* * *
The transition from violence to action must begin in the community. The show of force present at the panel for community organizations promises a great deal of action. Members from organizations on both side of the border presented their strategies for addressing the ongoing violence.
“The natives have participated in the struggle to eliminate violence against women. Now it is time to press the Mexican Authorities for action and to raise international awareness,” said Mácrina Cardenas of the Mexico Solidarity Network.
The Mexico Solidarity Network organizes delegations across Latin and North America in an effort to raise international consciousness of the conditions in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua.
“In 2005 we visited 53 cities in North America, three of which were in Canada, to talk about what is going on the Chihuahua,” Cardenas said. “Many of the victims are not even listed on the government’s list of disappeared women despite the fact that their families have been speaking out against their deaths at conferences for months.”
Cardenas noted that their task has been fundamental to silencing the media’s campaign of misinformation that has supported the government’s failure to act and deception of the Mexican people.
Domestic violence is unsurprisingly prevalent among these crimes, it was found to be a factor in as many as 85 percent of the murders. Several of the organizations present at the panel have programs in place to help survivors recover from these experiences, and to educate the existing community to eradicate social norms.
“Our method is intervention, support and recovery of the pride and dignity which have been stolen from these family members,” said Marisela Ortiz of the Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa. “We must establish a social sensibility to this phenomenon.”
As a member of the organization The Women in Black, Alma Gomez described the marches and demonstrations that have been implemented in an effort to get the attention of the Mexican government. This included the placing of crosses in front of government buildings as memorial to the victims.
“The crosses bear a nail for every woman that has died. In November of 1997 there were only 97 murders. By 2002 that number reached 206. Each week more women disappear, the government cannot continue to ignore us,” Gomez said.
Like the family members of the victims, the men and women who sustain these organizations do so at their own risk, many work without compensation.
“Every Mexican activist on this panel has been threatened with death, many have been charged with sedition,” said Diane Prinderville of Amigos de la Mujeres de Juárez. “Yet they remain steadfast, and for that I hold them in the highest regard.”
####
