Concerns Spread Over Juarez Murders
by Deborah Kong
SAN FRANCISCO, California - A pink blouse, a frilly yellow child's frock and other pastel-colored clothing dangle from the ceiling. Beneath the dresses, shoes lie haphazardly among dead flower petals.
In artist Adrian Arias' homage to the women of Juarez, Mexico, the hanging clothes are a reminder of hundreds of missing or murdered girls. The scattered shoes recall those found in the desert where their raped, mutilated and beaten bodies were often abandoned.
The slayings of more than 250 women in the city just across the border from El Paso, Texas, began a decade ago. But recently, growing outrage over the killings has spread to places far from Juarez, including the San Francisco cultural center where Arias' haunting tableau is on display through Wednesday.
"There's a lot of silence around this problem," said Arias, a 42-year-old videographer, artist and poet.
"This has been going on for the past 10 years and there hasn't been anything done to resolve the problem. As an artist, I feel I need to do something to be near the families who miss their sisters, their daughters, their friends."
In recent months, protesters have called attention to the murders by carrying signs that read "Not one more" and "Justice for our daughters" outside Mexican consulates in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Austin, El Paso and other cities around the world.
Last month, a congressional delegation led by U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., visited sites where the victims' bodies were found and spoke with their families.
And in February and March, benefit performances of "The Vagina Monologues" around the world will each donate up to 10 percent of proceeds to help families of Juarez victims. The shows, coordinated by nonprofit V-Day, will feature a new monologue about the killings by playwright Eve Ensler and provide information about them to audience members.
"I feel really, really compelled now to do everything I can to stop what's happening there, and to get America to stop it," Ensler said, adding that she's had trouble sleeping since returning from a recent trip to Juarez to research a magazine story.
"If this were happening to men, it would have stopped a long time ago. Because it's poor women, they're completely invisible and nonexistent on anybody's radar."
The Juarez victims are mostly slender, long-haired and pretty, between the ages of 14 and 20. Mexican authorities estimate that 258 women have been killed; nearly 100 were sexually motivated and the victims were raped, strangled and had their necks broken. Human rights groups, however, place the number of victims at more than 350.
Police have arrested more than a dozen people, including an Egyptian chemist who is the only one convicted in the crimes. Officials say the chemist, Abdel Latif Sharif, paid others to continue the killings while he was in jail.
But some don't believe the official version, and theories abound that the women were killed by organ traffickers, a street gang or Satanic cult. There is fear the killings have spread to the state capital of Chihuahua.
Some victims' families have complained of sloppy police work, corruption and government apathy. Others blame American companies, pointing out that many of the women worked in assembly plants that produce electronics, toys and other items for U.S. consumers.
Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a UCLA professor who organized a conference this month on the murders, said concern has been growing in the United States since eight bodies were found together in a former cotton field in Juarez about two years ago.
She also credits filmmaker Lourdes Portillo's "Senorita Extraviada, Missing Young Woman" documentary, which has been shown around the world since late 2001, with increasing awareness of the problem.
In the political arena, Solis has pressured Mexican authorities to further investigate the crimes. On Friday, she and other legislators introduced a House resolution outlining their concerns and suggesting solutions.
"There's just a clear negligence on the part of the authorities in really, truly coming to grips with who is actually involved with the murders and then finding some resolution and conclusion for the families," Solis said.
The killings have also provoked an artistic outpouring. In Los Angeles, "The Women of Juarez" play tells the story of a family grieving over the disappearance of a young factory worker.
New Mexico songwriter Bugs Salcido plans to donate a portion of proceeds from his new CD, "The Juarez Murders," to Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez, a Las Cruces, N.M., group working to end the killings and support victims' families.
In San Francisco, Day of the Dead installations by Arias and by Mexican artist and activist Silvia Parra, have been on display since the beginning of the month. In Parra's exhibit, slips of paper list the dead women's names; many say "Desconocido," unknown. The names are surrounded by pink candles painted with a black crosses, a symbol for the dead Juarez women.
"They're my sisters. They're my daughters," Parra said. "The crimes are of such hatred that it's just unbearable to my soul as an artist, as a mother and as a woman. I cannot just stand by."
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