissing.<\/p>\r\n
Over the past decade, more than 350 women's bodies have been found in or near \r\nCiudad Juarez. Many of the victims have been girls and young women, from 10 to \r\n22 years old, who worked in the maquiladoras. Almost all were slender, had dark \r\nskin, and long dark hair. All of them were poor.<\/p>\r\n
The brutality of the murders is stunning. The women have been raped, slashed, \r\nstrangled, crushed, maimed, dismembered and mutilated. Often, a breast has been \r\nsevered, or the nipple bitten off. Sometimes the bodies have been covered with \r\nbite marks. Sometimes the skull and face have been destroyed. Some women have \r\nbeen stabbed 23, 24 times. Some of the bodies have been burned. Some show \r\nevidence of ritual sacrifice. Some women's hair has been cut off. These crimes \r\nare more murderous than murder, if such a thing is possible--they are crimes of \r\nsuch intense hatred that they seek to destroy the personhood of the women, \r\nnegating their humanity and erasing their existence.<\/p>\r\n
The authorities have shown little concern for the female victims, and little \r\neffort has been made to identify or even find the bodies. Officials have \r\ndownplayed the crimes, often slandering the dead women as prostitutes. The \r\ngovernor of the state of Chihuahua blamed the victims for their own deaths, \r\nsaying the women \"dressed provocatively\" or \"were out on the streets at night \r\nalone.\" The state attorney general said that if the women had stayed at home \r\nwith their families, they wouldn't be murdered.<\/p>\r\n
As more and more women disappeared in broad daylight and nothing was done to \r\ntrack down their killers, outrage and protest grew from the victims' families, a \r\ngrowing women's movement, community organizations, and international human \r\nrights groups. Under intense pressure, authorities looked for a scapegoat to \r\ntake the blame.<\/p>\r\n
In October 1995, police arrested a wealthy Egyptian who worked as a chemist \r\nin one of the maquiladoras. He had lived in the United States for 20 years and \r\nhad a history of sexual assaults on women. Police said they could tie him to at \r\nleast four of the slayings, and that he was possibly responsible for all of \r\nthem. Within weeks of his arrest and while he was still in jail, the body of a \r\n15-year-old girl turned up in the desert. Then another, and another.<\/p>\r\n
In April 1996, police proclaimed another breakthrough in the case. Eleven \r\nalleged members of a gang called Los Rebeldes (the Rebels) were jailed and \r\ncharged with the deaths of seven women. But still the killings did not stop.<\/p>\r\n
In March of 1999, a prosecutor assigned to the murders announced that five \r\nbus drivers had confessed to participating in the deaths of 12 women and girls. \r\nMost likely, the prosecutor said, they were responsible for many more. Shortly \r\nafter their arrest, four of the drivers held a press conference from behind \r\nbars. Some of the men were crying and some had bruises on their faces. They said \r\nthey had been tortured and coerced into signing false confessions. A local \r\nnewspaper printed photographs of wounds and burn marks on their legs and \r\nstomachs.<\/p>\r\n
In February 2002, state police shot to death an attorney representing one of \r\nthe bus drivers. Police said they mistook the lawyer for a wanted fugitive. But \r\nthe victim's father said his son had been receiving telephone calls threatening \r\nto kill him unless he quit the case. After this assassination, the attorney who \r\nrepresents another accused driver said that he too has received telephone death \r\nthreats.<\/p>\r\n
Dozens of men have been arrested over the years in connection with the \r\nmurders, but the killings have continued. Who is murdering the women of \r\nJuarez?<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
Are the police somehow involved in these murders? Many of the victims' \r\nfamilies think so.<\/p>\r\n
And more than a few investigators, even the U.S. State Department in its most \r\nrecent human rights report on Mexico, conclude that the killings could not have \r\ngone on for so long without the connivance and perhaps the complicity of the \r\npolice.<\/p>\r\n
One mother described her daughter's body after it was found in February 2001: \r\n\"Her nose was broken. Her eyes were purple...she was completely marked.\" The \r\npolice never investigated the case. In her own investigation, the mother \r\ndiscovered that her daughter's wrists were bruised in a way that showed she had \r\nbeen handcuffed.<\/p>\r\n
Police told another mother that they were closing her daughter's case because \r\nthey had no leads. The mother asked to see the case file. When they gave it to \r\nher, all the statements from all the people the police had interviewed had been \r\nremoved. So the mother began her own investigation. When she tried to interview \r\npeople who'd known her daughter, they told her they were afraid to talk to her. \r\nOne woman told her she'd been threatened. Undaunted, the mother persevered. At \r\none point, she discovered a woman who befriended young women and invited them to \r\ngo dancing. When the young women met her, she'd take them to a rendezvous where \r\nthe judicial [state] police would be waiting, and she'd hand the young women \r\nover to them. Some of these women are now among the missing and dead.<\/p>\r\n
One victim, leaving a maquiladora, \"disappeared\" in the middle of the morning \r\nright across the street from the police station.<\/p>\r\n
Could the drug lords be involved in these murders? Juarez is a major transit \r\npoint for illegal narcotics. Mexico's most powerful drug cartels use it as a \r\nbeachhead for their crack and cocaine pipelines into America, the world's \r\nlargest consumer of illegal drugs. Drug trafficking is a lucrative and brutal \r\nenterprise here, generating $1 billion in profits per year. Bribery and \r\ncorruption of officials, politicians and law enforcement is one of its \r\nwell-known cottage industries, and the murder of rival entrepreneurs--and \r\ninnocent bystanders who get caught in the crossfire--is just part of the price \r\nof doing business. Among the captains of this industry are wealthy and powerful \r\nforces on both sides of the border. It is not hard to imagine people like these \r\ndealing in the traffic and murder of women for pleasure.<\/p>\r\n
Or are the murderers connected in some way to the maquiladora industry? Many \r\ncoincidences seem to point in that direction. Most obviously there is the fact \r\nthat many of the missing and murdered women were maquiladora workers, snatched \r\non their way to or from work. Many of these women disappeared the very next day \r\nafter they were hired. One woman worked in the same factory with her sister and \r\nfather. One day, for no given reason, someone at the maquiladora changed her \r\nschedule so that she had to leave work without the protection of her family. She \r\ndisappeared that same afternoon, her body was discovered 24 days later. Another \r\nwoman showed up four minutes late to work. The doors to the maquiladora were \r\nlocked and the manager wouldn't let her in. She never made it home.<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
In Senorita Extraviada, <\/i>a recent documentary about the Juarez murders, \r\nfilmmaker Lourdes Portillo interviews Maria Talamantes, whose story points the \r\nfinger at the police.<\/p>\r\n
After an altercation with some neighbors, Maria and her husband called the \r\ncops. When they went to the police station to lodge a complaint, the police \r\narrested the couple and kept them in jail for 24 hours. During their detention, \r\nthe police raped Maria. They took her to a cell that was littered with pile upon \r\npile of women's clothing. When Maria asked what all these clothes were doing \r\nthere, the police told her, \"They belong to the women we've taken.\" With a \r\nshiver, Maria remembered that many of the murdered women's bodies had been found \r\nwearing the clothes of other disappeared women. (Later, some time after Maria's \r\nordeal, when it was announced that the government was assigning a Special \r\nProsecutor to investigate the Juarez murders, the police inexplicably burned one \r\nthousand pounds of evidence-- women's clothes.) Then they took Maria's picture, \r\ntelling her, \"If you report us, we will find you...and kill you and your \r\nfamily.\"<\/p>\r\n
Maria says the police showed her a photo album, filled with pictures of girls \r\nwith long hair. Pictures of these girls being dragged by their hair through the \r\nbushes. And more. According to Maria, the photos showed each girl laying in the \r\nmiddle of a circle of men who raped her, one by one. Then they beat her. Then \r\nthey turned her over and raped her anally. The photos showed the men laughing. \r\nThere are photos of the women's faces. Maria said, \"They had expressions of pain \r\nand suffering. You could see them cry and scream. Her face--it showed the pain \r\nshe was feeling. They looked very sad.\" There are photos of the men pouring \r\ngasoline on the women before they set them on fire.<\/p>\r\n
After her release, Maria filed a report and identified the police who were \r\ninvolved in her rape. They were all arrested, but none of them were ever \r\npunished. Some time later, Maria got a job in one of the maquiladoras. On her \r\nfirst day at work, she sensed that someone was looking at her. She turned to see \r\nthe factory security guard staring right at her. It was one of the men who'd \r\nshown her the photo album in jail.<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
Who is killing the women of Juarez? The killer has not yet been found. But it \r\nis not a mystery how the forces of imperialist exploitation and oppression have \r\ncreated the conditions in which these murders are taking place. Juarez is indeed \r\na city of one possible <\/i><\/i>future, and a mirror that reflects what is \r\ntoday an intolerable reality for millions of people around the world.<\/i> It \r\nis one of many places on our planet right now where the consequences of free \r\nmarket modernization and imperialist globalization have hit the masses with \r\ncrushing force, including with the reinforcement of centuries-old traditions \r\nwhile developing new and painful twists in the oppression of women--in places \r\nlike Afghanistan, where most women not wearing the body-covering burkha still \r\n<\/i>cannot walk the streets without fear of being beaten, harassed, and \r\npersecuted; like parts of the Middle East and Africa, where little girls are \r\nsexually maimed by genital mutilation; like China, where tens of thousands of \r\nwomen are being kidnapped and sold into slavery; like the Philippines, where \r\ncity-size encampments of child-prostitutes spread like a rash outside U.S. \r\nmilitary installations; like the U.S., where one in every three women will be \r\nsexually assaulted in her lifetime.<\/p>\r\n
In their deaths, as in their lives, the women of Juarez are just another \r\ncommodity to be exploited, part of the global trade in women that urgently poses \r\nthe question, \"Is this the world we want to live in?\" This demands an \r\nanswer.<\/p>\r\n
*****<\/p>\r\n
Guillermina Gonzales is painting the lampposts of Juarez bright pink and \r\nmarking them with a black cross. \"My [sister] was one of the victims of Juarez. \r\nWhen it is said the women killed are prostitutes or from other places, we are \r\nhere to show this is not true. The victims cannot tell you their lives or how \r\nthey died, but I can tell you that this is totally unjust. They have a history. \r\nThey have family.... I believe that a grave danger for women exists in each \r\npoint in the city. I believe that the simple fact of being a woman here is a \r\ngrave danger.\"<\/p>\r\n
The families continue to fight for justice. They build shrines to their loved \r\nones in police stations as reminders of the missing. They say justice is deaf to \r\ntheir plea, but they will not be silent. To be silent is to acquiesce, and the \r\ndesert, they say, must no longer be allowed to swallow the dead.<\/p>\r\n
Sources used for this article include:<\/p>\r\n
1. Tori Amos' website: http:\/\/takenbythesky.net\/juarez\/murder93.html<\/p>\r\n
2. <\/i><\/p>
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