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Deaths In Ciudad JurezCiudad Jurez, Chihuahua, a Mexican border city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, USA, has gained world-wide notoriety for more than a decade of serial murder of young women. Authorities do not know for sure when the women of Jurez began to die in such large numbers, however, it was during the 1990s that the situation first came to knowledge of the public domain.
According to Amnesty International, as of February 2005, more than 370 bodies have been found so far and over 400 are still missing. 76 of these murders were found to fit a pattern of described as: - "The victims of these crimes have preponderantly been young women, between 15 and 25 years of age. Many were students, and most were maquiladora (foreign owned factories).
* As an example, Julia Caldera and Daniel Chavez the parents of one of the victims had a 15 year old daughter. Her name was Maria Elena and worked as a maid for the former director of El Cerezo, a prison in Cd. Juarez.
So not all of the women had a specific job that you can typify. A number were relative newcomers to Ciudad Jurez who had migrated from other areas of Mexico. The victims were generally reported missing by their families, with their bodies found days or months later abandoned in vacant lots or outlying areas. In most of these cases there were signs of sexual violence, abuse, torture or in some cases mutilation."1 The Mexican police have been criticized for making arrests with little or no evidence. However they have made some arrests. One of the first being that of an Egyptian-born chemist, Abdul Latif Sharif (born in 1947), who was accused of several rapes in the United States before moving to Ciudad Jurez in 1994 to escape a deportation hearing in Texas. Since his conviction and imprisonment for the murder of a young maquiladora worker, in 1995, the police have arrested two groups of men whom they allege Sharif was paying "from behind bars" to rape and murder on his behalf in an attempt to establish his innocence of the crimes.
However, Despite the arrests of Sharif and his alleged co-conspirator, the killings have continued, leading the Mexican police and the public in general to consider many theories, among them that the real killer or killers are still on the loose or that the original killer or killers are in jail and copycats have moved to the area since. There are also accusations that there has been a conspiracy of silence and cover-up by Mexican politicians bribed by the killer or killers. Many of the victims were prostitutes, others were women who worked in the city's many maquiladoras, and many more, like the five-year-old victim, were very young girls who probably had no way of defending themselves against a larger and stronger attacker. Sharif was convicted of one murder after his 1996 arrest. Victor Garcia Uribe was convicted in October 2004 for eight of the murders. Gustavo Gonzlez Meza was arrested on suspicion in some of the killings but he died in jail under suspicious circumstances on February 8, 2003. On January 7, 2005, four members of the "Los Toltecas" gang were convicted of six murders and six member of the "Los Rebeldes" gang were convicted of another six murders. Jesus Manuel Guardado and four other "Los Toltecas" had been arrested in 1999. One was found not guilty. Five of the twelve convicted so far have been bus drivers. The Organization of American States's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights notes in a 2002 report that the "...the response of the authorities to these crimes has been markedly deficient...On the one hand, the vast majority of the killings remain in impunity; approximately 20% have been the subject of prosecution and conviction." and "An important segment of the killings in Ciudad Jurez took place at the hands of an intimate partner, but their significance has yet to be acknowledged by local officials." The United States police, according to newspaper reports, have offered help in finding the suspect or suspects in the deaths of these women. In addition, many equal rights and feminist groups have organized vigils in memory of the dead women, as well as public talks to make more people aware of the suspicious deaths of these women. Plans are said to be in the works for a movie called Bordertown examining the crimes and starring Jennifer Lopez as an investigative journalist trying to discover the truth behind the crimes. In 2004, Sally Field and other famous Hollywood actresses went to Ciudad Juárez to speak about women's rights and demand justice for the dead women. Footnotes Videos Lourdes Portillo, Seorita Extraviada ISDN 0807861731 2001 (demand your Library order it so you can see it for free) References - Antonio Mendoza, Killers on the Loose: Unsolved Cases of Serial Murder, (Virgin Books 2002), 0753506815 — Study of unsolved serial killing around the world, including Ciudad Jurez.
- Simon Whitechapel, Crossing to Kill: The True Story of the Serial-Killer Playground, (Virgin Books 2002), 0753506866 — Updated edition of the first detailed study of the Jurez murders.
Ciudad Juarez, Deaths in Ciudad Juarez, Deaths in
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