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February 25, 2003 Chihuahua Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Complain About NGOs and Press, Statistics Inconsistent Just days after at least three young women and a six-year old girl were found murdered in Ciudad Juárez, the state attorney general, Jesús José Solís Silva, complained to a team of journalists from El Heraldo de Chihuahua that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) struggling to end the serial rape-murders in Cd. Juárez are unjustly accusing him and his team of being human rights abusers, killers and drug traffickers. "It's as if we authorities were from another planet, they don't respect our human rights," he said. Although Solís does not like the way he is treated by international and Mexican human rights groups, he says that the Chihuahua group Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black) is the worst because their attacks are almost personal. "They accuse people, from the governor on down, of being killers, criminals, drug traffickers and there's no one to stop them," he told the Chihuahua City newspaper El Heraldo. Solís cited a specific incidence in November, 2002 when he went to Washington D.C. for an international meeting. At the meeting, Solís alleges that Mujeres de Negro accused him of being the Chihuahua government functionary with the most Human Rights Commission findings against him. Solís said the alleged accusation is false because he has no state, national or international findings against him. Authorities unclear on statistics According to Solís, Mujeres de Negro "are the ones that most frequently go [to D.C.] and make accusations and the last time they went to Washington they said in front of me that 30 women were killed last year, which is completely false, but there they say it and nothing becomes of it." When a reporter asked him about statistics and numbers related to the killings of women in Cd. Juárez, Solís responded that he does not know why the NGOs keep statistics because they only confuse people. However, the government itself often gives contradictory figures. In October, 2002, state police investigator Manuel Esparza Navarrete, who works with the Special Investigator of Crimes Against Women in Cd. Juárez, said that there have been 67 serial killings since 1993. This contrasts with a figure of approximately 90 serial killings used in October by some NGOs, the El Paso Times and an academic study. Adjusted for the discovery of three more young women's bodies in February, 2003, this number would now be 93--exactly the number given by the president of the Chihuahua Supreme Court. Pablo Zapata Zubiaga, the head of Chihuahua's Supreme Court, told El Heraldo de Chihuahua that the Attorney General's Office recognizes that there have been 93 sex-related serial killings but added that some NGOs put the number at more than 300. Press Cautioned Zapata went on to tell El Heraldo that Mexico has been heavily discredited because news of the Ciudad Juárez serial killings has spread around the world via the media. Zapata requested that the media think about the consequences of publishing information about the serial killings, especially the local media, because that is where national and international news providers get their information. Source: El Heraldo de Chihuahua, February 23, 2003.
According to El Diario, some of the bodies were discovered with arms bound, dresses pulled up, and with large chunks of cement partially covering their bodies. The corpses were located near the Cristo Negro mountain, on land owned by Pimsa, a sand and gravel company. Teenagers discovered the first two bodies when they went out with their dogs to scour Pimsa's property for material that they could sell to recyclers. The dogs quickly found the bodies and the authorities were notified. One of the teenagers that found the first two bodies said that one woman had died recently but that another was just bones. The third body was found by women from the Fronterizo neighborhood which is near the Pimsa land. "We were playing a game, trying to see who could find the next body and there was a horrible odor coming from one of the piles of waste. This led us to look for the source of the odor and that's when we found the girl," said Guadalupe Martínez García. The women yelled that they had found another body and reporters and
city police ran to the scene. Later, the women criticized the state police
(the organization responsible for the investigation) for not making a wide
sweep of the region and just standing around the previously discovered
bodies trying to keep the press outside the roped off crime
scenes. While the area where the latest bodies were found had been recently swept by state law enforcement officials, they had found nothing there. Since 1993, approximately 90 young women have been raped and murdered
by one or more serial killers in Cd. Juárez although no one had been
convicted of any of the crimes.
Gustavo González Meza, one of two bus drivers arrested in November
2001 for the murder of eleven young women, died on Saturday, February 8,
2003 while in state custody. An autopsy determined the official cause of
death to be cardiac arrest stemming from a blood clot. The death was ruled
to have been from natural causes but González's family has called for an
independent autopsy. Two days before his death González underwent surgery for a hernia. González's lawyer, Sergio Dante Almaraz, said that González received the hernia while being beaten into a false confession by state law enforcement in 2001. Like the González family, Dante himself had questions about the way in which his client died, "I don't know of anyone that has died from a hernia. Besides that, they took Gustavo González out of the prison [for the operation] without anyone's permission. Who asked for the operation?" Dante also said that state authorities "are eliminating us one by one." This is in reference to the February 2002 killing of Mario César Escobedo Anaya, a previous lawyer for González, who was shot to death by state police agents that said they mistook him for a drug dealer. The death was investigated but no charges were made against the agents involved. For more on the irregularities surrounding Escobedo's death see http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/mar02/feat2.html Widow will fight to clear husband's name Blanca López de González, age 23, González's wife and the mother of
his four children ages eight, five, four and one, said that she will move
"sea and land" to get a second autopsy done on her husband.
"This is cruel," she told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte,
"we don't believe the official version of events, it was bad enough
that they kidnapped him from his home, arbitrarily jailed him and
continued torturing him until they injured him and then the authorities
still decided to end his life." Despite her young age, López de
González said she will keep fighting until she clears her husband's name
and until her children succeed in life. Miriam García, the wife of Víctor Javier García Uribe, the other man arrested along with González, told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte that she believes that someone purposefully killed González. According to García, a few days before González's death, she was visited by two state police officers that threatened her, her husband and González with death if she attended the Friday, February 7, 2003 gathering against violence in Cd. Juárez where Eve Ensler, creator of the Vagina Monologues, and Lourdes Portillo, director of the film about the Cd. Juárez serial-killing victims, "Srta. Extraviada" addressed a crowd of hundreds. García said that she did not go to the demonstration because of the threat against them. "They killed him, they killed him, they killed him--they did it even though I didn't go to the demonstration in front of the Attorney General's office . . .," she said. That García might have attended the Friday event is very possible
given her presence at a November 2002 commemoration of the discovery of
eight young women's bodies in a cotton field in central Cd. Juárez. At
that event, despite the fact her husband was in jail for the murder of the
eight women, García approached some of the young women's mothers and
families to talk about her husband's situation. Like almost all of Cd.
Juárez society, the victims' families see González and García as
scapegoats tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit. While González and García were originally being held at a facility in Cd. Juárez, they were later transferred to Chihuahua City where González died. Despite protests from family members and their lawyers, state officials went ahead with the transfer because of what they called security concerns. In November 2002, four journalists from the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario interviewed González and García about their time in jail and life after their arrests. During the interview, García stated that he named González as an accomplice in the murders while he, González, was being beaten by state law enforcement. García said he thought of González because the day before he had ridden on a bus driven by González. During the interview, both men denied that they had ever been close friends but they known each other for some time as fellow bus drivers. González told the El Diario reporters that he had no hard feelings
toward García for implicating him in the murders. He said that he was in
prison because of his own bad luck and had resigned himself to it. Source: El Norte, February 9 and 10, 2003. El Diario, February 11,
2003.
Visible from many parts of West El Paso along I-10, the Ciudad Juárez neighborhood of Anapra is one of the city's poorest areas. An article in the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Diario estimates that the average family survives on 500 pesos a week (approximately US$45 at the current exchange rate). The area also has a gang problem and some of the Cd. Juárez serial-killing victims lived in Anapra before they met their horrible ends. Juan Vazquéz, who runs the "Pan de Vida" (Bread of Life) kitchen in one of the poorest parts of Anapra, says that more people are constantly showing up at the center to receive free food. Currently, his Christian-supported center is giving bread and water lunches to 1,300 children per week. He acknowledges that it is not much but says that the children drink their water like it is milk. Vazquéz says that Anapra families eat beans, rice, soup, corn tortillas and very infrequently, chicken. His own center gives out bread made from wheat because someone from the US provides it to the center. Many of the homes in Anapra are built by US volunteers with groups like Casas de Cristo, according to El Diario. In one of the Casas de Cristo homes lives María Victoria de León and her four children. Known around the neighborhood as doña Vicky, she recently found herself worrying about a 700 peso water bill. With just one source of water, an outdoor spout, de León knows she can not have used so much water. She would like to inquire about the shockingly-high bill but because she does not have money for the bus to get to the water utility office, she is planning to borrow 500 pesos to help her pay the bill. She says that some time later she will inquire about why it was so high. The electric bill is another source of worry. Last month her bill was 163 pesos but she has only a refrigerator, three light bulbs and a TV. The bill is expensive compared to her salary but she accepts it because she notes that the TV is always on in the house. De León works for the company Tatung, in a maquiladora, and earns a base salary of 360 pesos per week (about US$33) plus a weekly bonus of 190 pesos. However, she supplements her income by clandestinely selling sweets and other treats on the floor of the maquiladora. Her thirteen-year old child has dropped out of school but the eleven-year old goes to junior high while the nine and seven-year olds go to elementary school. De León says she gets no help from the government, nor from her husband. "He took off a short while ago--he got mad and left-- there's no use crying about it though, I have my hands and my legs to work, it's OK." Source: El Diario, February 7, 2003. Article by Martín Orquiz.
February 5, 2003 Between October 23, 2002 and January 22, 2003, Villa Luz had a permit to mine approximately 7,000 cubic meters of sand from the desert. It sold the sand, as it has for ten years, to a Sonora mining company that uses it as a combustion accelerant in the copper smelting process. The mining company pays Villa Luz US$3 per cubic meter meaning that the ejido earned US$22,500 from its last permit. The removal of the 7,000 cubic meters of material meant that a hectare of sand with 30 meter (90 foot) high dunes was lost from the desert. However, Villa Luz says that the dunes are a renewable resource and that after a few months the area will look the same as it was prior to the extraction of the sand. Explaining why the ejido mines, Efrén Nerváez, the Villa Luz
treasurer, said, "First of all we do it because we need the money,
secondly because we have the resource, but not to exploit it in an
irrational way." Source: El Diario, February 5, 2003. Article by Luz del Carmen Sosa.
January 28, 2003 Across Mexico, the weaker peso is being presented as both an economic benefit and a liability. With the dollar gaining in strength against the peso, Mexican goods are cheaper in the US and could aid Mexican exports. Also, Mexican labor and assembly look better for foreign investors as the peso becomes cheaper. However, Mexicans also fear that the weaker peso will make imported goods more expensive and will drive up inflation. José Luis García Arenas, president of the Asociación de Centros Cambiarios (Exchange Centers' Association), said that the dollar is rising in value in Mexico because of fears of a war with Iraq and how a possible war could affect the Mexican economy. Seeing the dollar above 11 pesos has stopped people from either buying or selling currency in Cd. Juárez, he stated. García also said that some money-exchanging businesses reported doing no business on Monday, January 27. Salvador Orozco, an analyst with Grupo Financiero Santander Serfín in Mexico City, agreed that the uncertain situation between the US and Iraq is the cause of the peso's fall. Other Mexico City bank representatives said that exchange rate volatility will continue through the end of the week. Source: El Diario, January 28, 2003. Article by Rocío Gallegos. |