The case of the women's murders in and around Ciudad Juárez has become internationalised, with the publication of a report by Amnesty International (AI), a visit by US legislators (organised by three lobby groups), and the preview in the British press of a forthcoming book by a Mexican American journalist which purports to identify the killers. The AI report, Intolerable Killings, puts the number of murders at 270 since 1993, which is closer to the 290 reported by the special prosecutor for murders of women than the 320 counted by the leading local NGO campaigning on the issue, Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (NHRC), let alone the 370-400 or more which has become the media standard. The special monitoring commission set up by the Mexican congress has been working with a figure of 258 murders.
Size of the problem
The rate of women's murders in the Juárez area is high, but it is not the highest in the country. That dubious privilege belongs to the state of Mexico, which sports a female murder rate of 5.3 per 100,000: the state of Chihuahua, where Juárez is located, has a rate of 4.7 per 100,000.
At the statewide rate, therefore, it would not be surprising if Juárez, with a population of 1m, reported up to 47 murders of women a year, rather than the average of 27 which emerge from AI's tally. That last figure is only slightly higher than the national rate of 2.6 per 100,000. The rates cited, which refer to 2001, come from a recently published Mexican health ministry study, Muertes por violencia en las mujeres de México.
It is worth noting that the Juárez murders of women have been taking place against a backdrop of high overall violence. In the same 10 years since 1993, almost 1,600 men have been killed; 460 of these cases have been attributed to turf wars between drug traffickers (Juárez is the headquarters of the `cartel' founded and led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes until his death in 1997, and now led by his brother Vicente).
Are the killings connected?
AI points to patterns that suggest a connection between many of the Juárez murders of women. These refer to the cases in which sexual abuse was evident (about a third of the victims had been raped; many had been mutilated). As with other NGOs, it complains that the Mexican authorities deny the existence of connecting patterns. This is not quite the case. The office of the special prosecutor for women's murders believes that 76 of its 290 cases may be the work of serial killers; a proportion not unlike the 95 out of 290 cited by NHRC.
The Mexican-American journalist Diana Washington Valdez, of El Paso Times, has written a book, Harvest of Women (to be published in 2004), based on her five years of research into the killings. She claims to have learnt that at least 100 of the Juárez women were killed as a `blood sport' by six wealthy businessmen (five from Juárez and one from Tijuana) who remain `untouchable' because of their political connections.
Not all the Juárez cases have remained unsolved. Of the 258 being followed by congress, up to a month ago 90 had been closed, 51 were in the hands of the judiciary — and investigations were still under way in 108 cases.
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