Ciudad Juarez: Enough is Enough

In a joint statement, organizations called on the government to end its “simulations” and make “human rights for all a reality on this border.”

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - December on the border is a time of family, faith and fiesta. Every year, thousands pay homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe. While throngs jam international bridges for holiday shopping excursions, lively gatherings of friends and family on both sides of the border enjoy tamales, posole and festive times.

But in Ciudad Juarez, December 2010 also is a time of funerals, fear, frustration and fury. Roaring, non-stop violence related to the so-called narco war continues to claim lives right up to the holidays.

According to the Ciudad Juarez body count tallied by New Mexico State University librarian Molly Molloy, 2,982 people were murdered in the Mexican border city from January 1 to December 12 of this year; since January 2008, at least 7,358 people have fallen victim to homicide in Ciudad Juarez, a city of slightly more than one million people, according to Molloy.

“People are not only fed-up, but in enormous pain because of so much death,” Elizabeth Flores, director of the Pastoral Obrera worker advocacy center, told Frontera NorteSur.

Flores said that her neighbors are sunk in a “profound sadness” that’s overtaken their lives during the last three years. And many, she added, suffer not only deep personal losses but economic ones as well, due to the closure of businesses and the continued lack of employment.

Increasingly, more and more Juarenses are saying enough is enough. In a manifestation of popular disgust turned into collective action, thousands of doctors and nurses conducted a work-stoppage December 13 to protest public insecurity and government incompetence. Service practically ground to a halt at large hospitals and private clinics.

The health care workers took to the streets after three colleagues were recently kidnapped. One of the victims, Dr. Jose Alberto Betancourt, was murdered. A resident of El Paso, Betancourt raised four children in the US city.

Since 2008, many physicians have experienced extortions, threats, kidnappings and even murder. Clinics and doctors' offices have been closed, as physicians abandon a profession and a city under siege.

Dr. Arturo Valenzuela, physicians’ movement spokesman, was quoted prior to the job action:

“This work stoppage is going to be a wake-up call for the municipal and state authorities, and it's also going to be a message to society to wake-up and get moving, because a passive society does not achieve anything. It is necessary to struggle.”

In an extraordinary development, strikers discussed not treating wounded gunmen or policemen. Doctors said that they have healed injured delinquents only to later become the targets of shake-downs, threats and violence.

On Monday, December 13, a group of several dozen health care workers staged an action at the Ciudad Juarez offices of the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office, where they hanged red-colored smocks in imitation of bloody garb and demanded officials resign.

The December 13 strikers demanded an end to impunity, greater economic support for their embattled city, effective law enforcement, and an end to anonymous, masked patrols by members of the Federal Police, who have been repeatedly accused of human rights violations and crimes by the citizenry.

Late last week, for example, 56-year-old Julian Chavez Mendoza, a vendor of the Diario and PM newspapers, publicly accused the Federal Police of entering his home without a warrant, beating him and stealing money and other belongings.

The December 13 strike received widespread support from business, social movement and professional associations.

The movement’s pressure already could be paying off: on the eve of the strike, two kidnapped doctors were suddenly released.

Before the work stoppage, protesters vowed to extend the strike state-wide if demands were not met within 48 hours.

Like Ciudad Juarez, other parts of the state of Chihuahua are submerged in criminality and violence. In recent days, mass executions, shootings and brazen robberies have disturbed the peace in and around the state capital of Chihuahua City.

Besides doctors and nurses, many others are mobilizing against violence and for human rights.

At a forum held late last week at Ciudad Juarez’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, women’s groups and their allies analyzed the Mexican government’s response to the 2009 sentence by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) related to the cotton field femicide case, as well as the federal government’s “Todos Somos Juarez” social reconstruction and public security plan enacted after the massacre of young people at a house party in the Villas de Salvarcar neighborhood last January. On both counts, the Calderon administration’s responses were judged resounding failures.

In Flores’ view, “Todos Somos Juarez” was a top-down program hatched in Mexico City without sufficient participation from grassroots Juarenses.

“We all agreed that the strategy did not function.” Flores said of the forum’s consensus.

One year after the IACHR handed down its obligatory sentence in the cotton field case, in which relatives of three young women brutally slain in Ciudad Juarez in 2001 sued the Mexican government for human rights violations, lawyers and supporters of the families declared that the Calderon administration had not complied with the court’s orders.

Consequently, the Costa Rica-based legal body should hold a hearing on the matter, they said.

In a historic decision, the IACHR ordered Mexico City to find the real killers, punish officials responsible for botching the murder investigations, compensate and assist the families, and hold a ceremony including a public apology at the crime scene, among other measures.

The “investigations” of the cotton field murders were replete with tortured suspects, fabricated scapegoats and even misidentified victims. Eight murder victims were recovered from the cotton field, but only three families pressed the matter all the way to the IACHR. However, other femicide cases from Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City are in the pipeline for the IACHR’s possible consideration.

In 2010, representatives of Ciudad Juarez and Mexican human rights organizations toured Europe and spoke out internationally about not only the government’s alleged slowness in complying with the IACHR decision, but also the mounting violence against women in general.

Earlier this year, David Pena, attorney for Amnesty International, noted that the persistent disappearances of young women fitting the profiles of the cotton field victims had soared more than 400 percent since the end of 2007, when narco-violence erupted and thousands of soldiers and federal cops occupied the streets of Ciudad Juarez.

According to Pena, disappearances of young girls and women jumped from six in 2007 to 26 during the first eight months of this year. In all, 72 persons in question were reported missing in the 2007-2010 time frame, Pena said.

Mexican Congresswoman Adriana Terrazas Porras, a member of the opposition PRI party, said the Calderon administration recently compensated the three cotton field families for a combined total of about $900,000 but declined to issue an apology as mandated by the IACHR.

Terrazas said non-compliance is likely to become an issue in the Mexican Congress, and if President Calderon does not give the required apology then it should be up to Interior Minister Francisco Blake to make the public mea culpa.

On December 10, Chihuahua state prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas and several other officials placed flowers at the cotton field, but no relatives of the murder victims or their supporters were present for the floral offering.

Imelda Marrufo, spokesperson for the Ciudad Juarez Women’s Roundtable Network, said family members were notified two days ahead of time of the impending event, which fell on the anniversary of the IACHR’s public ruling and its looming deadlines for government action.

Instead of attending the government-organized event, members of non-governmental organizations met at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte to consider and debate future responses to the crisis devastating Ciudad Juarez. Proposals floated at the forum included a new round of public protests in January, a tax strike and a generalized, peaceful civic insurgency to reclaim the city.

Groups participating in the forum included the Plural Citizens Front, university students and researchers, the Juarez Strategic Plan, Ciudad Juarez Women’s Roundtable Network, Culture Pact and Casa Amiga Esther Chavez Cano, among others.

In a joint statement, the participating organizations called on the government to end its “simulations” and make “human rights for all a reality on this border.”

Added Pastoral Obrera’s Elizabeth Flores: “We need international solidarity and pressure from international human rights groups,”

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico