WUNRN
Mexico - In Juárez, Years of Seeking Justice for Murdered Women - Film of Victim Mother's Story
By Daniela Pastrana
CIUDAD
JUÁREZ, Mexico, Jun 11, 2010 (IPS) - "Sometimes I'm cheerful, but other
times I see no reason for working in the community or even for life," said
Paula Flores, who has become the symbol of the fight for justice for the
hundreds of women who have been murdered or disappeared in this northern
Mexican border city.
"Sometimes
I hit bottom," admitted
Sand covers
the unpaved streets, an extension of the desert that for the last two decades
has witnessed some of the most gruesome sexual violence -- nearly all of which
has gone unpunished.
Paula Flores
is the focus of a documentary film that was screened at the 3rd International
Human Rights Film Festival, May 21-June 3 in
Directed by
José Bonilla, "La Carta: Sagrario... nunca has muerto para mí" (The
Letter: Sagrario... For Me, You Never Died), centred on the mother's
perspective, follows the 12-year fight for justice of the family of Sagrario
González Flores, who was raped, tortured and murdered in 1998.
"Juárez
is an issue that is a challenge to all of us," the director told IPS.
Sagrario
disappeared Apr. 16, 1998, two months before her 18th birthday. Her body was
found in the desert 14 days later. She was the fourth of seven children of
Paula Flores and Jesús González. Her father committed suicide in 2006, unable
to overcome his grief.
The family
had moved to Ciudad Juárez, in
In the
1970s,
"We had
no idea what awaited us here,"
In February
2005, the family convinced the police to arrest José Luis Hernández, alias El
Manuelillo, a well-known figure in the neighbourhood who worked as a
"coyote" -- a human trafficker who was paid to cross undocumented
migrants illegally into the
Hernández
had disappeared for seven years, shortly after the crime. It was the family's
own investigation that led to him.
In his
initial statement, he said two men had paid him 500 dollars to deliver the
young woman, who was intercepted as she left her job at the maquila, shortly
after 3:00 pm. That was not the usual time that her shift ended -- management
had abruptly changed her schedule -- which meant her father was not there to
accompany her home.
But during
the trial, Hernández changed his story, asserting that he acted alone. He is
now serving a 28-year sentence in a prison far from Juárez, in the southwestern
state of Jalisco.
"The
case has not been resolved," said Sagrario's mother as she looked through
newspaper clippings about the family's 12-year search for justice.
"They
never put together a reconstruction of the events, and when I told off
Manuelillo, he said that the cops had told him to make that statement (about
acting alone) so they could close the case," she said.
Since 1993,
when the first killings of maquila women were reported, crimes of gender
violence have continued unabated, and the numerous human rights and victims
organisations working on this problem agree that the death toll has surpassed
the thousand mark.
Official
reports state that about 800 women have been killed since then. But the
authorities do not record them as femicides ("feminicidios" in
Spanish) -- defined as the systematic killing of women, or killing based on
gender hatred, a definition that arose from the Juárez crimes.
Government
agencies only recognise that more than eight percent of the women's deaths can
be attributed to "crimes of passion" or "family problems,"
and 12 percent have "unidentified causes."
The current
rate of murdered women in Juárez is 23 per 100,000 women, which is three times
the rate that the World Health Organisation defines as an epidemic. However, in
this already violent city, torn by drug trafficking, it is far below the rate
of murdered men: 354 per 100,000.
"That
other violence has overtaken the issue (of femicide), but the girls keep
disappearing, and that they aren't found as quickly is another thing,"
said
According to
a study by the non-governmental Juárez Citizen Security Observatory, the murder
of women has jumped 579 percent since the city got caught up in the wars
between the drug trafficking cartels.
Of the 259
women killed in the last two years, 51 were clearly attributable to gender
violence.
"Impunity
is the key to continued femicide in Juárez," summarised Patricia Ravelo,
who conducted all the research that went into the documentary film.
On Nov. 16,
2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a condemnatory sentence
against the Mexican state for the murder of three women in Campo Algodonero,
outside Ciudad Juárez. It was the first ruling of its kind and established
reparations for gender-based killings.
The ruling,
which cannot be appealed, holds accountable several officials, charged for
supporting impunity in the femicides.
In
particular, the families of the victims point to Arturo Chávez, who currently
serves as
His
designation as national attorney general came under fire from women's and human
rights organisation in
"We
have come up against the fact that the Mexican state is unwilling to carry out
the (
Paula Flores
brought a lawsuit before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2007.
That year she also founded the Sagrario Foundation, which looks for ways to
articulate a cultural alternative to violence.
Also, since
2002, the María Sagrario Flores González nursery school has been operating in
Lomas de Poleo, providing care for 250 children under age six.
"Some
families are tired of the issue, and people have grown accustomed" to the
femicides, said
"But my
daughter is not a myth, as the governor (José Baeza) says, that the dead women
of Juárez are a myth. I didn't make it up. Sagrario did live -- she had a great
desire to live."
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