Starting in 1993, women and girls alike were going missing and turning up dead in the desert of Ciudad Juárez. Ciudad Juárez, or city of Juárez, is a city in northern Mexico that is just south of El Paso, Texas. Known as one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico for numerous accounts of violent crimes and a lengthy history of drug trafficking, Juárez garnered worldwide recognition when over 500 women were reported to have been murdered between the years of 1993, and the early 2000s. That number has since grown however, with more than 2,500 women becoming the victims of brutal homocides that continue to plague the city till this day.
Poverty is well known to be rampant in Juárez. Opportunities for jobs were scarce, but the rise of maquiladoras in the 1980s, which are assembly plants that exploit cheap labor, caused an influx of poor Mexican people in search of jobs to flood into Juárez. Living in poor housing conditions, impoverished women often had to leave and walk across the desert, in hopes of catching a shuttle bus that would take them to work in the maquiladoras. They did this all while being alone and unprotected, leaving them as very vulnerable and easy targets for rape, murder, or even abduction.
Why have there been so many homocides directed toward women? The Former state Attorney General at the time, Arturo González Rascón, and many other police officers believe the reason that the victims were attacked, was because they had worn provocative clothing, or they themselves were involved in the drug trade. These assumptions of what provoked their killings were more subjective rather than factual. The authorities show a lack of interest to find the culprits at all, and instead have deliberately failed to collect evidence at the murder sites and even destroyed important evidence that could imcriminate the multiple killers that are at fault.
This lack of care and attention, reveals how poorly women really are valued in Mexico, and how the authorities in Mexico could really care less about delivering justice to those who commit violent crimes against women.
Even in recent years, women contine to be victims of senseless violence in the city of Juárez. Just in 2020, Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre, who was a Mexican artist and women’s rights activist in Juárez, was found shot dead near her bicycle in January. Her murder aroused numerous protests not only in Juárez, but all the way in Mexico City, where the news of her death spread internationally. Friends and activists classified her death as a femicide, which is defined from the Mexican government as a violent killing of a women based of their gender, and continued to rally widespread attention in order to find out who killed her.
To this day her murder remains unsolved among the countless other young women, where their killers were never brought to justice. In a city where you could kill a woman and get away with it, women can be considered almost invisible and disposable. As impunity continues to skyrocket, various groups have been formed to demand justice for the victims’ families and just to bring an end all the killings in general. May Our Daughters Return Home, Justice for our Daughters, and Hijas de su Maquilera Madre, are some to name a few that strive to bring awareness this atrocity.
Works Cited
Crying out for Justice: Murders of Women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. 2005.
Resendiz, Julian. “Juarez Reports Nearly 500 Women Murdered in Past 3 Years.” KXAN Austin, 31 Aug. 2021, www.kxan.com/border-report/juarez-reports-nearly-500-women-murdered-in-past-3-years/.
Villagran, Lauren. “Marchers Overnight in Juárez Demand Justice on Anniversary of Activist’s Murder.” El Paso Times, 18 Jan. 2022, www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/local/juarez/2022/01/18/dozens-march-demand-justice