AMLO apologizes to relatives of murdered, missing women in Juarez

JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – It was words families whose daughters disappeared or were murdered in Juarez in the past three decades had been waiting to hear for a long time.

On Friday, on the spot where the bodies of eight young women were pulled from the ground in November of 2001, an envoy of the president of Mexico apologized for an endemic culture of sex abuse, privilege and lawlessness that led to tragic outcomes.

“After years of denials and cover-ups by prior governments, I am here on behalf of the Mexican government to assume our responsibility and offer a public apology to the Arce family for the violation of their rights and those of their daughter, Silvia,” said Alejandro Encinas Rodriguez, undersecretary of government for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Encinas addressed the case of a young mother who was abducted along with a female coworker coming out of their place of employment on March 11, 1998. But he later made clear the words apply to many others as well.

“I pledge, on behalf of the government, to work so that these situations don’t happen again and, if they do, that they don’t go unpunished,” the federal official said as activists chanted “Ni una mas!” (Not one more.)

Juarez, a border city that’s one of Mexico’s manufacturing giants and a favorite medical tourism destination, was plagued by a string of serial killings and abductions of young women in the 1990s and 2000s.

Relatives of the victims, including the Arce family, complain the cases were either not investigated or that police manufactured culprits through torture. They say police disparaged their daughters’ character and turned on them when they demanded that arrests be made. Some believe drug traffickers, bar owners, the sons of well-to-do families and even government officials were responsible but never brought to justice.

“We did not get a response from authorities. They behaved in an indolent manner,” said Ignacio Arce, the brother of Silvia Arce. “What I ask today is that they follow through with the case because it’s been many years of this injustice that we are living in Juarez, especially the murders, the rapes and the disappearances. This has to stop.”

Arce recalls how government officials chastised him and his mother, Evangelina, accusing them of “making Juarez look bad” all over the world.

The brother said he was impressed that AMLO, as the president of Mexico is known, took interest in his sister’s case and shows commitment to changing a sexist culture that empowers abusers. On Friday, the family took pictures next to a bust of their daughters at the symbolic Campo Algodonero (cotton field) site.

Encinas and Chihuahua Gov. Maru Galvan vowed relatives of crime victims will be treated with respect from now on and cases reopened.

“We want to safeguard Juarez; we want to safeguard our women,” Galvan said. “It hurts me to see your suffering. It hurts me to feel your anxiety, your frustration because of (your loved one’s) absence. I assure you we will repair damage caused in the past and ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.”

But some as the chants of “Vivas se las llevaron, vivas las queremos!” (They took them alive, we want them alive) echoed in the background, some activists say women’s murders are still being swept under the rug.

Nowadays, when a woman is shot, strangled or dismembered, police are quick to say she was a member of a drug gang and other criminals killed her. “There is violence against women, exploitation and sex assaults. They are minimizing those crimes by saying it’s all drug-related,” said Isabel Ramirez, of the Chihuahua Independent Committee, a human rights nonprofit. “Things haven’t changed much.”

Juarez has recorded 500 women’s murders in the past three years, 85 to 90 percent of them “drug-related.”

The activists pointed out Mexico has been under pressure from international organizations in the past 10 years to better protect women and to improve a judicial system in which only one in 10 criminal cases are solved.

Encinas did mention that the apology was in line with a 2018 recommendation from the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights.