Femicide in Ciudad Juarez

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As murders of women in Ciudad Juárez one since at least the early 1990's year-long is killing spree in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez called. These murders have been reported in the international media since 1993. The victims are kidnapped , tortured and usually after a few days to a few weeks, tied up, placed on fallow land outside the city. The corpses usually show traces of violence, some corpses were beheaded or mutilated . Most of the murders have not yet been solved. Different groups of men are suspected to be behind the crimes.

Ciudad Juárez was also a place of violence against women at the end of the 2010s . In 2019, around 1,300 women sought help at the local women's institute, which offers advice from lawyers , social workers and psychologists and has set up emergency telephones in the city.

Motifs

The motives are unknown. It is speculated that organ traffickers may be behind some of the crimes. Thousands of criminals deported from the USA to the border town of Ciudad Juarez could also be partly responsible for some of the murders. Women's rights groups suspected systematic killings based solely on the gender of the women. Research from 2008 came to the conclusion that 30% of the women killed had known their murderers before the crime.

Number of victims

The exact number of victims is not known, especially since the already high number of victims of violence in Mexico - also in connection with the drug war - does not always allow a certain motive.

According to Amnesty International , by February 2005 more than 370 bodies had been found and over 400 women are missing. According to other information, there should be over 600. The Mexican human rights commissioner José Luis Soberanes spoke in November 2005 of 28 women murdered by then this year and that the city was "a disgrace for the country". A UN report points to the estimates of the author Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, who stated the number of victims as 740 in the period 1993 to 2009.

According to a report by the Mexican online newspaper la rednoticias.com , 76 victims were killed between January and September 2009 alone. This number more than doubled to 177 victims in the following year from January to September 2010. According to the New York Times, a total of 304 women were killed in 2010 alone. Imelda Marrufo Nava from the network “Mesa de Mujeres de Ciudad Juárez” speaks of a total of 915 murdered women. According to Amnesty International information, 320 women were killed in 2011 alone and there are sources that assume that since the second wave from 2009 - with its peak in 2010 - more girls and women have been murdered than in the entire 15 years before.

It is generally unanimously reported that the crime rate and especially the murder rate in Ciudad Juárez has currently decreased significantly. In 2012, according to Joy Strickland, the organization Mothers Against Teen Violence registered 82 victims - and 115 missing women and girls.

Most women were between 13 and 25 years old at the time of their killing or disappearance. Many of the victims worked in the maquilas , factories of multinational corporations that were built near the border. The use of sexual violence was found in 137 victims. 75 bodies could not be identified because they were too badly disfigured.

Mexico

Around 3800 murders of women were recorded across Mexico in 2019, almost a third classified as femicide. In April 2020 alone, 337 women were allegedly murdered, the highest number since 2015, when the statistics began. Allegedly 70 were victims of femicide (21%). The official statistics indicate 97.6 murder victims per day for 2019, this number rose to 98.8 per day in the first half of 2020. Mexico's Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said in July that 489 women were victims of femicide, around 3% of the total of 17,982 murder victims. Compared to the 448 women murdered in the first half of 2019, this was an increase of around 9.2%; the numbers were even lower in 2018.

Arrests

Numerous people were arrested as suspects in connection with the killings. The Mexican police are accused of having no or insufficient evidence against many of the suspects and that the alleged perpetrators therefore had to be released from custody. She is also charged with extorting confessions, hiding evidence and even kidnapping women herself. In 2005, the bus driver Víctor Javier García Uribe was acquitted on appeal; He had previously been sentenced to 50 years in prison on the basis of a forced confession for the murder of 8 women.

The first suspect to be arrested was the Egyptian-born chemist Abdul Latif Sharif. He fled to Ciudad Juarez in 1994 to avoid being deported. He was accused of multiple rapes in the United States. After he was convicted of the murder of a young woman worker in 1995, police arrested two groups of young men. They claimed that Sharif paid them out of prison to keep the murders going and thus prove his innocence. Despite the arrest of Sharif and his alleged accomplices, the murders did not stop, leading to speculation that the real culprits were still at large or that the original culprits were caught and copycat perpetrators have been continuing the murders since then .

In 2003 Cristina Escobar González was murdered. The perpetrator was arrested while trying to stow her body, which was covered in traces of severe abuse, in the trunk of his car. He testified that he killed her in self-defense and was sentenced to three years in prison. This low penalty is interpreted by human rights organizations as an indication of corruption in the responsible judicial authorities.

In June 2013, twelve people - ten men and two women - were arrested for allegedly killing 11 young women after forcing them into prostitution and drug sales. The women were no longer useful, they were then killed and dumped in a deserted valley near the city.

Criticism of the investigation

Since the series of murders could not be stopped to this day, the Mexican investigative authorities are facing increasing criticism from home and abroad. The investigative authorities are accused of corruption, incompetence and intimidation of witnesses. There is particular criticism that the local authorities do not follow up on the FBI who was called in to help. The series of murders continues despite numerous arrests. The Mexican authorities deny the existence of serial killings in Juarez. According to the attorney general's office, more than 60% of the officially registered murders were committed because of intra-family conflicts. According to the ombudswoman Patricia Gonzáles, over 30% are said to have taken place in the drug and prostitution environment.

Relatives of the victims complain that they are not taken seriously by the responsible authorities and that they have received no or incorrect answers about the current state of the investigation.

In February 2002, the lawyer Mario Escobedo Anaya, who was defending the defendant Gustavo González Meza, was shot dead by police officers. The officials claimed to have acted in self-defense. Eyewitnesses contradicted the officers' statements, but the lawyer’s death was not investigated further.

The international trafficking of young women for prostitution, organized by the gangs in Ciudad Juárez, is generally regarded as the background to the murders . After the kidnapping, the women are mostly beaten, drugged and weaned from their families. Women who even then do not want to start a new life as prostitutes are killed and disposed of, especially to scare off the other women.

On the other hand, many women also die as drug couriers if they are caught by competing cartels. Mass graves with the corpses of long-missing people are often found in Mexico many years later. The complete dissolution of the corpses in acid is also common in drug cartels, e.g. B. Carried out hundreds of times by the arrested Tijuana cartel member Santiago Meza Lopez.

From the point of view of the Mexican judiciary, there is no specific series of women murders. There are only the very numerous female victims in the Mexican drug war, the number of missing persons has not decreased to this day. Since youth sentences for murder were tripled from 2012, the number of women victims has fallen dramatically.

More reactions

On May 30, 2005, the Mexican president told journalists that the majority of the murders in Juarez had been solved and that the culprits were behind bars. He criticized the media for rehashing the same 300 to 400 murders over and over again, saying that the acts had to be seen in context.

The mothers, families and friends of the victims have organized themselves in the NHRC (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa - Our daughters should return home). The aim of the organization is to make the public aware of the situation in Juárez, to put pressure on the government and to break the public silence that makes the perpetrators impunity. They are demanding that the murders, which have long been unsolved, be properly investigated and solved. In Juárez they are threatened and attacked because of their work.

Reception in the media

  • In 1999, Tori Amos addressed the murders in the song Juárez on her album To Venus and Back .
  • In 2000 the band At the Drive-In made their song Invalid Litter Dept. from the album Relationship of Command and the accompanying music video drew attention to what was happening in Juárez.
  • In 2001 Lourdes Portillo shot and published the first documentary about the victims: "Señorita Extraviada".
  • In 2004 Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 appeared , at the center of which is a very similar series of murders in the fictional city of Santa Teresa in the state of Sonora .
  • In 2005 Alicia Gaspar de Alba's novel "Desert Blood" was published, which deals with the Juarez murders from the perspective of a homosexual woman.
  • In 2006, Zulma Aguiar published a documentary about the murders; the mothers of Juarez fight against feminicide. She was supported by the NHRC.
  • In 2006 the film The Virgin Of Juarez by director Kevin James Dobson with Minnie Driver and Esai Morales was released
  • In 2007 the film Bordertown (with Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas ) was released, which also takes on the subject of the murders in Juarez.
  • In 2007, “Las Hijas de Juarez (Daughters of Juarez): Un auténtico relato de asesinatos en serie al sur de la frontera” by Teresa Rodriguez & Diana Montané. In English: "The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border". A detailed non-fictional treatment of the subject.
  • In 2009 the film The Paradise of the Murderers by the award-winning Mexican director Carlos Carrera was released . The film is about a young detective ( Ana de la Reguera ) who has just started her job in Juárez and tries to solve the series of murders in the border town. The film was the 2010 Mexican entry in the race for the best foreign language film in the run-up to the 2010 Academy Awards .
  • In 2011, The Dead Women of Juarez , a crime novel by US author Sam Hawken, which deals with the Juarez murders, was published. In 2012 the German translation by Joachim Körber appeared: Die toten Frauen von Juarez . The detective novel draws on the descriptions of the non-fictional book by Teresa Rodriguez & Diana Montané The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border .
  • In the 2013 series The Bridge - America with Diane Kruger and Demian Bichir , the murders in season 1 are discussed as a subplot.
  • A scene from the thriller The Counselor alludes to the feminicides in Juarez.

literature

  • The killers usually come on Friday . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1998, pp. 138 ( online - August 24, 1998 ).
  • Daniela Hrzán: “Interchangeable work - exchangeable life.” In: Human rights for women - magazine for human rights 1 / 2003. P. 12–15.
  • Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané, Lisa Pulitzer: The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border . Atria 2007, ISBN 978-0-7432-9203-0 (engl.)
  • Natalie Panther: Violence against Women and Femicide in Mexico: The Case of Ciudad Juarez . Vdm-Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-639-00538-7 (English)

Web links

Commons : Ciudad Juárez Femicide  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sonja Peteranderl, DER SPIEGEL: The Epicenter of Pain - DER SPIEGEL - Politics. Retrieved April 29, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Message: Ciudad Juarez: the city of lost girls. (No longer available online.) In: PeaceofMinds.nl. Peace of Minds Academy, November 25, 2013, archived from the original on May 10, 2015 ; accessed on May 31, 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Interview with Ciudad Juárez ) In: AtencoResiste.org. Dead link: Nothing found on July 24, 2020.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.atencoresiste.org
  4. ↑ Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, “Trama de una injusticia. Feminicidio sexual sistémico en Ciudad Juárez ”, 2009, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico
  5. ↑ Rashida Manjoo: Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against woman, its causes and consequences. (PDF; 770 kB) United Nations , May 23, 2012, p. 17 , accessed on April 17, 2016 (English).
  6. ↑ Online newspaper la rednoticias.com from September 26, 2010
  7. ↑ Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Juarez . In: New York Times, June 23, 2012
  8. ^ The first victims by Wolf-Dieter Vogel, Amnesty Journal February 2013
  9. ^ Violence, Hope and Healing in Ciudad Juárez . In: Aljazeera.com of March 5, 2013
  10. ↑ Homepage | Amnesty International Germany
  11. ↑ Announcement: Since the beginning of the recording: Number of murdered women in Mexico reaches a sad record. In: Merkur.de . May 26, 2020, accessed on May 31, 2020 (there is also a link to official statistics).
  12. ↑ Message (dpa): Mexico: The number of feminicides during the Corona crisis has risen sharply. In: The time . July 21, 2020, accessed July 24, 2020.
  13. ↑ poonal: German edition of the weekly press service of Latin American agencies of 7 February 2006
  14. ^ Femicide in Guatemala & Canada
  15. ↑ 12 Arrested in Mexico Border City Over Female Murders . In: The Telegraph of June 13, 2013.
  16. ↑ James C. McKinley Jr .: Little Evidence of Serial Killings in Women's Deaths, Mexico Says in the New York Times of October 26, 2004 (English)
  17. ↑ poonal: German edition of the weekly press service of Latin American agencies of 28 February 2006
  18. ↑ Junge Welt, March 23, 2006