Impunity rampant in crimes against women in Juarez, activists say

JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Judith Galarza was a wife and factory worker when the disappearance of her sister drew her into social activism decades ago.

The young Leticia Galarza became incensed with labor exploitation, human rights abuses against Indigenous people and the details of an army massacre of political demonstrators in Mexico City in 1968.

Leticia joined activist groups during the Echeverria and Lopez Portillo regimes of the 1970s. She disappeared in 1978 – rumored to have been taken for questioning to a military base, accused of belonging to an armed guerilla movement – and her sister hasn’t stopped looking for her since.

But as the years went by, Judith Galarza has run across a multitude of sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of missing or murdered women in Juarez who, like her, demand accountability from the government.

The long-time human rights activist says women are in as much peril today as they have ever been in Juarez, and she blames privilege and corruption for the impunity that facilitates the violence.

“There is nothing to celebrate,” Galarza told Border Report in an interview during an International Women’s Day event. “We are honoring our women (victims) and reminding all other women they have the right to organize, to demand respect and to continue working to bring about a society where there is peace and social justice.”

Galarza sees parallels during the record number of women’s killings in the past three years in Juarez and the serial killings of the 1990s and early 2000s that brought international attention to the city and widespread condemnation of its police forces and social institutions.

More than 500 women have been murdered here between 2019 and 2021, with most killings still unsolved. Authorities have told Border Report most of those killings were drug-related. Galarza says that’s a way of blaming the victim, of minimizing the crime to not spend resources on the investigation or, worse, covering up for the culprits.

“We have made some gains, but as long as you continue to accuse women of being responsible for their own deaths, impunity will reign,” Galarza said. “I remember political leaders in the 90s saying, ‘it’s their fault because of how they dress, because they are out at night.’ It was a justification for not investigating powerful or dangerous people. That was unfair to victims who were (late-shift) factory workers, who were taken walking to bus stops or to their homes at night.”

Chihuahua state officials say there’s no bias in their investigation of murders against women. They point to the creation of a Crimes Against Women Unit that last year got a new building, additional investigators and psychologists to help assault and rape victims recover and assist relatives of murdered women deal with grief.

The Office of Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar also promotes the Alba Protocol – the equivalent of an Amber Alert in the United States – that shares information about missing women among all police agencies and on social media platforms.

Nonetheless, the killings continue. Twenty-six women have been murdered here in the past two months, including a lesbian couple who were shot and dismembered, and two women in their 20s killed sometime after taking a cab to an undisclosed location. On Monday, another young woman’s remains were found in Juarez’s Lower Valley.

“Not much has changed” from the 1990s, Galarza said. “Young women are still being murdered here.”

A history of cover ups when it comes to drug traffickers and well-to-do suspects

Galarza, 68, is the local coordinator of the Latin American Federation of Families of the Disappeared. The group locally has shifted priorities over the years from seeking the truth about political disappearances to investigating femicides to trying to stem the tide of young women recruited from schools and homes to sell drugs in neighborhoods and then murdered for it by rival groups.

“Impunity is rampant. If (police) come across a simple case in which a relative assaults a young woman, they detain him and publicize the arrest. But that’s not the case when someone important is behind the murder or disappearances of young women,” she said.’

Galarza in the 1990s and early 2000s became involved in serial murder and disappearance cases when relatives of the victims came to her for help. She said her inquiries led to suspects that included cartel leaders, police officials, television executives, factory managers and bar owners.

She claims various high-ranking government officials first offered to put her in charge of search parties and then tried to bribe her.

“They wanted us to search for our relatives out in the open. That was a delay tactic because we knew the authorities knew who took them and where,” Galarza said. She cited an instance of police handing over to a family the remains, clothing and personal effects of a victim. The problem was, DNA testing revealed the bones did not belong to the missing girl, but the clothing the police turned over did.

She talked about being summoned to the home of a Chihuahua state legislator “for a talk,” then finding the attorney general and other high-ranking officials there. The officials again disparaged the victims, urged her to focus only on searches and allegedly offered to pay for repairs to her organization’s building.

Instead of taking the money, Galarza went on to testify before the Organization of American States and several international forums about the violence against women in Juarez. The commission and the European Parliament in 2006 and 2007 issued sweeping recommendations to the government of Mexico to keep track of femicides and launch an education campaign on violence against women.

Galarza said that was a good start, but insists many men, especially powerful men, don’t care and too many women remain unaware of their legal rights in Mexico.

“That I am an informed woman fully aware of my rights doesn’t mean all women are. We, the activist groups, have a lot of work ahead of us, still,” she said.