The shame of a nation, an opportunity for regional accountability?

Las Hijas de Juarez

In late April the InterAmerican Court of of Human Rights began procedings over the infamous assasinations that have claimed the lives of over 1000 women in the city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. The case has been brought forth by a team of attorneys from Mexico and Spain following the impunity with which the Mexican government has investigated and responded to the brutal killings occuring since 1993.

The victims are often young and pretty women from humble backgrounds that are typically assaulted on their way to work or on their way home from work in the manufacturing ‘maquilas’ operating in the outskirts of the city. The victims present evidence of torture, having been raped, beaten, cut and often present torn nipples from bites in one breast. In 2007 investigative reporter Teresa Rodriguez, et al. published ‘Las Hijas de Juarez’, narrating the embarrasing impunity that has surrounded different criminal investigations conducted mainly at the state level, in the state of Chihuahua, but also at the federal level, suggesting there is a deliberate cover up on behalf of authorities and political elites raising the posibility that some may be directly involved.

Not even the advice of reputed national as well as foreign criminologists and crime prevention experts has shed some light into these cases as state authorities were seen as an obstacle to the different independent investigations. Several individuals have been investigated and inprisoned and even died in suspicious situations while in prison without ever bringing any conclusive hard evidence they were involved in such gruesome criminal activity.

Although 16 years is a long howl, justice may be done for some of these women, yet certainly not for all, for although over 1000 have been murdered, the prosecution presents 3 cases as its main punch while considering the wider gender violence issue. Thus, the shame of a nation presents and opportunity for regional accoutability on a blot that has been brushed aside for far too long within Spanish societies.

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