In Juarez, Mexico, hundreds of women have been killed in the past decade. No one knows who is guilty, and police do little to stop the violence
Story by Lindsay Gebhart
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El Paso and Ciudad Juarez lie beside one another, their hands interlacing at the Rio Grande, a concrete-lined canal filled with brown sewage. At night it’s impossible to judge where one city ends and the other begins. But then the red, flashing lights of the border watchtowers catch the eye.
Juarez is a city whose garishness can only be matched by its disorganization. The Mexican city of 1.3 million has more liquor stores than schools. Knickknack shops, burrito carts and bars stand in place of skyscrapers.
Juarez seems to have been built in a hurry, with shantytowns clinging to the edges of the city. People beg for money on every corner. Some stand in front of cars crossing the border. They have mouths full of rotten teeth, and they juggle bean bags, begging for money or food.
Others are peddlers, wearing Ecko jerseys and dodging cars as they hold up poster-sized pictures of Strawberry Shortcake or Spiderman.
The air is thin, softly balancing car exhaust, greasy food and body odor.
Since 1993 about 300 women have been murdered in Juarez. Although many suspects have been convicted of the crimes, women continue to die. For many women, there is nowhere to turn; police lose and destroy evidence, torture confessions out of suspects and take payoffs. To the police, a woman’s word means nothing—a man is let out of jail just hours after being accused of rape. Today, even after extensive media attention and social pressure, the police force remains unchecked.
Mobs of rich, twisted men have been blamed by some for the killings. Others have blamed the drug cartels, sexual predators from the United States, the women’s lovers and even the police themselves.
Regardless of who is committing the crimes, the question of why remains unanswered. Is it the widespread poverty that has led to domestic violence and substance abuse? Is it the families torn apart when young women go to the city to search for work? Or is it the men of Mexico telling the women to get back in their place—the home?
Juarez is a city where people have given up hope, where the sight of a sobbing mother brings only shrugs, and where the only hope is an impossible escape.
Ignored Victims
The missing and murdered women look eerily similar: longbrown hair, caramel complexion, big eyes, beautiful. The bodies that have been found show everything that’s been done to them. Women and girls are found with their hands tied behind their backs. They have breasts or nipples missing. Their bodies have burn marks; their hair is ripped out. They’ve been raped in every way possible. Some have been kept alive for weeks or months—the terror they’ve experienced caused some to have multiple heart attacks.
One hundred to 140 of the deaths have been attributed to serial killings, committed by persons unknown, according to various Juarez organizations. The rest of the murders were brutal forms of domestic violence, committed by husbands, boyfriends or family members. In the past five years, the murders have begun to spread, first to Chihuahua City, the capital of the state of Chihuahua. From there, the pattern spread to border towns Tijuana and Matamoros, and south to Mexico City.
The murdered women of Juarez were mothers, university students and factory workers. They were poor, and their cases were easily dismissed by Mexican officials and police who said the women had just run off with a man or jumped the border.
While El Paso is the third safest city in the United States, the murder rate for women ages 15 to 24 in Juarez is five times that of Tijuana and more than 10 times that of El Paso.
The government, women’s groups and human rights organizations offer different estimates of how many women have died. As of mid-September 2004, Casa Amiga, a rape crisis center in Juarez, counted 272 deaths in Juarez alone. Amnesty International, an international human rights organization, counted 370 cases in Chihuahua City and Juarez as of August 2003.
These crosses are painted on telephone poles
throughout Juarez to contantly remind drivers of
the women who have been killed in the city.
Economic Leverage
Casa Amiga, a white corner house that blends in with its surroundings, is discreet in a cluttered neighborhood in northern Juarez. Its only distinguishing mark is its maroon awning with big, white letters and the organization’s logo. The inside is somber. It’s familiar only because it’s all too close to the Latin American clinics seen in movies. Middle-aged and young women sit in chairs in the waiting area. The women at the front desk wear high heels and casual business attire, chatting and reading the lifestyle section of the newspaper. The left wall is covered with fliers of missing girls who look innocent and vulnerable.
One of the missing girls, Brenda Esther Alfaro Luna, 15, took a job to help support her mother and younger siblings after her father was imprisoned in the United States. One day in September 1997, she didn’t come home from work. Luna’s bones were found Oct. 13 of that year. The cause of her death is still unknown.
Brenda’s mother, Maria Esther Luna de Alfaro, cleans the office of Casa Amiga once a week for free in appreciation for the therapy the counselors have given her. Although she is only 39, gray hair fringes her face. Her body is tired, and her shoulders slump forward when she sits down. She wears plain clothes covered by a lime, red and orange flowered apron.
After her daughter disappeared, the police contacted de Alfaro twice, she says. They asked her the same questions about the crime both times, telling her they had lost the first file.
“For five years they had the remains of my daughter in the police department. I tried to claim the bones, but no one would listen,” de Alfaro says.
Esther Chavez Caño, the director of Casa Amiga, was one of the first people to speak out against the murders in 1993 when she began writing a column in El Diario, Juarez’s newspaper.
When de Alfaro didn’t get any results from the police, she went to Chavez for help. Chavez requested a piece of bone from the police and sent it away for DNA testing. It was Brenda’s.
“The police then gave the bones to me,” de Alfaro says with glassy eyes, her hands folded in her lap. “I took them to the cemetery and put them into a grave.”
“She was a very active child. If I was down, she would always make me smile. She was very lovely.”
“I am lost.”
“All the women ended up murdered the same way. It’s probably the same police corruption. The murderers just pay the police not to investigate. There is no way to try to solve this problem. There is no hope.”
Those in charge have more than political power on their side—they have an inordinate amount of economic power, says Irasema Coronado, the co-director of the Coalition Against Violence Toward Women and Families on the Border, a women’s organization in El Paso.
“The government will help the mothers find housing or give them money for the burial and some sort of stipend for the month,” says Coronado, who is also an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. The mothers “become less critical of the government,” she says. “It happens all the time.”
De Alfaro says the police haven’t done any actual investigation since her daughter’s disappearance, but the government gives her 900 pesos a week, which is equal to about 82 American dollars.
“Yes, it helps, but they are trying to buy us. All the families are poor,” de Alfaro says. “I want to see investigations.”
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