Frontera NorteSur September 2001

After stints in maquiladoras and at other odd jobs, Minerva informed her mother early on the morning of March 13 that she was catching a bus to go downtown for a new job interview. It was the last time the Torres family saw Minerva.

"We feel very depressed at times. It gets worse everyday because we don't know her whereabouts, what happened to her," says Albeldaño. "We don't know if she's alive, or whose hands she might be in."

Soon the parents discovered that they were not alone in their suffering. Noticing flyers posted around town that begged for help in locating other missing young women, the couple got in touch with the families of the others. To date, local media reports and posters issued by the Chihuahua State Attorney General's office (PGJE) indicate that at least nine young women and teenagers between 13 and 20 years of age have vanished from Chihuahua City since last December. However, a source with the PGJE will only confirm four of the disappearances.

Four of the women disappeared in one three-week period during the months of February and March, and at least three of the missing were last reported seen at separate times in the same general area of downtown Chihuahua City, a congested zone filled with bus, automobile and pedestrian traffic. They seemingly dropped off the face of the earth in broad daylight.

Besides Minerva Torres, the young women reported as missing include Ericka Carrillo Enríquez, Jazmin Islas Gutíerrez, Miriam Cristina Gallegos Venegas, Rosalba Pizarro Ortega, Yesenia Guadalupe Vega Herrera, and Julieta Marlene González Valenzuela. Missing posters of Torres, Pizarro and González, issued by the PGJE, are displayed in the main Chihuahua City bus station.

Another Ciudad Juárez?

The Chihuahua City disappearances have mobilized women's rights activists and raised fears that the now internationally notorious crimes that have struck terror in the heart of the border city of Ciudad Juárez to the north are being repeated in the capital city of Mexico's geographically largest state.

Both the age group and manner of disappearance of the Chihuahua women coincide with those of many of the women who have been killed or disappeared in Juárez during recent years.

Likewise, many of the women in both Juárez and Chihuahua worked in maquiladora plants or other low-wage jobs. Since 1993, more than 300 women in Juárez have been reported murdered or disappeared. In June, a woman was found strangled outside a maquiladora plant in Juárez. A few weeks later, The daily El Heraldo de Chihuahua newspaper reported that a
man was arrested after being caught while attempting to rape a maquiladora worker right after the victim left the factory where she worked in Chihuahua City.

Blame for the carnage has been laid alternately at the door of serial killers, porno snuff rings, drug gangs, satanic cults, and everyday misogynists. A growing number of observers is calling the phenomenon femicide.

They note another chilling trend: Some of the recent disappearances or killings in Juárez and Chihuahua were committed on or right before holidays with sentimental meaning, such as Valentine's Day and Mothers Day. In one such incident, the body of a sexually victimized and pregnant young woman was dumped close to the home of Juárez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo.

A report issued last month by three Mexican non-governmental groups--the Mexico City-based Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights; Choose, Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights; and Epikea, Justice with Equality--calculated that at least 108 of the murdered women were victims of sexual attacks, typically suffering torture and rape before being killed.

Because dozens of unidentified bodies were found too late to determine the precise manner of death, the number of killings that fit this pattern could be far higher. Given the high number of disappearances, it's also widely suspected that an undetermined number of bodies have yet to be recovered.

"We want an environment in which all of us can live in harmony and security," says Isabel Saldivar of the non-governmental, Chihuahua City-based Commission in Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights (Cosyddhac). "These disappearances are really grave. All the stops must be pulled out so this sort of thing doesn't happen again," she says.

"We want preventive actions by the state. On the one hand, [we want] preventive actions that eradicate this kind of occurrence, on the other hand, punitive actions that eliminate impunity in these cases."

Polemics

As in the Juárez drama, controversies quickly erupted over the conduct of PGJE personnel in the Chihuahua City investigations. Declaring that leads existed as to the whereabouts of some of the missing women, PGJE agents ferried victims' relatives on several trips last May to red light districts in the cities of Juárez and Casas Grandes, both in Chihuahua state, and in Monterrey, hundreds of miles away in Nuevo Leon state.

However, searches in strip bars and table dance joints produced none of the missing women. The suggestion that her daughter might be working in a sex industry venue shocked Albeldaño. "One didn't imagine there were places like this," she says. Minerva Torres, adds Albeldaño, is a follower of the Mormon faith, an ardent churchgoer, and an individual who eschews wild lifestyles.

One line of investigation reportedly pursued by the PGJE centered on the theory that the young women might have been convinced to abandon their homes to follow religious sects, including the Mormons.

Minerva's father contends that police are barking up the wrong tree. "If they think that way, they're never going to find them," Torres fumes. "They have to look for the criminals who have them. I'm sure that someone has them out there, but they haven't communicated with us."

One possibility, speculates Torres, is that the women were kidnapped for the white slave trade and forced into prostitution somewhere. In Minerva's case, her family has received no phone calls demanding ransom.

On Mother's Day, May 10, Torres joined protesters from Juárez in a demonstration outside the offices of Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martínez that demanded the return of missing loved ones.

According to Alma Gómez, a Chihuahua state deputy for the Democratic Revolution Party, police inexplicably detained the Juárez contingent at a government highway checkpoint before allowing constituents to proceed to the Chihuahua City protest. Once outside Martínez' office, the protesters were met by a counter-demonstration organized by a women's group from Martinez' Institutional Revolutionary Party. The latter were quoted in the media as stating that they did not want the latest disappearances to be politicized.

The U.N. Comes to Town Again

Even as the Chihuahua City cases came to public light, renewed controversy broke out in Juárez around the scope and direction of state investigations into that city's long record of murder and disappearance. Prompting the new round of polemics was the May visit to Juárez and Chihuahua City of Dato Param Cumaraswamy, a UN special monitor for judicial and legal independence. He was the second UN special monitor to hear first-hand about the Juárez cases in as many years.

While in Mexico, Cumaraswamy met with non-governmental organizations, Chihuahua State Attorney General Arturo González and the state's Special Prosecutor for Women's Homicides, Suly Ponce. Before departing the country, Cumaraswamy commented at a news conference that he was leaving with enough documentation on irregularities in the legal system "to fill a suitcase." He's expected to make a report sometime this year.

Meanwhile, border violence against women once again is being used in the triennial ritual of political parties competing for power. The violence has garnered various mentions in the platforms and statements of the contenders in the upcoming July municipal elections in Chihuahua state.

Although the killing of border women has been a political issue in the state for years, the number of bodies and disappearances continues to mount. The most recently reported victim in Juárez was a strangled woman whose body was found outside a maquiladora on June 12. Hers was the twelfth death this year to fit the pattern of the ongoing unsolved murders there, according to the Diario de Juárez newspaper.

Looking for a Local Remedy

Elvira Villareal of the March 8 Feminist Group, a Chihuahua state non-governmental organization, considers the UN monitors' visits a positive step. Yet, while welcoming international interest, Villareal nonetheless adds that family members and their advocates seek local solutions to their sorrows, such as better police work and tougher punishment.

"They want justice in their own country; they want to exhaust all the legal remedies in their own country," says Villareal. Cosyddhac representative Guadalupe Montoya contends that Chihuahua state needs to pass stronger laws to punish perpetrators of forced disappearance.

Although kidnapping is certainly a crime, Montoya explains, some police agents are reluctant to investigate unexplained disappearances, especially if no ransom note is found. This forces family members to launch their own searches.

In addition to the psychological and emotional toll exacted by forced disappearance, Montoya says, economic costs could prove devastating to low-income family members who face the impossible choice between keeping their jobs or leaving them to search for their relatives.

"The family members of disappeared persons in our state are completely defenseless," she says. "This is a red alert in Chihuahua. Besides the disappearances of women, men have also disappeared," she adds. "This puts us on notice to look for alternatives, like passing a law so people don't have to keep organizing in their own defense."

Part of the problem in getting new, pro-woman legislation approved, affirms Villareal, is that politics in Chihuahua and Mexico are still dominated by men. While a 1997 amendment to the Chihuahua state constitution stipulates that no gender group should have more than 70 percent of the seats in the state congress, a legislative head-count shows the failure of good intentions. In 2001, only five women sit in the 33-member Chihuahua state congress, according to Villareal.

Says the activist, "Government has been amiss in attending to the families of disappeared women. It's a gender problem. The victims are women. Apart from this, they're poor. It's also a class question.

Meanwhile, Francisco Torres and Martina Albeldaño wonder when they will hear news about their missing daughter, whose 18th birthday fell on July 25. Despite some leads, Albeldaño laments that, mysteriously, "Nobody knows anything."

A rumor that some of the missing young women might be in the El Paso area was not confirmed by the El Paso Police Department, whose spokesman did not return phone calls.