A Message In Murder
Who's killing the young women of Juarez? Activists say there's a backlash against new gender roles
by Martha Brant
In Ciudad Juarez, a shift switch can prove fatal. When the electronics plant CAPCOM changed 17 year old Maria Sagrario Gonzalez to the day shift, it meant she could no longer ride to work with her older sister and father. She had to leave the house at 4AM for the first of two buses in order to make the 6AM bell. Going home in midafternoon should have been less risky. After work on April 16, Sagrario transferred to another bus downtown as usual and headed home. She never made it. Two weeks later police discovered the body of a girl who'd been strangled, stabbed five times and abandoned in the desert. Her body was so decomposed that the only way the family could identify the girl was by her work robe. On it she stitched her name: Sagrario.
So many young women turn up dead in Juarez that newspaper headlines read: ANOTHER ONE. Depending on who's doing the counting, between 100 and 150 women have been killed since 1993 in Juarez. Domestic violence claims some victims. Others are drug executions common in this cocaine-trafficking city. Still others are casualities of the dark side of Juarez's teeming nightlife: prostitutes, exotic dancers and drug addicts. But not all the violence can be dismissed as a byproduct of a rough frontier town. Women's groups suggest that it may also be a response to border women's new roles and freedom. "There is a backlash of violence against women," says Esther Chavez, who heads the feminist Grupo 8 de Marzo and is keeping a tally of the deaths.
The most puzzling outbreak has been a series of eerily similar murders of women much like Sagrario - poor, young, and pretty. Just last week, police found the body of a 20 year old woman in a dumpster. Theories about who's killing the women range from a serial killer to a snuff-film ring. The recurring violence has galvanized women across Juarez society. Two councilwomen went on a hunger strike several months ago to call attention to the crimes. The families of the victims have formed a group called Voices Without Echo. They gather every Monday at police headquarters with their handmade signs. 'Justice For Sagrario' reads one.
Juarez police are trying to take control. They're finishing the second most sophisticated crime lab in the country. They've created a sexual-crimes unit. They've thrown an Egyptian man convicted of rape in the US as well as several gang members in jail. This month they charged an El Paso, Texas, man with two killings. But the murders continue. A former FBI man and sexual-crimes expert, Robert Ressler, has been brought in. He hasn't ruled out the possibility of serial killing, but found the living conditions of many women on the border unsafe. Of the unlit, sandy desert streets like the ones Sagrario had to walk, Ressler said: "I wouldn't walk down them armed".
Bustling Juarez - and the vast surrounding desert - is a likely place for murder. More than a dozen victims are known to be maquila workers; the plants are a natural target for predators. The old school buses painted white that transport maquila workers are easy to spot and follow. Newcomers not yet wise to the big city might accept rides from strangers. "The murders are not just a police problem, they're a social problem," says Graciela de la Rosa, whose group, FEMAP, provides health advice for working women. Women leaders are trying to raise the issue of safety in the maquila. The industry has responded sporatically. After Sagrario was killed, CAPCOM had a brief safety talk with workers. The mission: don't go out alone and don't wear miniskirts.
Too often the victims themselves have become the scapegoats. "Some of these women were in the wrong place at the wrong time by choice," says Jose Antonio Parro, a Spanish criminologist working on the murders. In the Sagrario case, police initially suggested that the young woman had ran off with her boyfriend. Her family was dubious. A quiet, serious girl, Sagrario's greatest joy seemed to be teaching kids the catechism. "She would have been 18 in June," her mother Paula says. Old enough to work the late shift.
Copyright Newsweek 1998