Borderline justice: The body count of young women factory workers near the US-Mexican border continues to grow - Currents: Human Rights - Brief Article

New Internationalist, March, 2003 by Greg Bloom

BY the time they are found - if they are found at all -- the bodies have been partly mummified by the sun and dry wind that sweeps across the sparse Chihuahuan desert. They have usually been dumped on the outskirts of Ciudad Jiarez: a migrant-filled, industrializing border city of 1.2 million residents in Mexico just across the Rio Grande from El Paso in Texas. Scores of young women -- most of them between the ages of 12 and 20 -- have been raped and murdered in and around Jubrez since 1993. The exact number is unknown. State investigators said in December 2002 that there had been 'only' 47, then 67 later that month. Activists and researchers put the figure between 80 and 90. Practically the only thing that state criminal investigators and women's advocates agree upon is that the rape-murders are the work of two or more serial rape-murderers that often bite off the nipples of the victims or cut away pieces of flesh in ritualistic patterns.

Claudia Ivette Gonzalez Banda, aged 20, who disappeared on 10 October 2001, was one of their victims. 'When she was half-an-hour late, I knew that she was dead; says Claudia's mother, Josefina Gonzalex. 'Claudia never went out, she didn't have a boyfriend, she was quiet! On 6 and 7 November 2001, the decomposed bodies of eight young women were found in a cotton field in Juarez. Within days, Josefina Conzblex was told by police that Claudia was among those found. However when the DNA test results came back -- 10 months after they were promised -- the federal government's lab tests were only able to make one positive identification. It was not of Claudia. Now, the Government has requested further 'data' from the GonzAlex family. What is meant by 'data' has not been made dear.

Josefina Conzdlez is a member of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (May Our Daughters Return Home) -- a group, like a growing number in Jubrez, that citicizes law-enforcement authorities for their sloppy investigations and insensitivity to families wanting a resolution of the murders. Indeed, in 10 years only one person has been convicted for one of the rape-murders -- and that conviction was overturned. Activist groups allege that investigators have pinned the rape-murders on nearly a dozen men as scapegoats, effectively protecting the real offenders. Because the killers still walk free, these groups believe that the perpetrators are either from the drug cartels that pay protection money to the police, from the ranks of the police, or are adult children of high-ranking politicians or the rich. Some also worry that the young women are either being mutilated by Satanists, exploited in snuff movies or used as organ donors.

The protests about this official inaction are growing. In Mexico City on 25 November last year, family members of the Juarez serial-killing victims led more than 6,000 protestors dressed in mourning through the city streets. In Juarez, a new group of victims' family members is being formed by other mothers -- including Benita Monarrez, the mother of Laura Berenice Ramos Momirrez, who disappeared in September 2001. State authorities told Benita that her daughter's body had been found in the same cotton field as Claudia Gonzblex Banda. However, the DNA test results have come back negative in Benita's case. Although troubled by the fact that she has buried a body she thought was her daughter's, Benita finds a positive side to what she sees as investigative incompetence. 'I now have hope that my daughter may be alive; she says.

Greg Bloom is editor of Frontera NorteSur, a free, online, US-Mexico border news service. ACTION: To learn more or give assistance, contact Marisa Silva of the US-based not-for-profit Amigos de as Mujeres de Juarez (Friends of the Women of Juarez) which provides support to the victims' families and a rape crisis centre. Email: marcielovestom@yahoo.com