Who Killed Brenda?

IN OCTOBER 2006 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to President Bush opposing the planned construction of 700 miles of security fences and barriers along the United States-Mexico border to stop migrants from crossing illegally into the US.

“In our estimation, the erection of a border fence would force migrants, desperate to find employment to support their families, to seek alternative and more dangerous ways to enter the country, contributing to an increase in deaths, including women and children,” wrote Bishop Skylstad, President of the US Conference of Bishops.

Since 1995, when the US government started a series of border enforcement initiatives, nearly 3,000 people have died trying to cross illegally into the US, with deaths doubling in recent years.

Ciudad Juarez on the northern border of Mexico is separated from El Paso and the US by a bridge which hundreds of people cross every day on foot or by car. Many others attempt to cross illegally into the US by swimming across the Rio Bravo or hiding in the windowless wagons of cargo trains. Prominent signs near the river warn you not to risk your life attempting to swim across the border, more signs along the railway line warn of the danger of death from suffocation in the trains without oxygen. The signs bring home the determination of people to overcome any obstacle to reach the land of their dreams even if it costs them their lives.

Intolerable killings

Migrants arrive from all over Latin America to settle in the sprawling shanty towns on the desert outskirts of Ciudad Juarez attracted by the opportunity of working in the maquiladoras, factories for assembling goods for export set up on the Mexican border to take advantage of cheap labour and low corporate taxes.

Ciudad Juarez is also a city where, over the past decade, hundreds of young women have been brutally murdered. In more recent years the violence against women has spread to the city of Chihuahua. Since 1993, according to official reports, over 490 women have been killed and over 600 are still missing. But unofficial estimates are many times higher. Those not counted are women from other countries in Latin American who migrate to work in the maquiladoras before trying to cross into the US. Their unidentified bodies are buried in mass graves, their families back home unaware of their fate.

In 2003 Amnesty International published the report, Intolerable Killings: 10 years of abductions and murder of women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. The report highlights the failure on the part of the authorities to carry out proper investigations. Convictions have been made in some cases where confessions were obtained under torture.

Victor Javier Garcia and Gustavo Gonzalez Meza, both bus drivers, were tortured into confessing to the murders of eight women found in a former cotton field in 2001. Gustavo Gonzalez Meza died in 2003 in mysterious circumstances while still in prison a year after his lawyer, Mario Escobedo Anaya, was shot to death by the police. Victor Javier Garcia was finally released in July 2005 after being defended by lawyer Sergio Dante Almaraz. On 25 January 2006, Sergio Dante Almaraz was shot to death while he was driving in the centre of Ciudad Juarez. He had received numerous death threats, when I met him he told me, “If I am still alive it is because of God, not because of the state law”.

Drugs and impunity

Esther Chavez Cano, founder and director of Casa Amiga in Ciudad Juarez, an organisation providing psychological support to women who have suffered domestic and sexual violence, blames the violence on the socio-economic inequality between the rich and the poor. “We cannot believe that so many young women are disappearing. We don’t know the exact number, where they are from or who killed these innocent human beings whose only sin was to be a woman, young, and a student or poor worker. It’s a tragedy we have been living with for more than 10 years”.

“The people who produce the wealth live in conditions similar to those in concentration camps; they have no water or electricity. No matter how poor people are, they always have a television where they see a world they cannot reach, and they want to live the American Dream. The work in the maquiladoras for $4 a day frustrates them, so they become involved in drugs. Drugs, together with impunity, are the major factors contributing to the breakdown of this society”.

In Colonia del Carmen I met Esther Luna, mother of Brenda Alfaro Luna, 15, who was kidnapped one September morning in 1997 on her way to her first day of work. Sitting in the living room which is also her children’s bedroom, surrounded by pictures of Brenda, Esther tells me her family’s traumatic story. Nine years ago her husband was working in the US with a green card but he became a drug addict, was arrested, sentenced to six months in prison and deported back to Mexico.

When her husband was in prison Esther began working but was not earning enough to support her family and Brenda, who had just finished her second year at secondary school, offered to help. Esther remembers her as an enthusiastic and energetic girl with a beautiful personality who was always encouraging her. “Mum, don’t worry, we will pull through if we both work as this is a city where you can progress if you work”.

A satanic cult?

Three weeks later a body with its organs missing was found. Esther recognized her daughter from her clothes and a scar from a dog’s bite. She wanted to bury her immediately, but the authorities insisted on carrying out forensic tests in Mexico City. Despite visiting the authorities every day it was a whole year before she was told the results were negative. The samples were then forwarded to Houston for further tests, but the results were lost. Four years later she found out about Casa Amiga and they helped her to recover Brenda’s body, and she was finally able to bury her in January 2003.

I asked Esther whether her faith had been affected by her daughter’s death. “I believe God calls us through adversity and through the perversity of people for He never makes mistakes. I have not rejected God’s will, but I feel impotent in a world that does not support the poor. I ask God for strength, and to continue to give strength to all the mothers who are living this Calvary. I hope that one day everything will be made clear because nothing is hidden from Him, He knows who the criminals are”.

The women are kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed, and their bodies are dumped in remote and desolate areas on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez where often the only people who have been seen there before are the police. The bodies of three young women were found in an isolated spot in Cerro del Cristo Negro (Hill of the Black Christ). They were kidnapped in the city centre on separate dates and were found by chance by their families when, after a violent storm, the mother of one of the missing girls recognized her daughter’s hair on the hillside. An excavated cave and symbols carved on the sandstone seemed to suggest the perpetrators were part of a satanic cult.

I was struck by the number of crosses in Ciudad Juarez. Some were painted on lampposts a few years ago by Paula Flores, whose daughter Sagrario was killed in 1995, and five other mothers to raise awareness in the community. In Lomas de Poleo, on the outskirts of the city, eight crosses mark the place where the bodies of eight murdered young women were found in 1996, six of whom could not be identified. A group of young drug addicts arrested for the crimes were freed from lack of evidence.

Do not forget us

Opposite the headquarters of the Association of Maquiladoras eight pink crosses commemorate the young women found in a former cotton field in November 2001, only one hundred metres from a busy main road. One of the bodies was unidentified, and the dedication on the cross simply reads Desconocida (Unknown).

Under the concrete parapet of the immigration barriers on the bridge crossing over to El Paso stands a large wooden cross covered in hundreds of nails and ribbons with the names of murdered women written on them, and Ni una mas (Not one more) in large letters across it.

Without support from the authorities, the families of murdered young women have appealed to the international community to put pressure on their government to bring the murderers to justice and to end the impunity. In February 2004 celebrities including Jane Fonda and Sally Fields took part in a march of solidarity with the families in Ciudad Juarez. A film on the murders, Bordertown, directed by Gregory Nava, starring Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas was released in October 2006. On a speaking tour in the US for justice in Juarez and Chihuahua, Patricia Cervantes, mother of Neyra Azucenas Cervantes, who disappeared on May 13, 2003, stressed the importance of international support. She told the audience, “Do not forget us”.