Arrests In Border Slayings Fuel Anger Against Factories
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Anger over killings of dozens of young women in this border city is being directed at the factories that employed many of the victims, as well as the bus drivers who allegedly preyed on them.
The arrests this week of five men - four of whom were drivers working under subcontract for the assembly-for-export plants known as "maquiladoras" - has sparked calls for the factories to take more responsibility for their workers' safety.
About 40 percent of the factories are US-owned, 50 percent Mexican-owned, and the rest owned by companies from other countries.
Some 192 young women have been killed since 1993 in this gritty city across the border from El Paso, Texas. Many disappeared while traveling between their factori jobs and shantytown homes on the edge of the metropolitan sprawl.
Scores of bodies have been found beaten, strangled or stabbed in the surrounding desert, and many showed signs of rape or sexual abuse.
Prosecutors say the bus drivers may have killed as many as 20 of the women, and that more killers probably are still on the loose.
Abdel Latif Sharif, an Egyptian who is a former maquiladora engineer, is serving a 30-year sentence for one of the murders.
The fact that victims included girls as young as 13 working illegally in the plants - the minimum legal age is 16 - has only reinforced the perception that owners fill their factories with little regard for the workers themselves.
"How in the world could they have hired such people to drive buses...with no background checks, no controls?" said Esther Chavez, a 65 year old Juarez accountant who has led the fight for justice for the slain women.
The four suspect bus drivers, three of whom had criminal records, weren't directly employed by the maquiladoras. They worked for small independent lines that run secondhand US school buses over the dry plains to bring workers to factory gates.
Chavez says the companies "hide" behind the subcontracting arrangement.
The maquiladora program was set up in 1962 to allow manufacturers, mainly working for the US market, to take advantage of cheap Mexican labor. Plants manufacturing for foreign companies such as Amway, TDK, Honeywell, 3M, Kenwood and Dupont are among the region's biggest employers, paying wages of about $1 an hour - more than double the country's minimum wage.
The industry has caused Juarez's population to grow fivefold over the last 30 years to about 1 million. Each day, an estimated 600 new people arrive from Mexico's poor provinces hoping for work.
Chavez said women's advocates have long believed someone connected with the maquiladoras was behind the killings, because "many of the girls disappeared the day after they were hired".
But no one previously had investigated people associated with the plants because "they're completely protected here. The government says they are the only source of jobs," Chavez said.
Officials of the Juarez-based Maquiladora Association, an industry group made up of representatives of the plants, were unavailable for comment.
The new arrests raise the chilling possibility that newly higher women were easier prey for what has become known as the "bus drivers gang" because they were unfamiliar with the routes and may not have known where to get off or recognized drivers' detours.
Callers to a Ciudad Juarez radio talk show this weekend demanded that the maquiladoras hire their own bus drivers and check their backgrounds.
"What are the maquiladoras going to do about this fear and mistrust among women? ... They're not going to want to work," said Manuel Tarine Granados, host for the 860 AM radio show.
Meanwhile, a sense of sadness pervades the debate. "There is so much that the maquiladoras could do to improve things. But they're only interested in making money off their workers, whether the workers are of legal age or not," said Irma Perez, whose 20 year old daughter, Olga, disappeared on Aug. 10, 1995, and is presumed dead.