Women Continue To Disappear In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Posted by: Nikki Dowling
Filed in:
news
10:10AM, Tuesday August 11th 2009
Ciudad Juarez, a border town in Mexico, is a dangerous place for women. Since the 1990s, hundreds of girls have disappeared from the streets of this city. Fifteen years ago, so many women went missing that the FBI got involved. For a while, the killings seemed to have stopped. Now they’re happening again. In the past year and a half, over 20 girls have mysteriously disappeared from the town. Most of them are young and attractive and were last seen in the downtown area.
Many of the girls from previous disappearances were found dead in the middle of the desert, badly beaten, raped, and tortured. Some were wearing the clothes of other girls who had gone missing and were in such a state of decay that they were mistaken for someone else. Others never turned up at all.
This time, however, no bodies have been found. In fact, many of the girls’ families think their loved ones are still alive. Several report getting random phone calls from unknown numbers and weird messages from men who claim the girls are okay. One popular theory is that the women were captured and sold into prostitution rings.
Today, the vast majority of the previous disappearances have never been solved. Even with the FBI on the case, investigators were unable to track down who was committing these atrocities. And bodies continued to pile up.
There are a lot of theories as to what is happening. Many of the previous murders were linked to the drug war, and the government or the local police may have been to blame. Since domestic violence is a huge problem, another theory is that the girls are beaten to death by their husbands or boyfriends.
But there may not be one end-all reason for the killings. There have been far too many with far too varied circumstances for there to be just one culprit. The fact that these killing have been going on for so long is indicative of bigger problems. The Mexican government continues to turn a blind eye to the cases, putting limited resources into finding the women. There are reports of local newspapers purposely misreporting that the girls had been found so that people would stop looking for them. A few women have come forward, saying they were raped or beaten by local police.
The FBI didn’t stick around for long. The victims were poor, young, and Mexican. And women. [LA Times]
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Perceptible
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 10:22 am: [report]
Thank you for including a story like this on the Frisky. This is so sad. Raising awareness is probably the only thing most of us can do to help.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 10:48 am: [report]
What are you talking about? Everyone goes missing in Juarez, not just women. It’s called narco-terrorism so they can make money on ransoms.
Humble Bee
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 10:52 am: [report]
poor women. Thats so horrible, those people are ruthless.
Coral
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 11:54 am: [report]
In some areas, tourists have to be careful of the Banditos, who will rob and kill them.
joyy
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 12:06 pm: [report]
@Cheese - People getting shot up in broad daylight, dead bodies hanging from bridges, or murder victims being chopped up, stuffed into giant soup pots, and put on public display is equally as horrible, but not exactly the same as women disappearing altogether (which has been going on longer than the ungodly-increase in cartel violence over the past few years). I would be very surprised if the cartels had little/nothing to do with it, but it’s not exactly the same.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 12:09 pm: [report]
@joyy: Who is to say that they aren’t linked? That area of Mexico is just plain #&@$% up.
joyy
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 12:22 pm: [report]
I actually suggested that they probably are linked, but the more recent explosion of narco-violence has not just involved people disappearing, but rather being violently killed/displayed. It says to me that very different things are going on, not that they aren’t linked. Also, I will reiterate that women have been disappearing much longer than the recent violence you mentioned.
Riley
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 12:26 pm: [report]
The FBI didn’t stick around for long because they were Mexican, you are reaching to spin it as a gender issue for the reason of little US involvement.
Last time I checked, the FBI wasn’t the steward of Mexico. People complain when the Govt. sticks its nose in everyone’s business, then complain when they let countries work on their own problems. We are involved in cartel dealings and business because it indirectly and directly affects our borders and our people.
As terrible as kidnappings and rapings are, they are a Mexican govt. concern and not a US concern. There are more than enough kidnappings and rapists in this country for the FBI to concern itself with.
_jsw_
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 12:30 pm: [report]
@Riley: Agreed. Tragic as it is, it’s not an FBI concern.
Nikki Dowling
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 07:59 pm: [report]
@Riley and jsw…so you are suggesting the the United States turn a blind eye to horrific killings such as these simply because they are happening RIGHT over the border? The United States is a rich and powerful country, with more resources than Mexico. It is our job to help when and where we can, especially when something like this is happening so close to our borders.
And to clarify, I do not complain when the U.S. intervenes in the problems of other countries so long as we are intervening for the right reasons. I think that, too often, the U.S. only goes in when our own interests are at stake. If we aided in causes such as this more often rather than just trying to help countries with oil, we could make a huge difference.
_jsw_
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 08:24 pm: [report]
@Nikki Dowling: No, I wasn’t saying that we need to turn a blind eye to it, merely that it wasn’t a situation the FBI should be responsible for resolving. Not only that, but you’re referring to an FBI investigation that wasn’t mentioned in your cited source and which occurred over a decade ago in any event. At that time, in 1999, we were asked to investigate, and we did. We weren’t asked to do more.
Also, as you yourself said, there are likely many separate causes for the murders, including corrupt government and police agencies. When the government and police of a sovereign nation are corrupt, there’s nothing we could legally do even if we found out who did it. The root cause of a lot of these murders, directly or indirectly, is likely the drug trade. We’ve been trying for decades to win that, and unless we do, these sorts of murders aren’t going to go away.
I agree with Riley that you were spinning it as a gender issue when it wasn’t. We wouldn’t have spent any more time investigating there if men were being killed instead (note: they are being killed, too - the women discussed account for one percent of the deaths there in the past 18 months, and I’m guessing the other 2500 deaths there included at least a couple of men), and the fact that they were young had no negative impact. The fact that they were poor likely contributed to why they were living in such an area, not to why we stopped working the cases. And the fact they were Mexican means that their country, not ours, is ultimately responsible for policing their citizens.
Aiding another country is one thing. Intervening is another. The linked article, and the others I’ve found, make no mention of the Mexican government again asking for help. Your post made is sound like we went it, did nothing, and left them hanging. The fact is that, a decade or more ago, we went in when asked, determined it wasn’t a serial killer, and then left because we weren’t invited to do more, and we haven’t been asked back.
_jsw_
wrote on August 11 2009 @ 08:26 pm: [report]
Er, ” Your post made it sound like we went in”
Nikki Dowling
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 08:34 am: [report]
@jsw…I wasn’t spinning it as a gender issue. It IS a gender issue. Over 350 women have been murdered or have gone missing since the ‘90s. All are young, attractive girls. Domestic violence in this country is rampant and the government and many of the people there are sexist.
Also, the root of the current murders (those from the past year and a half) may very well be the drug trade. However, the murders that occurred separately, in the ‘90s and continued until around 2001 aren’t necessarily related to drug trafficing. When you say “The root cause of a lot of these murders, directly or indirectly, is likely the drug trade” you are incorrect, unless you know something that the FBI, government officials and numerous other invetigators never figured out. In fact, there’s evidence that a group of police are to blame. They weren’t in the drug trade but eyewitnesses say they kidnapped, raped and tourtured women, later dumping their bodies in the desert.
Your claim that “We weren’t asked to do more” is wrong too. The government was involved in a cover-up (I’m referring to the earlier murders) and, thus, wasn’t going to ask us to go in. However, the families of the missing women wanted our help. The Mexican governement pretended to set up a agency to help but it was merely a guise. As I said before, they were probably involved.
There’s a very good documentary about the earlier murders. It may be called “On the Edge.”
Riley
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 08:59 am: [report]
@Nikki - Not to sound so unemotionally utilitarian, but 350 since the 90’s is about 18 rapes/murders a year. In 2006 the US as whole had 222,400 cases of rape and sexual assault alone, 45% of those were in the 18-29 range. In 2005 the US had an estimated 16,692 homicides, of those about 24% are female. Granted, these are the numbers of the entire country.
I still stand by my comment that we should take care of ourselves before stretching across every nation that has problems. It is our job to keep our citizens safe first and foremost.
Also, you did make it a gender slant with your last sentence; “And women.” Suggesting that being poor, young and Mexican are secondary reasons for the crimes going without US attention. I suppose if they were poor, young Mexican men, it would have been solved almost immediately?
_jsw_
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 09:00 am: [report]
@Nikki Dowling: The fact that 2500 people have been killed there in the past 18 months suggests that murder is rampant, and the fact that some of those murdered were young women is sad, but no more so that the many others who were not young women but who were also innocent. When so many are being murdered - half a dozen a day or so - it’s not a gender issue. The murders of young women specifically are a gender issue, but you can’t just single out a group amongst thousands and say we’re ignoring it all because of that group.
I agree that domestic violence and sexism are rampant there, based on all I’ve read and seen, but that isn’t why these women are being killed in that area. Lots of countries are unfortunately barbaric in their treatment of women, but most don’t tend to slaughter them wholesale. This is a problem specific to that area. The reason I blame the drug trade - which has been a force there since well before these particular murders started - is that it tends to increase corruption, violence, and fear, and tends to devalue life. These factors make it easier for people who are psychopaths to take root, and it makes it harder for people who are just and honest to persist in law enforcement and government. Thus, those who did this might not be involved in the drug trade, but the drug trade makes it easier for them to stay in power or to not be arrested due to the overall affect it has on the area.
Also, when I said we weren’t invited back, I mean by the government. Private citizens asking us to perform legal investigations and prosecutions in a foreign country don’t provide a valid reason to do so. Remember Iraq? Part of the reason we invaded was supposedly to help the people. Their lives are now worse than they were before. Are you suggesting that we invade Mexico to investigate these crimes? We have no alternate way to do so when the government is too corrupt to invite us in.
I think that the torture and murder of anyone is horrific, even that of almost any criminal (there are a few I’d consider to be deserving of that). I think the deaths of half a dozen people per day is appalling. But I think that sending in the FBI will result in nothing, even if we find out who’s doing it - because we have no power to prosecute. We can’t arrest anyone. We can’t put them in jail. So… we can’t help.
One way we could help is to make it easier for foreign workers to work here without forcing them to risk their lives crossing the border, which would give them somewhere else to go instead of there, and another way would be to stop being so damned prudish about drugs and to allow some of them to be sold legally, which would cripple much of the drug trade.
Riley
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 09:01 am: [report]
*All statistics come from the US Department of Justice.
joyy
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 09:17 am: [report]
@jsw & Riley - the narco killings that skyrocketed over the last two years are different than the phenomenon of women disappearing in droves over the past decade or two. Scary, scary #&@$% has been going on in the Juarez area for over a decade, it just didn’t hit the radar of national American broadcast news until things exploded about two years ago with the brazenly violent, often public murders, which were often accompanied by grisly public displays of the bodies.
People involved with the cartels end up dead in the streets. Women randomly DISAPPEAR. I would be surprised if there was no connection between the two. But there are very different things going on, why else would they create a special prosecutor’s office just to investigate it?
Some extra reading for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/world/wave-of-women-s-killings-confounds-juarez.html, http://latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/string-missing-teens-highlights-continuing-violence-against-women-ciudad-jua
Also, agreed on the idea that it’s not the US’s job to take care of this, given you know, the sovereignty of Mexico and all.
@jsw: “The fact that they were poor likely contributed to why they were living in such an area.” Um, you do realize there are other reasons people live in Juarez besides being poor, right?
writergirl
wrote on August 12 2009 @ 09:43 am: [report]
This is not an FBI issue. I hate to say it, but if American women were being abducted there, we would go in, but they are our citizens and we are responsible for them.
We have no jurisdiction over citizens of Mexico and unless we are asked to go in and help the Mexican government set up a special task force to solve these crimes, it’s none of our business.
We could go in, but where do we stop? If we go into Mexico, what do we do about the rampant child slavery issues going on in the Middle East? Do we go in there, too? What about the woman abducted and sold into prostitution in Thailand? Russia? India?
When—and where—do we draw the line? There are too many horrible events occuring within the world and we cannot solve all of them.