Ni una más… (English version)

Ni una más… más allá de la denuncia? (Spanish) *

Rocío Duque

“Silence, like protest, is the drug of our time, the way we do something by doing nothing” Charles Bowden (Murder city. Ciudad Juarez and the global economy's new killing fields)

It was the spring of 1993 when the corpses started showing up.

Then they went on piling and piling up…how many? Nobody knows, although according to (more or less **) official sources, around 745 women were killed in a similar way (kidnapped, raped, tortured) between 1993 and 2009 in Ciudad Juarez, in the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexico; 304 just in 2010.

Esther Chávez and Irma Campos (both recently deceased) started the counting of horror, many years ago, when nobody cared, when “good people” used to say: “They were looking for it..” That was when people were not frightened and angry, at least not all of them. Then things got worse and people said, “Let them kill each other”…Now…

Suddenly, the figures don’t make any sense: around 30 thousand people killed during the four years of the so-called “war against drugs” And, at the end of the day, it is not just about how many but how and why. A woman, Marisela Escobedo, is assassinated in broad daylight at the gates of Chihuahua’s capital city hall last December. Her execution was filmed by the security cameras of the City Hall. To this day there is not even a suspect. When they ask me: Why women are assassinated in Mexico this way? My answer is really simple: Because they can.

It has been like this for years and years, until today: 304 women were assassinated in Juarez, more than in any other year. Femicides in Chihuahua increased three times during the last 4 years. Victor Quintana says in his article Otro año de guerra absurda y feminicida: “Never before in the history of Chihuahua and the country so many executions have happened as in the fourth year of Calderon’s war against crime. But for the citizens the most outrageous thing is the ineffectiveness of such a war, and its political economy, I mean: Who is profiting from the thousands of deaths in Mexico, from the physical, mental and social destruction it carries…?”

This didn’t start yesterday, of course and Marisela was not by far the first one. This is Déjà Vu:

““ ...03/05/93 ,unidentified, 30-35 years old. Swarthy completion, dark hair, on her way to Ortiz Rubio, 3 meters from a ditch, close to Satélite, shorts, panties, barefoot, 5 months pregnant , killed the day before by strangulation, bludgeoned in abdomen and face…15/12/93..Yolanda Tapia, ...cranial wound, a piece of wood inserted in her vagina, it is said that her son killed her… María del Rocío Cordero, 11 years old, in a ditch, close to the highway to Casas Grandes and Barranca Azul, she was kidnapped on her way to the school Gabino Barreda in Colonia Mexico 68 where she lived, strangled, anally and vaginally raped …10/01/95, unidentified, skeletal remains, Ejido El Sauzal.... 06/12/96 Brenda, Mejia Flores...15 years old, missed since November 1996. Knifed, coup de grâce, maybe raped….21/12/97, unidentified, between 12 and 16 years old, Lomas de Poleo , several months dead… 23/02/98 Elizabeth, burned, behind Ponciano Arriaga railroad and Juan Gabriel avenue…03/08/98 Paulina Lizalde Gomez, 15 years old, 7 months pregnant, in a waste land, doused with gasoline and burned…19/03/02 Alicia Carrera Lagunes, 75, and Carolina Carrera, 34 (Down syndrome) , in their house, Alatorre 1876, Colonia Obrera, both of them bludgeoned, burned, gagged, hands and feet tied , their heads covered with plastic bags, they tried to incinerate them…

These are just few of the police reports quoted by Sergio González Rodríguez in his book Huesos en el Desierto…The horror prevails to this day in spite of the authority efforts to play them down.

1- The cold forensic language reminds us the negligence, or better said, the complicity of authorities with organized crime. One of the first corpses that appeared was the one of Gladys Janeth Fierro, 12. She was going out of the school. She was kidnapped, she was raped, and she was strangled. On May 1994, her body was found in the notorious Lote Bravo , south the airport of Juarez. The police investigation, reported by the National Human Rights Committee of Mexico shows the degree of negligence and corruption of the authorities, among the noteworthy points: She was first reported as a Jane Doe, a woman (not a kid) on May 94; later that month , she was finally identified as Gladys Janeth Fierro a 12 years old girl who was kidnapped and raped…then, nothing happened…The National Committee of Human Rights reported that the information handed by the police to Fiscalía Especial para la Investigación de Homicidios de Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez..(Special Prosecutor Office for the Investigation of Women’s Homicides in Ciudad Juarez) was, basically, cooked up.

Theories about the mass murder of women in Juarez have run amok over the years (the best way to muddy the waters): satanic rites, snuff videos, serial killers, even aliens from Mars…you name it.

But there is also what we have learned, and what we don’t forget.

1- The Legal and Justice system and the legislative and executive powers are corrupt to the bone. 98% of denounced crimes are never solved and about the rest everybody wonders if the suspects are just scapegoats. By the way, to learn about the justice system in Mexico, watch the video Presunto Culpable (Presumed guilty) .

2 – Criminal economy (drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, the sale of illegal weapons, etc) is a fundamental part of Mexican economy and not just a parallel one. Every year in Mexico drug trafficking earns twice the amount that enter the country by remesas or remittance (transfers of money by Mexican workers in foreign countries, mainly the United States) which are the third largest source of legal income in Mexican economy. Every year an estimate between 19 and 29 billion dollars product of criminal activity, mainly drug trafficking, enter the country (the nominal GDP is calculated as 1.56 trillion US dollars). Other sources consider that as 10% of the national economy depends on drug trafficking.
Moreover, it does not happen only in Mexico: it’s speculated that 320 billion dollars product of the international drug business (the illegal one, the other one is Big Pharma’s share, but that is another story) are an integral part of the global economy and represent 1% of the worldwide trade. . Antonio María Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has “seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.” And…who launder that drug money? The same banks “rescued” from bankruptcy by Bush and Obama
administrations. Such as Wachovia,, Bank of California, American Express, Bank International, Bank Atlantic, and others. Meanwhile, the economic cost of the insecurity in Mexico is calculated by various sources as being between 7.4% and 15 % of the GDP, which is more than twice the budget for education in the country.

3 – The war against drugs, which actually is the war for drugs, is one the United States has waged but never has fought on its own territory, in spite of being the first consumer in the world. American agencies, such as the DEA and CIA have been involved (for a long time) with drug trafficking and not necessarily fighting it. The Iran-Contras scandal is a classic example (for more examples, check out Dark Alliance and that fundamental book: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade). Nowadays Afghanistan supplies 93% of the opium and almost all the hashish of the world. Opium production reached historic records after the American occupation.
Let’s look at another American success in this war: Colombia. Seven American military bases in its territory, great fanfare for the successful Plan Colombia... have you heard or read any news lately about cocaine scarcity and therefore that its price has skyrocketed? I haven’t. Yuppies on Wall Street are jumpy because they can’t get their cocaine on time, panic for shortage of dope? Nope. How do they do it, fighting this war against drugs, in which the only ones who are safe and sound are the drugs themselves? They keep traveling, happily and unobstructed, around the world. The others are called collateral damage.

4 – Weapons – The United States is losing sleep over the unstoppable violence in Mexico, but it is the main weapons supplier for drug barons, and also for the army and “law enforcers”! I call it a circular business. Weapons that are legally sold in USA territory -- weapons protected by the second amendment of the Constitution (no less!) -- make up 90% of the weapons used to kill women like Marisela are sold in bordering states (mainly in Texas) with almost no restrictions. About this point check: : A year-long investigation by The Washington Post.
And a last minute update: An investigation by ProPublica has found that: “In an effort to catch Mexican drug lords, the federal agency responsible for regulating the gun industry and cracking down on gun crime allowed thousands of weapons to pass into Mexico and fall into the hands of criminals, according to a report by CBS News and other outlets this week. A senior agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives--better known as the ATF--told CBS and the Center for Public Integrity that ATF supervisors instructed agents to not intercept weapons made in suspicious sales, but to monitor them to see where the weapons ended up. CBS reported that a number of unnamed agents have made similar allegations.”
Really? Well, it looks that this “strategy” didn’t work, as the same report continues: “Recent incidents of violence against U.S. Border Patrol agents suggest that intentionally or otherwise, U.S. guns are still falling into the wrong hands. Last month, two U.S. Border Patrol agents were shot in Mexico with an AK-47 smuggled from Texas. One of those agents died. In December, another Border Patrol agent was killed near the Mexico border. Two guns were found at the scene of the killing, both purchased by a suspected gun smuggler who ATF had reportedly been monitoring [7] but had taken no action against. According to the Los Angeles Times and CPI, hundreds of these weapons have still not been recovered.”

5 – Mérida Initiative – Meanwhile, the United States and Mexican governments have implemented the Merida Initiative. A billionaire’s plan, similar to Plan Colombia, designed to fight drug trafficking. The Mérida initiative, which also includes the Dominican Republic, Central America and Haiti, relies mainly on heavy warfare (guess who are selling the weapons and who are training the armies). I have found tons
of information about what is expected MI will deliver at the end, but I have had a really hard time trying to find sound information on how MI has helped save lives, enforcing law and order, improving human rights, reducing drug consumption, helping drug addicts overcome their addictions, and, of course, eradicating illegal drugs … after all, that’s what the MI is supposed to be about that. The main achievement of the Merida Initiative has been the killing or incarcerating of dealers and drug traffickers. Ah! And there is also a little money for the United States, in return for enforcing the law against arms smuggling into Mexico.

Now, we are again mourning and full of rage, of course we are! There are demonstrations and we are clamoring for justice. That is necessary and important, but picket lines, demonstrations and campaigns are and will be just cathartic if they are not part of a general plan of pacific social disobedience against both organized crime and so-called white collar crime (which at this point are exactly the same), along with the denunciation of corrupt authorities and international organizations. Which, I think, it should cover at least the next issues:

Mérida Initiative – We have to demand accurate information from the government about the MI. What is this, what we can expect from this? But, more important, who are involved, who are the contractors profiting from this?

Money laundering – Campaigns against banks and institutions engaged on laundering the money coming from crime and corruption. Yes, this requires of researching and a lot of ingenuity to organize civil and peaceful protests.

Arms trafficking – We have to start a consistent and persistent campaign against arms producers and suppliers and we have to do it along with organizations in the United States engaged in fighting against arms dealers. We have to expose the double standards of United States government and their congressman and congresswomen on this issue. After the recent Arizona massacre, this may be the right time to do it.

All actions above mentioned are just patchwork remedies, of course. No one of them could modify the fundamental causes of this horror: poverty and inequity, both products of a corrupt and brutal system that is able to survive over the corpses of those who resist and denounce it. A system that offers nothing to kids and young women and men. But we have to defend ourselves and defend the people who try to defend us.
Discussions and debates about “ what to do?” should be more assertive, beyond emotionally charged spontaneity; beyond the flyers and statements full of adjectives and commands; beyond demonstrations which have become the left wing version of pilgrims to Our Lady of Guadalupe sanctuary.
A strategy to win, not to cry.
The feminist movement today has to honor the phrase: Ni una más !

* Roughly translated: No one more woman killed! … Beyond denounce? However, I decided to keep the original Spanish, which has become an iconic motto for the movement.

** There are not reliable figures . Moreover, before 1993, the local police didn’t even disaggregate by gender the cases. Check http://rocio-duque.blogspot.com/2011/02/feminicidios.html about this issue.

Spanish version of this article at: http://rocio-duque.blogspot.com/2011/01/ni-una-masmas-alla-de-la-