NEW YORK – The numbers say it all.
Since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drugs in 2006, more than 34,000 men, women and children have been murdered in Mexico. In 2010 alone, violence killed 15,273.
Behind the numbers, advocates and human rights defenders say a bigger problem remains: violence against women.
“People are willing to commit crimes against women—whether that’s sexual assault, rape, murder—right now is the time to do it because you can get away with it,” Dr. Cynthia Bejarano, a criminal justice professor at New Mexico State University, said. “I think it does allow the overall increase in violence plaguing the city and people know they can get away with murder.”
Violence against women rose by 7.25 percent in 2010, according to Chihuahua-based women’s rights group Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas, or Justice For Our Daughters, and the femicides show no sign of slowing down. The group documented 140 murders of women in the state of Chihuahua alone from Jan. 1, 2011 to April 30, 2011—a 13 percent increase from the same period last year.
The group blames several reasons for the uptick, including Mexico’s 98 percent impunity rate for all crimes, corruption within various levels of government, and desperation among the population.
Bejarano, who is also a member of Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas, said the impunity has created a carte blanche for any type of gender violence to occur.
Ciudad Juarez, in particular, remains among the top cities where the impunity rate, corruption and desperation lead to continued violence.
Bejarano estimates that around 900 women have been killed there since the early 90s and said that the public writes off the killings and disappearances as part of the cartel violence, which often overshadows the women’s cases.
“People excuse it as ‘oh, well it’s a cartel.’ That’s been really commonplace in Juarez and Chihuahua. It’s been really difficult to spotlight violence against women because the rate has become astronomical,” she said, referring to Juarez’ murder rate of 6.69 per day in 2011.
The problem becomes exacerbated when the law enforcement agencies fail to investigate and follow through with reported crimes, Rupert Knox, Amnesty International’s Mexico researcher, said.
“The level of impunity creates a climate in which multiple crimes can occur. Clearly, it continues to be a major problem for authorities. The prioritization still isn’t there. There is a tendency to not take it as seriously as it should be taken,” Knox said.
Amnesty International regularly receives complaints about the justice system in Mexico. The complaints often cite the civilian judicial authorities and municipal, state and federal police forces for failing to pursue and conduct effective criminal investigations into abuses, homicides and other crimes.
The failures of those agencies lead to wider impunity, Knox said, furthering the crime rates and delaying cases of missing persons for prosecutors.
“If someone is abducted and goes missing, then the family can only file a report of a missing person. It’s not a criminal complaint. It doesn’t trigger a criminal investigation. It is common that families are told they have to wait four or five days,” Knox said.
Many cases, including that of Eva Arce, remain unsolved for years. Arce’s daughter disappeared in Juarez in 1998 and has yet to be found. Arce has since become an advocate demanding attention from the government on cases of missing persons for both Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas and Voces Sin Echo, another Juarez activist group that seeks to raise awareness about the killings and disappearances of women there.
“There isn’t any protection for women. We have to take care of ourselves when we have to go out,” Arce said in Spanish. “Women are being found dead. Women are still going missing. We don’t have any safety.”
Arce is not alone in her fight. Many family members of victims have become activists in the struggle to gain protection in Mexico, which by itself garners attention of attackers.
Marisela Reyes lost six members of her family all in the past two years after having spoken out against the violence that has torn apart the state of Chihuahua.
The country had 128 attacks against activists from 2006 to August 2009, according to an October 2009 report by Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), and the 2009 U.S. State Department report on Mexico said organizations complained that the Mexican government was not doing enough.
“The report criticized government authorities for the country’s lack of comprehensive policies to reduce and eliminate the risks faced by human rights activists,” the State Department report said.
With the lack of confidence in officials to prosecute criminals for the cases, some victims fail to report the crimes at all, including for brutal acts such as rape.
Bejarano believes that the chaos has even forced law-abiding citizens in Juarez to turn to violence to survive—so much that even teenagers are becoming criminals. In January, two teenagers killed long-time Juarez women’s rights activist Susan Chavez.
“They killed her and they cut her hands off to try to stage a killing to deflect any attention from themselves to the cartels. That’s one example of what’s happening,” Bejarano said. “That was considered a type of femicide. The drug war feud has really taken over the city.”
Bejarano said she doesn’t see an end in sight for violence against women but remains confident that organizations will continue to press the government to work toward protecting women.
“I think women rights organizations will continue to do what they do and that’s to resist this level of corruption and impunity,” Bejarano said. “There have been very little changes and much more violence so I think that’s why more than ever before it’s important to shed a light on these issues.”
Nathan Frandino 