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Portland vigil held for murdered Juarez women

Portland along with 250 other cities and 50 other countries took to the streets to demand peace. The city added to the significant turnout along the entire West Coast — an estimated 100,000 people opposed to the Bush administration’s war against Iraq.

Ciudad Juarez, just across the Mexico/U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, is famous for two things: cheap labor and the unsolved serial murders of young women. Over the past ten years, according to Amnesty International, around 370 women have been murdered in Juarez; 137 of them were sexually assaulted. At least 90 of these cases are believed to be the work of a serial killer or killers, who target attractive young women from poor backgrounds. Meanwhile, official investigations have been slow, fruitless, and riddled by allegations of corruption.

In observance of International Women’s Rights Day, the Portland branch of Amnesty International organized a candlelight vigil for the women of Juarez on March 9. About 50 people were in attendance.
One of those present was Claudia Magallanes, who grew up in Juarez but moved away in the late ‘80s, leaving her father and extended family behind. She recalls that as a child, she could play in the streets without worrying. Now, she says of her relatives in Juarez, “They’re careful — you have to be. Women are not alone at night, and that’s a luxury we do have here.”

Magallanes believes that NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) is responsible for many of Juarez’ problems, from poverty and overcrowding to the pervasive violence.

“NAFTA caused a lot of people to move there thinking there were jobs, but there weren’t,” she said. The sudden population influx overwhelmed the city’s social services and law enforcement infrastructure and led to sprawling ghettos of the unemployed.

Juarez’ great draw lies in its maquiladoras, manufacturing facilities located in Mexico but owned by foreign-based companies. These facilities can import materials for assembly without paying tariffs; they then assemble finished products for export. There are about 300 maquiladoras in Juarez, located primarily in the poor western part of the city.

In fact, the wages paid to an entry-level factory worker in Juarez — about U.S. $2 an hour — are considerably higher than those in the interior of the country. However, the cost of living in Juarez is only slightly lower than that in El Paso, meaning that these wages do not necessarily buy a better quality of life for factory workers.

El Paso has also benefited from the influx of investment brought in by Juarez’ proximity. The city website touts the benefits of the maquiladora program for businesses based in El Paso. Among them, it lists: “low labor costs...a predominantly non-union labor force...fine quality of life for U.S. managers living in El Paso.”

Despite all this, in recent years Mexico has been losing favor with U.S. companies as a manufacturing base. In what is commonly known as the Race to the Bottom, many multinationals that previously moved their factories from the U.S. to Mexico are now moving their operations to China and other countries with lower labor costs. According to the New York Times, Juarez has lost about 287,000 jobs since its peak employment year in 2000.

This statistic partially helps to explain why — even without taking into account the serial killings — Juarez has such a high crime rate. Domestic violence and drug-related killings account for the major proportion of murdered women, and the murder rate among males is even higher than among females.

However, the pattern of torture, mutilation, and sexual killings of women in Juarez goes beyond the violence that would normally arise from conditions of poverty and overcrowding. Most of the victims fit a similar profile: young (the median age is 16, the youngest was 6), poor, and dark-skinned. Some worked in the maquiladoras, others were waitresses or high school students. All came from families with little political influence; and due to the incompetence or corruption of law enforcement, the families themselves have often ended up being primarily responsible for the investigations.

“There are a lot of rumors. The local authorities have been accused of doing these crimes themselves,” said Eric Bailey, of Portland Amnesty International.

Another theory, primarily championed by El Paso Times journalist Diana Washington, holds that the murderers are a group of rich men with high political connections and ties to the Juarez drug cartel — “untouchables.”

Whatever the truth may be, the official investigations have obviously failed to stop the killings, despite having arrested and extracted “confessions” from a number of suspects over the years. On March 11, another woman’s body was found in Juarez, near the spot where three other victims were discovered last February.

Activist groups in both the United States and Mexico are continuing to agitate for a full, bi-national investigation of the crimes. In Nov. 2003, after an international conference entitled “The Maquiladora Murders, or Who Is Killing the Women of Juarez?,” activists working in conjunction with the victims’ family members drafted a petition demanding that the U.S. and Mexican governments regard the crimes as human rights violations and intervene in the investigations. The text of this petition is available at www.PetitionOnline.com/NiUnaMas.

Abby Sewell is an Alliance intern and a student at Reed College.

 

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Last Updated: January 29, 2003