Five More Bodies Found In Mexico
by Mark Stevenson
Authorities in Ciudad Juarez, just opposite El Paso, Texas, found five skeletons in a drainage ditch Wednesday near a field where they had uncovered the decayed, partially-clad bodies of three young women a day earlier.
The discovery ignited fears that a gruesome series of 57 rape-murders of young women that plagued this tough border city in the 1990s has not ended.
"I am tied up in knots. This is like somebody's private cemetery," said Esther Chavez, a women's rights activist who had led the battle to press authorities to investigate the killings, which began in 1993.
Searching near the cotton field where the three bodies were found Tuesday, police came across the skeletons in a drainage ditch near a heavily traveled street. All appeared to be the remains of women, prosecutor Arturo Gonzalez Rascon said.
Gonzalez Rascon said all available state police agents were investigating, and Mexican Army soldiers would participate in the search for more remains.
The skeletons were found about 300 yards from the offices of the Association of Maquiladoras, the trade group that represents the export assembly plants that dominate the city. Most of the victims in the 1990s killings were young, slender, dark-haired female assembly workers.
Chavez said that one of the bodies found Tuesday had been identified as a worker who was last seen after she showed up three minutes late for her shift at the plant and was told to go home. She never got there.
Chavez and other women's activists have criticized local prosecutors for not investigating the cases more aggressively. More than a dozen young women have disappeared this year in Juarez.
"The authorities lack investigative skill, and they lack interest," Chavez said. "Imagine, after all these deaths, they are only now deciding whether to bring DNA identification equipment here."
Women's groups plan to protest outside the state Attorney General's Office in Ciudad Juarez Thursday, to light candles in memory of the victims and to demand stepped-up investigations.
One of the most recent victim's hands were tied behind her back, and her body was clad only in socks. That was chillingly similar to the dozens of murders that occurred here in the 1990s.
Between 1993 and 1999, at least 57 bodies turned up in the desert around Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling city of 1.3 million.
All had been strangled, apparently raped and many were mutilated. The circumstances were so similar that investigators considered them serial killings.
In March, 1999, five bus drivers were charged in 20 of the 57 previous murders, and such killings appeared to have ended.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press