Frontera NorteSur October 2000

Where we were the desert was ugly and smelled rank with the combined waste of the preindustrial Juárez Valley and the garbage of Mexican consumer society. On both sides of a washout were five or six calf carcasses with intact furry pelts covering dry white bones. All their meat and muscle were gone with only a few traces of desiccated sinew crisscrossing the insides of the bodies like cobwebs.  Further ahead, mixed in a dumping ground with new-looking clothes, thousands of Pampers, bottles and cans, were the bodies of three mummified dogs. Between the calves and the dogs was an entire desert filled with hundreds of little potato chip, Dorito, Frito and Cheeto bags. From every green-brown piece of desert scrub the metallic interior of snack bags winked reflected sun light at us.

Voces sin Eco is a not-for-profit organization that advocates for missing women and their family members. Founded on July 18, 1998, Voces constantly demands that reports of missing women be taken more seriously and acted upon more quickly by the police. The group also challenges the mayor, city and state law enforcement and government to better protect women in Cd. Juárez. 

Voces sin Eco spokesperson Guillermina González Flores, age 23, whose sister María Sagrario González, age 17, was murdered on April 16, 1998, had thought she had gained a small victory for Cd. Juárez citizens when a state law-enforcement agency (PGJE) agreed to accompany Voces on their regular desert searches. However, in August, on the day that was to be their first combined walk with the PGJE, officers never showed up as anticipated. Instead, while Voces awaited their arrival, drunk local police agents began questioning González and others as to what they were doing standing around in the middle of a desert field. Voces responded by dialing 060, the Mexican equivalent of 911, to report the officers as drunk drivers.

At the walk I attended there were no police agents. I do not know if they were invited. I had called González a few days earlier to ask her for an interview and she suggested that I accompany the group on their Sunday search through the desert. From reading El Diario I knew that Voces frequently invited reporters on their outings and I assumed that group would use the time in the field to tell me the stories of its members and others. I thought they would criticize at length the uncaring attitude of local police and law enforcement's lack of results in the protection of women. Instead no one approached me and hardly any information was volunteered except by Nava. This was not a media savvy group.

A Small Organization

Indeed, Voces sin Eco is not much of a group as far as numbers are concerned. Only about fifteen people were there under the hot sun that day. Nava complained that no one in Cd. Juárez really seemed to care about missing women anymore and about the continued disappearance of women. The week before, Nava stated, two families had brought fliers to Voces with their missing daughters' images on them but neither family had turned out to help look through the fields. The press he complained no longer covered the issue of missing women as much as they had in the past.

Voces is not much of a group as far as funding and facilities are concerned either. González complained to me that the group does not have enough money for a phone line for their office and they need a computer, a fax machine and a copier also. Anyone wishing to contact the group must call González's cell phone number. She herself does not have as much time for the group as she would like as she works and goes to school as well.

A Truck Wreck

The day's walk had begun later than expected as just in front of the group's caravan of cars, trucks and vans a driver had lost control of his propane tanker and went off the road. He over-compensated to get back on to the two-lane highway and the truck rolled twice stopping on its side. By the time everyone had stopped and was getting out of their vehicles the driver was climbing out of the truck's passenger-side window. Falling to the earthen shoulder of the road he had obviously broken his nose and was quite shaken. Gas hissed out of the back of the tank as one man approached the site smoking a cigarette. "No fume," shouted someone, "Don't smoke."

González quickly organized the scene and put up a broad yellow tape around the accident site. The group redirected traffic away from the truck and called the fire department on their cell phones and radios. By the time an aged fire truck arrived ten minutes later the driver was sitting on a chair that someone had brought out for him and he was holding his nose to stop it from bleeding. The crowd had reached a consensus by that time and everyone agreed that the driver was lucky that he had not been killed, the neighborhood had been lucky that the tanker had not exploded and the family in the house just a few yards from the truck was fortunate that it had not been plowed into by the rolling truck that had torn a ditch in the road's asphalt as it came to a stop.

By the time Voces had left the scene of the accident--with a firefighter absurdly pointing a water hose at the back of the leaking gas truck--it was already getting warm near the green base of the irrigated Juárez Valley. By the time we finally arrived at our destination at the top of a sandy trail it was 9:30 a.m. and felt too hot to start a 2 1/2 hour walk in the desert. Rather than set out right away however Jesús González, Guillermina's younger brother, opened the back of the family van to allow everyone to get at an ice chest full of water, juice and soda. Everyone grabbed something to take for later while one of the Civil Radio Band 24 members warned everyone of rattle snakes. A sign-in list was passed around and then the group divided into two and set out on different sides of the road.

We all walked together for a while before fanning out and the members of Voces laughed and joked among themselves. Neither I, Ana nor Marcie, the two students from NMSU that accompanied me, felt as if we could participate in this conversation. Perhaps we were unable to speak because we had never experienced what they had and had never paid such high, terrible dues to enter a group.

The Most Terrible Things in All of History

Since 1993 two hundred eleven women by Voces' count have been murdered in Cd. Juárez. Many of these bodies have been later found in the desert. In addition to having been raped many of the bodies show signs of having been bitten, strangled, beaten, choked and/or burned. The bodies that are found in the desert are often discovered bizarrely arranged. Sometimes the women's shoes are placed neatly together near the bodies. At another site a metal pipe was stuck into a woman's anus. As Guillermina González said, "Son las cosas más horribles de la historia--these are the most horrible things in all of history."

As we began our search it seemed impossible that so much garbage had spread itself over such a remote area. Nava left me and alone I searched one side of an illegal garbage dump. There were seemingly new clothes in the trash piles along with old-style bottles and cans and an 8mm film reel. Between smoldering piles of waste (people seemed to have a need to ignite their illegal dumpings) was a ridiculous number of pink-white, molded-plastic baby dolls with various amputations. At one point, while the others were off studying what looked to them like sun-bleached human hand, wrist and arm bones, I was using a stick to pry up a plastic piece of flesh covered in dirt that from above had appeared all too real to me.

Later, at the back of the dump, I stood over a carbonized spinal column wondering if it was from a dog, goat, calf or human. There was no one else around so I made a mental note of its position and went off to find the group.

Catching up with Ana and Marcie we decided we were behind the group as nobody is in sight. So, we walked out into the fields and finally we arrived at a section of desert where no garbage had blown. We continued on for a while and then realized we were about to become lost so we turned around and followed an old fence line back to near where we had started. There I ran into Guillermina González and we talked for a bit about law enforcement's reaction to the murders of so many women.

Investigations

While rapes ending in murder and murders of women by unknown men seem to be down a little so far this year as compared to last year, the murders still continue. The State Attorney General's Office, the PGJE, which is in charge of the murder investigations has in the past linked many of the women's murders to Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, an Egyptian national that was working in Cd. Juárez for a US corporation. According to the PGJE, the ritualistic-type rapes and murders of women continued after Sharif was taken into custody because he was allegedly paying gang members to rape and murder women in his style so that it would look like someone still at large had committed all the barbaric crimes. Allegedly, Sharif paid US$1,500 for each rape and murder and demanded that the slain women's underwear be brought to him along with a newspaper story about the death.

Every women's activist that I talked with for this month's Frontera NorteSur stories, including González, thought that the PGJE's theories of conspiracies between Sharif and gangs were absurd. They believe the conspiracies to be ridiculous because they have faith in the US's FBI study that found that many killers are involved in the murders and that there may be many copy-cat rapist-murderers that are still free or are just beginning to commit crimes. The activists also thought the PGJE's theories unlikely because everyone knows that a professional, more-dangerous, drug-related killing in Cd. Juárez can be had for about US$500. The idea of having to pay US$1,500 to kill an unsuspecting girl or woman along with the proof-by-panties theory seemed absurd to everyone, like something from a bad telenovela (soap opera).

The fact that on March 31, 2000 Judge Mauro Carrasco García reversed a thirty-year sentence against Sharif for lack of evidence does not help build confidence in the PGJE investigation either. Five of the ten Los Rebeldes gang members arrested in 1996 have been freed as well since that time. Members of both Los Rebeldes and Los Choferes (a group of bus drivers accused in some of the murders) say that they were tortured into confessions.

Torture charges against police by suspects are often viewed with skepticism by the public. In this case however the government at least admits that some police officers may be abusing their powers. In July, a bus driver not related to Los Choferes, told Suly Ponce Prieto, the Special Investigator for the Murders of Women, that he had beaten by officers after being taken to the grounds of the Police Academy for questioning. Seeing signs of abuse on the driver's face, Ponce had the man taken for medical treatment. Three officers are currently under investigation for the abuse of the driver and the press has been examining the reason why suspects are taken to "a quiet place" like the Police Academy for interrogation.

Bones Not Human

Back at the trash dump, standing over the backbone that I had found earlier, González states that she believes that the bones are too wide to be human. I agreed but still have lingering doubts. Should we have picked up the spine and taken it for analysis I wonder? Could DNA analysis have allowed someone to identify a family member? Can DNA analysis still be performed on a charred mass of bones?

González and Nava (with hats on) standing over woman's hair and garbage

There are already many unidentified female bone fragments waiting to be claimed in Cd. Juárez. Also, every month unidentified bodies in the city have to be taken from the morgue and buried because the facility runs out of storage space for them.

Walking toward the cars, some of the men in the group poke through trash in the still-smoking garbage heaps around us. One of them finds a two-foot long, harmless snake and the men take off after it trying to crush it with the steel bars they use for walking sticks. Further ahead a young man in the group finds an Anglo-looking, plastic baby doll head. He puts it on his steel pole and parades it around for a while. It falls down and some of the men kick it like a ball until it rolls to the side of the road and is forgotten.

Finally back at the caravan we all look at the clear little bag full of what look to be hand, wrist and arm bones. They look human to me but later over the phone in a follow-up interview González says that a forensics expert said the bones belonged to a non-human animal.

Once again the back of the family van opens up and outcome the coolers. We all have some sodas and the González family invites everyone to a party at their house the next weekend. They extend a special offer to those of us from New Mexico but none of us can attend. Guillermina asks if we will come back sometime and I tell her yes. We'll try and get her some money and that office equipment they need.