[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 79 (Monday, May 14, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H4933-H4935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          GETTING JUSTICE FOR MURDERED WOMEN IN CIUDAD JUAREZ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to voice my strong support for 
the families and women who have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez and 
Chihuahua City in Mexico. I have always believed that violence against 
women anywhere is an attack on women everywhere. Just 5 minutes from 
the U.S. border in Ciudad Juarez in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico, 
over 400 women and girls have been brutally murdered over the last 14 
years.
  In today's Washington Post, which I will submit for the Record, I 
read the story of mothers of victims whose fight for justice has lasted 
well over a decade. Because of the gross negligence and failure of 
local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the murders, the 
statute of limitations is starting to run out on some of the earlier 
murders of women in Ciudad Juarez. What a disgrace, if we cannot solve 
the murders of these over-450 women.
  Women and young girls from all parts of Mexico moved to Ciudad Juarez 
in hopes of finding work, including jobs at American-owned companies 
known in Spanish as maquiladoras. These jobs involve late hours, 
forcing women to travel home in the dark, alone, leaving them 
vulnerable to attack.
  Many of these young women are under the age of 25. They are the sole 
earners and income earners for their families. Their brothers and 
fathers are not employed by maquilas, because the maquiladores choose 
to hire these young women, who they know will not speak out about their 
rights or condemn the treatment of these women in the workplace.
  That is why I introduced a resolution to address the murders of women 
and girls in Ciudad Juarez some 3 years ago, and I am happy to report 
that H.R. 90 was passed by this Congress and there is recognition now 
on the value and faith that we have in the families in Ciudad Juarez.
  I bring that out because I say to you and to the public, when we can 
fight for the rights of women in the Taliban and the Middle East, why 
can't we fight also honorably for the women who live 5 minutes from 
this border, many of whom are relatives to us, our constituents, 
related to families that we represent? It is about time that we change 
the discussion and direction about this debate that we have with our 
friends south of the border.
  I am proud to be a descendant of friends south of the border, but I 
also

[[Page H4934]]

have to say that there has to be some changes in terms of how we deal 
with women who are being abused, attacked, and mutilated. It is time 
that our governments come together.
  I ask that Condoleezza Rice and our President weigh in, as well as 
the new President of Mexico, Mr. Calderon, the President of Mexico, who 
says this is a priority for him to combat violence against women. I 
hope that we can do that.
  In 2003 and 2004, I organized a congressional delegation trip to 
Ciudad Juarez with families of victims, government officials, human 
rights advocates, newspaper reporters and indeed also the FBI. It was 
in these trips that my dedication to helping the women of Ciudad Juarez 
was solidified. Families of violence deserve answers and closure 
instead of either being ignored or harassed for asking for justice to 
find out where their daughters' bodies lay and where those remains are.
  I am sad to report that even though we have asked for assistance from 
outside of our Nation through the OAS, through a forensic group in 
Argentina to help identify the bodies and remains of these young women, 
that it hasn't been as successful as I would have hoped.
  I would ask our government to please weigh in again to provide the 
technical support that is needed to help identify the remains of these 
young women so that families can have some closure.
  Again, any assault on a woman, murder, mutilation or what have you, 
is an assault on all mankind; and we as Members of Congress should no 
less have any interest into what happens south of the border.
  The convictions in many cases of these individuals that were so-
called blamed for these murders were overturned. There wasn't a judge 
or anyone that would convict anyone of doing these heinous crimes.
  I have to say to myself and to the public and to this Congress, why 
have 450 women who have disappeared from their families, from their 
homes, somehow not found justice? I just want to remind individuals 
that the work goes on, that we need help to solve the murders in Ciudad 
Juarez, and ask our government, both governments, Mexico and the U.S., 
to find some resolution here.

                [From the Washington Post, May 14, 2007]

                         Waning Hopes in Juarez

                        (By Manuel Roig-Franzia)

       Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.--For 13 years, June 14 has brought 
     tears, tortured memories and enduring pain to Griselda Salas.
       It was on that date, in 1993, that her 16-year-old sister, 
     Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, disappeared. Guadalupe Ivonne's body 
     turned up less than a week later in a park in this dusty, 
     wind-swept industrial city near the U.S.-Mexico border.
       Guadalupe Ivonne, who was raped and strangled, was one of 
     the first victims in Mexico's grisliest modern-day crime 
     mystery--the murders of more than 400 women in the past 14 
     years in Ciudad Juarez, many of the bodies dumped in the 
     desert, horribly mutilated. The killings, mostly of poor 
     young factory workers, have inspired two Hollywood motion 
     pictures and enraged human rights groups, which have filled 
     volumes with accusations of corruption, botched 
     investigations and official negligence.
       Yet the mystery remains unsolved.
       Now the earliest of these cases are quietly slipping off 
     legal dockets because Mexico, unlike the United States and 
     many European countries, has a statute of limitations for 
     murder. At a time when U.S. prosecutors are resurrecting 
     civil rights-era murder cases--some more than 40 years old--
     Mexico is closing murder cases forever after 14 years. With 
     each passing day, it appears likely that a legal technicality 
     may end a quest to unravel a string of slayings that shocked 
     the world.
       ``It is totally and absolutely grotesque to think that 
     murderers could be enjoying their freedom because of this 
     law,'' said Jaime Garcia Chavez, a Chihuahua state legislator 
     who is pressing to abolish Mexico's statute of limitations. 
     ``It is inexcusable.''
       Once filled with optimism, buoyed by support from the likes 
     of actresses Jane Fonda and Sally Field, feminists and 
     lawmakers here are demoralized. Esther Chavez Cano, founder 
     of Juarez's first rape and domestic violence counseling 
     center, laments ``a worrying silence'' about cases that once 
     commanded banner headlines. Few here are optimistic, even 
     though the looming deadlines for dozens of Juarez cases have 
     set off a last-minute race to revive long-dormant 
     investigations.
       An Argentine forensics team commissioned to look into the 
     murders, drawing on experience from investigations of 
     Argentina's ``dirty war'' and the Salvadoran civil war, is 
     expected to release a damning report later this year that 
     will illustrate the almost impossible task faced by 
     prosecutors. The Argentines have found body parts carelessly 
     left for years on the floors of medical examiner's offices, 
     heads with no matching bodies, bodies with no matching 
     heads and a mishmash of unlabeled corpses tossed into mass 
     graves at paupers' cemeteries.
       ``It's basically a huge mess,'' forensic archaeologist 
     Mercedes Doretti, the team leader, said in an interview.
       Garcia Chavez's effort to give investigators more time to 
     untangle that mess by extending the statute of limitations, a 
     gambit he considers a long shot, has already come too late 
     for Jesica Elizalde, a slain journalist whose murder case 
     expired March 14. The case of a factory worker, Luz Yvonne de 
     la O Garcia, went off the books April 21, as did the murder 
     of an unidentified woman on May 12. Dozens more will follow 
     in the coming months and years.
       The next could be Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, though 
     prosecutors say they may be closing in on a suspect--a 
     promise that her family is reluctant to believe after years 
     of dashed hopes.
       Salas, a petite 16-year-old, shared a single bed in a 
     cinder-block shack with her infant daughter and her mother, 
     Vicky Salas. The family, like thousands of others, was drawn 
     to Ciudad Juarez by the maquiladoras--assembly plants, most 
     of them owned by U.S. companies--that sprang up blocks from 
     the border because of an abundance of cheap labor and that 
     transformed the town into the fourth-most-populous city in 
     Mexico.
       Young women were especially prized by factory supervisors 
     because they were considered more reliable and less rowdy 
     than men. Almost overnight, women were making money while men 
     were still struggling to find jobs, leading to resentment in 
     the local macho culture that activists cite as a social 
     undercurrent to the slayings.
       Salas walked each day down a treeless dirt road, past piles 
     of rotting garbage and shacks with sagging walls, to catch a 
     bus that took her to a television part manufacturer. She made 
     about $35 a week, sometimes pulling night shifts and 
     returning home to a neighborhood with no streetlights.
       The day that she disappeared should have been joyous; she 
     was getting ready to celebrate her daughter's first birthday. 
     Griselda Salas remembers her sister saying that a friend was 
     going to lend her money to buy presents and party supplies.
       ``She's probably gone off with some stud,'' Griselda Salas 
     remembers being told by police when her sister did not return 
     home. ``You watch, she'll come back pregnant with a fat belly 
     in a few months.''
       Vicky Salas was on a religious retreat at the time of her 
     daughter's disappearance. When she returned several days 
     later, members of her church were in tears.
       ``They've found a dead girl,'' she remembers her friends 
     telling her. ``They think it's Ivonne.''
       A car accident delayed Vicky Salas's trip to the morgue, 
     which was closed when she arrived. An unsmiling police 
     officer told her, ``You'll have to come back tomorrow,'' and 
     no amount of pleading by a panic-stricken mother could change 
     his mind, she recalled.
       Even as the death toll rose, victims' families continued to 
     complain about insensitive investigators. One state attorney 
     general suggested that the women encouraged their attackers 
     by dressing provocatively. Other officials implied that the 
     victims were prostitutes, living ``double lives,'' though 
     their mothers insisted they were poor factory workers.
       ``They called them the morenitas,'' Juarez police 
     criminologist Oscar Maynez said in an interview, invoking a 
     derogatory term that was in vogue at the time and roughly 
     translates to ``little brown ones.'' No one cared about 
     investigating their deaths. There was clear sexism and 
     classism.''
       Mexican federal authorities and international human rights 
     organizations that have investigated the cases have accused 
     local authorities in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua 
     of covering up evidence and failing to properly investigate 
     crimes for a decade and a half.
       The Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, a 
     Washington-based human rights organization, has said the true 
     killers may have been protected by authorities who tortured 
     innocents to confess to the killings. Victims' families have 
     been subjected to harassment.
       ``One relative of a murder victim received a threatening 
     voicemail message warning her to drop the case; the caller ID 
     showed the call had come from the state judicial police,'' a 
     WOLA report said.
       Flor Rocio Munguia Gonzalez, the special prosecutor for 
     what has become known as the femicides in Juarez, said in an 
     interview that such offenses are ``things of the past'' and 
     that she has more than tripled her investigative staff to 
     solve old cases before the time limits expire and to track 
     down those responsible for the ongoing killings of women 
     in Juarez.
       ``I take great satisfaction in our efforts--we're doing 
     everything we can,'' said Munguia Gonzalez, who has been in 
     office since February 2006.
       After seeing eight special prosecutors come and go with no 
     results, local activists are not impressed. Maureen Meyer, a 
     WO-LA analyst, said that a special federal investigator had 
     found that 130 public officials had either been negligent or 
     abused their authority during the murder investigations, but 
     none has been disciplined.
       ``There's a real failure to hold them accountable,'' Meyer 
     said in an interview.

[[Page H4935]]

       Maynez, the criminologist, said he believes a powerful 
     network of police, municipal officials and organized crime 
     figures still protects the killers. He resigned from the job 
     for a short time, after being asked to help frame two bus 
     drivers in one of the cases. He refused, but the two men were 
     arrested anyway. One died in suspicious circumstances during 
     a jailhouse surgery. The other was released after testifying 
     that he had been tortured by police into confessing.
       An attorney for the bus drivers was killed by Chihuahua 
     state police in a drive-by shooting in 2005, four days after 
     vowing to file a corruption complaint. The police said the 
     shooting was a case of mistaken identity.
       Skepticism is growing as the Argentine forensics team nears 
     the conclusion of its inquiry. The team has discovered that 
     forensics officials in Ciudad Juarez boiled the corpses of 
     some victims, destroying crucial DNA. The group also has 
     found that the families of at least three victims received 
     the wrong bodies for burial.
       ``The authorities just sealed the coffins and told the 
     families not to ask any questions,'' said Doretti, the lead 
     forensics investigator.
       The Juarez families, Doretti said, have insisted that no 
     evidence be sent to Mexican laboratories. Instead, Doretti 
     has sent samples to a U.S. lab; she is expecting results 
     soon.
       The new forensic evidence and the approach of the statute 
     of limitations deadlines are the sorts of developments that 
     once would have prompted demonstrations in downtown Juarez. 
     But the mothers who for years have pleaded for justice are 
     exhausted, aging and in poor health.
       The case of Silvia Morales, who was killed when she was 16, 
     will expire in less than two years. Her mother, Ramona 
     Morales, had been one of the most vocal critics in a protest 
     movement of victim relatives, but is now suffering from 
     diabetes and a bad knee.
       ``I can't do it anymore,'' she said one recent afternoon, 
     tears trickling down her face.
       Eva Arce, whose daughter Silvia Arce disappeared in 1998, 
     was twice beaten by thugs after demonstrations demanding 
     justice. She spends her days clipping newspaper articles 
     about a new generation of murdered women in Juarez and 
     writing poems.
       ``A tortured soul pours from a river of blood,'' she said 
     one recent afternoon, reading from her notebook.
       That same day, the newspaper El Norte of Ciudad Juarez 
     carried a photograph of a pretty, dark-haired young woman. 
     She didn't look so different from Silvia Arce or Silvia 
     Morales or Guadalupe Ivonne Salas. The caption read: ``Edith 
     Aranda Longoria, 729 days since she was last seen.''

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