[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 9] [House] [Pages 12345-12346] [From the U.S. 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 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 [[Page 12346]] 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. 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.'' ____________________