Mexico Slayings Gaining Attention
By Tessie Borden
Republic Mexico City Bureau
JUAREZ - A 9-year-old murder mystery surrounding dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of killings of women in Juarez has become a human rights question investigated by the Organization of American States.
A special human rights rapporteur from the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights of the OAS arrived in Juarez last week to meet with city officials, families and community leaders to hear about the murders of young women found, alone or in pairs or groups, in the desert outside Juarez since at least 1993.
"There's a certain amount of concern," said Marta Altolaguirre Larraondo, a Guatemalan lawyer in charge of examining women's rights issues for the commission. "The deaths are there, and they are indisputable."
Altolaguirre met with human rights advocates and community leaders in this border city of nearly 1.3 million people who alerted the authorities to the problem and have since watched as the number of victims has grown year by year. No one agrees on the number of murders, which varies from 65 counted by authorities to more than 230 counted by women's advocates. Theories also vary as to whether the killings are related and whether they were committed by one person or by copycats.
But there is a general profile of the victims: young or young-looking, tall, slender, with long, dark hair and medium dark skin. And there are similarities among at least some of the corpses, which were found naked or partly clothed, with hands tied behind the backs, apparently strangled and sexually abused. Some have been found only a few weeks after being reported missing, while others have lain in the desert until their remains were little more than bones.
Esther Chavez Cano, who runs a resource center for abused women in Juarez and was one of the first people to sound the alarm, says she has talked to investigators who describe the possible killer as an older, good-looking and strong man, someone who inspires admiration or trust among his victims and who is well-off enough to impress them. But that is only one of several theories.
Twenty men have been arrested in connection with and blamed for the murders, but the credibility of the cases against them falls apart as soon as more bodies are found.
That happened in November, when the decomposing bodies of three women and the skeletal remains of five more were found in adjoining fields. Less than a week after the discoveries, police arrested two bus drivers who they said confessed to raping, torturing and killing the women for pleasure.
But few in the community believed the arrests of Victor Javier Garcia Uribe and Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, both 28, were anything more than an effort to find scapegoats.
"We are very skeptical," women's rights advocate Victoria Caraveo said at the time. "It is very difficult in four days to pinpoint the people who killed these women."
Suspicion grew in late January, when the attorney defending one of the men was shot to death.
Human rights advocates at the meeting told Altolaguirre they do not trust local authorities and believe the men in jail were forced to confess. They complained about what they say is an impunity that demands a quick answer without any real investigation.
They also complained about how authorities have treated the victims' families, saying they were treated callously, with little concern for their pain.
Altolaguirre said she had been invited to look into the case by President Vicente Fox. She said Fox is concerned about the situation and wants a resolution.
Now that the OAS is checking things out, however, Chavez Cano says there is some reason for hope.
"I am not hoping they will perform miracles," she said. "But at least it's a tightening of the screws on this horrible problem."
The commission gained some clout in Mexico recently when the Mexican government released from prison Jose Francisco Gallardo Rodriguez, a brigadier general in the Mexican army who had suggested that the army should have a human rights ombudsman. Shortly after his suggestion was published in a doctoral thesis, Gallardo was accused of stealing and selling government supplies for his own gain. He spent eight years in prison trying to prove his innocence.
His case was to be tried before the Inter-American Court this month, but Gallardo's sentence was instead reduced to time served through an agreement among the interior ministry, the secretary of foreign relations and the army. Gallardo insists he will fight in the Mexican courts to clear his name.
The fact that the Mexican government reached the decision just days before the case was to be heard in the Inter-American Court was encouraging, Altolaguirre said.
"Each country has to strengthen its own institutions," she said. "But international mechanisms like ours can apply a certain amount of pressure."
Copyright 2002 The Arizona Republic