Feminicides - Ciudad Juarez - Mexico

Untill 2000 I lived in the Netherlands, working at a refugee camp with and for chidren. The government was, to say the least, not happy with refugees in general but I was not the government but a human, and I worked very hard to ease the children's pain through giving art classes. I was paid for 40 hours but worked for 60 hours. Then at the end of 1999 one 5 year old boy was send back to Iran and it broke my heart, especially observing the people around me and they just din't care and I decided to migrate to Mexico.

Feminicides in Ciudad Juarez Mexico back then - 2000-2004

Me being in Spanisch speaking Mexico and me being Italian it wasn't so hard to learn Spanisch and my method was to read the daily newspaper.

Untill I read about what happened to the 4 year old Janeth and her few years older sister by narco trafficantes, drug smuglers, who thought that their parents had ripped them off and kidnapped their children to force them to hand over the drugs. But they did't have it. Long story short: Janeth's sister escaped and Janeth was thrown out of a moving car left on the street for death. Janeth survived and the end of the story was that the parents were not involved with drugs.

Now you may ask this has to do with feminicide in Ciudad Juarez. Well, a lot actually because it was and is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Not only because of the narco trafficantes but espessialy women considered as 'birds of prey'. They worked at maqilladores, by americans owned factories working for low pay, and at the end of the day they made their way home. But...on the way many where kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed and dumped in the desert as garbage.

I started an international art and poetry campaign titled 'FacingFaces' Click the links below:

http://ginodartali.org/facingfaces.pdf

http://ginodartali.org/The%20complete%20art%20collection%202001-2004.swf

http://ginodartali.org/Eres%20el%20amor%20de%20mi%20vida.pdf

Ciudad Juarez feminicides now
 

Now 19 years later one would think that things have changed in terms of protection of the women on Ciudad Juarez. Well, they could have if the mare, the police and the prosecutor would have done their job but Mexico is corrupt and money can buy anything. And so one dead female more or less does not mean anything.

But there's another change: Mexico has always been poor but jobs today are even harder to find than before especially because the pay is even lower. So especially for the young working for the narco trafficantes is very tempting but at the same time also very dangerous and it are especially the women who are seen by the narcos as birds of pray. Today and once a month 300 women are falling victim as lust object, being rapped and tortured, killed and thrown away as trash.

Are there local inititiative protesting? Hardly because that would mean something like signing a death warrant on yourself.

But do have the courage:

This has been very hard for me to write because it also brings back so many memories, bad and good.

November 24th.
France

More than 50.000 in France and 10.000 in Belgium women went to the streets to protest against sexual harrasment and rape making it's also clear that it's not only a local 'thing' but a global problem.

Gino d'Artali
editor

Xochitl Herrera
inside intel XH Mexico

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