Maquiladora Means Murder Zone
By Paul Knox, Globe and Mail
MEXICO CITY -- For eight years, somebody -- probably several somebodies -- has been raping and killing women in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. To date, more than 60 deaths fit the rape-murder pattern, although about 260 women have died violently since 1993.
The string of gruesome sex attacks abated in 1999, but eight more corpses turned up earlier this month. Then, last week, there was a ninth.
Many of the victims are slim, dark-skinned women in their teens or 20s, workers at the in-body assembly plants known as maquiladoras that produce electrical goods and car parts. They come to the border from poverty-stricken towns farther south, drawn by the promise of steady work and a more exciting life. The plants, famous as examples of unfettered free trade, provide jobs but few amenities to the cities where they are installed.
Some of the women were strangled, some mutilated, some tortured and beaten to death, many after leaving work to return to their shantytown homes.
It's a shocking story, and a stain on the conscience not only of Mexico but also of Canada and the United States. We have embraced Mexico as an economic partner, but are too often indifferent to the social fallout from continental integration. At bottom, however, the women of Juarez -- both the dead and the survivors -- are victims of Mexican things: Machismo that leads to indifference, and a deeply flawed justice system.
Despite several arrests, the killings are largely unexplained. An Egyptian-born engineer, Abdel Latif Sharif, was arrested in 1995, questioned in several murders and found guilty of one in 1999. The conviction was thrown out on appeal last year after his lawyer pointed out that the alleged victim's description didn't fit the body produced as evidence. Mr. Sharif remains in custody pending further appeals.
The killings continued while Mr. Sharif was in jail, but that was no obstacle to police and prosecutors, who continued to insist that he was the mastermind. They arrested several members of a gang known as the Rebels and said Mr. Sharif had paid these men to murder women in order to draw suspicion away from himself. Most were later freed.
Then, in 1999, authorities said several bus drivers had confessed to murdering women, and contended that they, too, were hired by Mr. Sharif. Their cases apparently are still pending.
This month, two more bus drivers -- including one who had previously been a suspect -- were detained after the decomposed remains of eight young women were found in a vacant lot. A local newspaper published photographs of the men bearing wounds and cigarette burns. One of the men said he had been beaten and forced to confess at gunpoint. Women's advocates say they doubt the drivers are to blame.
Mexico has stabilized its economy and brought transparency to its politics, but President Vicente Fox Quesada needs to give urgent attention to the institutions of law and order. Too many so-called investigators are far better at extracting confessions than doing forensic scutwork to actually solve crimes. In a newspaper column this week, Mr. Fox's own public security minister described the federal prosecutor's office as "an institution which almost no one trusts."
There is a positive side to these chilling tales: the growing organization of women in Juarez and throughout Mexico. "Not one more in Ciudad Juarez!" screamed newspaper advertisements they placed this week, demanding action from vacillating local and national authorities.
Of that, nothing but good can come.
Copyright 2001 Globe Mail
(article located here)