Hopeful Young Women Perish in City of Broken Dreams
by Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times, June 23rd, 2002
The trip to the border became a journey to death for an estimated 60 maquiladora workers, most of them vulnerable women as young as 13 who came to Juárez in search of $6-a-day jobs and better lives.
The 60 were among the 325 girls and women slain in the growing city since 1993. Many of their unsolved killings were frighteningly brutal. They were raped, bitten, strangled and stabbed. One woman was found in an acid-filled 55-gallon drum. Others were found with their breasts mutilated and their hair cut off. Some were shot in the head at close range.
The murders have spread fear among young women in the city, especially in light of rumors, however unproven, that women are killed for their organs or in satanic rituals.
"I'm afraid to go out anymore," said Adriana Ramos, 18, who moved to Juárez from Mexico City a year ago."(May 8), a bus driver for my route was arrested after he tried to rape a 16-year-old girl who fell asleep on the bus. What if he had killed her, too?"
While one in five of the victims worked at one of the city's 300 maquiladoras - assembly plants owned by U.S. and foreign businesses - the others came from all walks of life. They included students, housewives, dancers, prostitutes, store clerks, small-business owners and a Dutch tourist.
Some of their bodies were dumped in Lote Bravo near the airport, in Lomas de Poleo in Anapra, at the foothills of Cerro Bola, and in an inner-city lot two miles east of Wal-Mart.
Serial murders?
How they were killed and the similarities between 80 and 90 of the victims indicate to experts that one or more serial killers may be prowling the U.S.-Mexico border.
-Silvia Laguna Cruz, 16, was last seen alive on her way to work at the North American Data Processors plant in 1998. Her body was found 100 yards south of Zaragoza Boulevard in northeast Juárez. She had been stabbed 20 times and raped. Her killer or killers "sadistically nailed an object to her chest," according to a Chihuahua state document.
-Guadalupe Estrada Salas, 16, was found dead in 1993. Her body was too decomposed to tell if she had been raped. According to a government document, a supervisor at the Bravo Electrosistemas plant was questioned. He admitted to having a friendship with her, and said he gave her rides on occasion. He was the last one to see her alive, but police said his alibi checked out.
-Sandra Vasquez Juarez, 17, was found floating in the Rio Grande on the U.S. side July 10, 1996. She died "due to manual strangulation," the El Paso autopsy said. U.S. authorities gave the case to Juárez officials because they believe the Zenith maquiladora worker was murdered there.
-Sagrario Gonzalez Flores was a teen from Durango who wrote poetry and wanted to learn the guitar to liven up the Sunday Mass. She finished her shift at 3 p.m. April 16, 1998, at the General Electric maquiladora - and was never seen alive again. Passers-by found her body 12 days later in a ditch in Valle de Juárez, east of Zaragoza in Juárez.
Drugs and abuse?
Despite the city's allure, life in Juárez does not hold much promise for young girls, experts say. Juárez sociologist Julia Monarrez said demographics are such that most young women from low-income families will end up working at a maquiladora.
With limited economic opportunities before them, those who don't find maquiladora jobs sometimes become involved with men who ply the drug trade, said Cheryl Howard, a sociologist at the University of Texas at El Paso.
About 195 of the 325 women's deaths have been attributed to domestic and drug-related violence - facts of daily life in one of the most coveted and disputed drug corridors in the Americas. Drug-trafficking has set new records for violence in Juárez, where it has become common for women to be killed by handguns or assault rifles.
"Come June, if my daughter's case isn't solved, I'm joining with the other mothers who've put a cross in front of the state police offices," said Dr. Irma Rodriguez, the forensic specialist and state police commander who's worked to reconstruct the remains of unidentified dead women.
Her daughter, Paloma Villa, 17, was gunned down by suspected hired killers last July after several men pursued an acquaintance into their Juárez home. Rodriguez's common-law husband also died in the attack, but her 23-year-old son, Vladimir Villa, a grandson of Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa, survived.
According to the Pan American Health Organization, homicide is the second-leading cause of death of young women in Juárez, a city of 1.2 million. During 1995-97, 124 women were killed in Juárez, compared with 36 in Tijuana, which has 1.1 million people, and 13 in Matamoros, which has a population of about 420,000.
But the cases that have drawn the most attention are those thought to be connected with serial killings.
One such victim, Olga Alicia Carrillo, 20, worked in a shoe store and lived with her family in a modest home in the city's downtown. She had a crush on a young man she dated who was active in the National Action Party's youth organization. Police questioned him because he was the last one to see her alive, but he was not charged. Carrillo was last seen at a PAN gathering for youths at the party's headquarters on 16 de Septiembre. Her body was found in a burial cluster with eight others.
"I can't cry anymore. I am all cried out, but the pain never goes away," said her mother, Irma Perez, who sells hamburgers and sodas in front of her house. "The other day I met someone who looked so much like my Olga that I asked her to stop by my house and see my daughter's portrait. She was amazed at how much she looked like her. I hugged her, imagining it was Olga."
Alleged threats
Perez said Rogelio Loya, a city official at the time, was the only one who offered to help her find her daughter when she didn't return home Aug. 10, 1995.
"Later, (Loya's) family asked that we no longer call him because he had received death threats for wanting to help us," the stricken mother said. "To this day, I don't know why he was threatened."
Others, including victims' family members and investigators, reported receiving threats.
Marisela Ortiz, a Juárez teacher who is helping families of slain women in Juárez and Chihuahua City, recalled a surprise encounter with state Attorney General Arturo Gonzalez Rascon.
"The mothers came to me and asked for my help," she said. "After I agreed to get involved, several state officials began harassing me, and told me to mind my own business. Gonzalez Rascon met with me, and he tried to discourage me from what I was doing."
After a stranger in a car pursued Ortiz through several streets in May, state officials temporarily assigned police to guard her. Before that, she and others were followed and monitored by people in cars parked across from their homes.
Gonzalez Rascon denied ever meeting with Ortiz. He was replaced. Before he, too, was reassigned recently, ex-state Deputy Attorney General Jose Ortega Aceves said, "If anyone is harassing the families or anyone else in any way, then I need to know so I can do something about it."
Samira Izaguirre, a Juárez radio talk-show host, said she might be forced to seek asylum in the United States or Canada because she has been the target of death threats and a government smear campaign. According to the receipt for a newspaper advertisement that attacked Izaguirre, the ad was paid for with government funds.
"This happened because we opened our program to critics of the government investigation into the Juárez women's murders," she said.
Range of violence
Evidence of torture, rape and mutilation was common among the victims, some of whom were handcuffed, had one or both breasts gnawed, slashed or amputated and had their hair cut off. Bite marks were found on more than six victims, but police have failed to match the marks with any suspects, including those in custody.
-Brenda Lizeth Najera Flores, 15, and Susana Flores Flores, 13, disappeared while on their way to school in 1996. They were raped, tortured and shot in the head, police said. The trauma from the torture caused the 13-year-old to have a heart attack.
Police said objects such as candles and occult symbols used in "black magic" rituals were found at the crime scene. The suspect in their killings, Edgar Cesar Sanchez, allegedly fled to the United States. He was arrested several years later after he joined the Mexican army. He is in custody at the Cereso prison in Juárez.
-Lourdes Lucero Campos, 26, a nutritionist for a Juárez maquiladora, was found dead Jan. 19 in an irrigation ditch near El Millon, a village across the Rio Grande from Fabens. Authorities arrested a boyfriend, but relatives said police couldn't match a bite mark on her body to his teeth.
El Paso victims
Most of the homicide victims were Mexican natives, but some came from El Paso, New Mexico, Honduras and the Netherlands.
-Two sisters from El Paso, Victoria Parker and Pearl Parker Hopkins, were among the slain. Mexican officials said they were not sex-killing victims, but part of a growing number of women whose deaths were violent and drug-related.
El Paso police said they believe the Parker sisters were lured to Juárez from their East Side home in 1996 by someone they knew. Each was shot in the head five times. Although Mexican authorities said they don't have a suspect, they linked the sisters socially to El Pasoan Eddie Barragan, who disappeared in 1998 in Juárez along with two other El Paso men.
Other U.S. victims have included Donna Maurine Striplin Boggs of Albuquerque, Gloria Olivas Morales de Rios of El Paso, Ignacia Soto of Fabens and Cinthia Portillo Gonzalez of El Paso.
-Striplin Boggs, 28, was found stabbed to death in 1994 on the bank of the Rio Grande opposite the Asarco plant. Her killing is unsolved.
-Soto, 22, also was stabbed to death. Mexican authorities said they have an arrest warrant pending, but they would not name the suspect.
-Olivas, 28, was strangled in 1995. Her body was found off Jilotepec Street in east Juárez. Police said they were unable to get more information about her, which made it difficult to investigate. Initially, it was reported she was abducted along with two men identified as Walter Rios and Alejandro Fuentes.
-Portillo, 23, and her boyfriend were shot to death by killers who mistook them for someone else, police said. The El Paso woman was one of 28 victims who were gunned down this year in Juárez.
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