by Kent Paterson
PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO —Just across the U.S. border, in the gritty factory town of Juarez, Mexico, women — including many who work for U.S. companies — vanish in broad daylight.
In a gruesome serial massacre now in its eighth year, police, press and human rights groups report more than 260 women have been murdered. Some died in domestic disputes or narcotics violence, but many fit a profile that strikes fear into the hearts of young working women in hundreds of foreign-owned factories here. Bodies have been found tortured, raped and mutilated. Dozens remain missing.
Brenda Esmeralda Herrera disappeared last Oct. 29 — two days shy of her 15th birthday. On Nov. 6 and 7, her nude body and the unclothed bodies of seven other young women were found in an urban field. Instead of the traditional coming of age party for 15-year-old Mexican girls, Herrera's family and friends attended her funeral.
"This is worse than Jack the Ripper," says Cipriana Jurado, who directs the nonprofit Center for Worker Research and Solidarity (CISO). "We want to stop this, because any woman could become the next victim."
Some victims were store clerks or domestic workers, but many worked in maquiladoras — assembly plants of U.S. and other global companies that began relocating to northern Mexico after 1965 to enjoy near-zero taxes and cheap labor. Now, many in this town say that the corporations have done little to protect their workers, treating their lives — not just their labor — as expendable.
Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 20, worked for a U.S. automotive parts manufacturer. Her body was recovered in the same lot as Esmeralda Herrera's. Earning about a dollar an hour, factory workers like Gonzalez produce clothing, electronic goods, medical equipment and other products, largely for U.S. consumption.
Although shoddy police record-keeping marked the first years of the murders, upwards of more than 100 slain and disappeared fit the profile of the low-income young woman worker targeted by a serial killer or killers, say rights activists who have compiled painstaking post-mortem reports. Many of the dead bear a striking resemblance to each other — slender, dark-complexioned and longhaired. Some were single mothers.
Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO, traveled to Juarez recently to firm up an alliance with Mexican unions and non-governmental organizations aimed at ending the violence against border region women. She called the continuing murders of the young factory women "a disgrace."
"We want these companies in America to know that the companies they run in this city and in other maquiladoras all across Mexico are not protecting their workers," Chavez-Thompson said.
Some corporations have announced security measures or offered rewards to apprehend the killers, such as the one posted by Promex Plastics after the murder of a 17-year-old employee, Lilia Alejandra Garcia, in February.
A recent meeting between Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Mexican National Security Advisor Adolfo Aguilar Zinser apparently did not include the murders on its agenda. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mexican soldiers and Texas National Guardsmen were deployed along this border, but the troops were on the hunt for Middle Eastern terrorists — not homegrown psychopathic ones.
Attempting to close its border to extremists, Mexico plans to spend millions of dollars on high-tech databases and passport-screening contraptions. Meanwhile, local state investigators say they are having trouble affording the kind of basic DNA testing equipment that might help solve and stop the serial murders.
Some worry the gender terrorists have become so bold that they taunt authorities. In early November, a Juarez daily described the futile efforts of Claudia Gonzalez's' parents to find their missing daughter in the desert outskirts of the sprawling city. The very next day, a passerby stumbled across Gonzalez's body and those of the other victims in a lot in the city center. Flanked by a busy apartment complex and two traffic thoroughfares, the lot stood directly across the street from the headquarters of the maquiladora industry trade association.
Also nearby was the spot where President Vicente Fox delivered a speech earlier this year promising to solve the murders.
Official accounts claim that some of the barely concealed bodies may have lain in the lot for months. Rights groups don't buy it, speculating that the killers carefully chose the time and place to dump the corpses shortly before they were discovered. CISO's Jurado says that bodies are increasingly abandoned near the city center.
"It's a symbol," says Esther Chavez Chavez, director of the Casa Amiga sexual and domestic crisis center in Juarez. The killers, she said, "are making fun of authorities and citizens, saying they're stronger."
Despite controversial arrests of several suspects — scapegoats, some say — the bloody spree continues. On Nov. 19, the strangled body of 21-year-old Alma Nelly Osorio was discovered near an elementary school.
Casa Amiga's Chavez, who works with hundreds of local women every year, says many wear a mask of calm to conceal their true terror. Underneath the Juarez women's veil, says Chavez, is the gnawing dread that they or their loved ones will become the next statistic.
Accountant Jaime Hervella, director of the El Paso-based Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, contends that class snobbery partly explains why the murders of young women workers continue with impunity. There is no outcry with weight behind it, he said, which might pressure authorities to find the killers.
Indeed, Hervella, who sometimes passes out leaflets warning visitors about the horrors of Juarez, says some members of the upper crust of his hometown act enraged with his campaign, accusing him of smearing the city's image.
Kent Paterson (kihuac@yahoo.com) is an Albuquerque-based journalist who writes regularly about Mexico.
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