International Women's Issues

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  Drug cartels are at war, but women there have had it worse for the last twenty years. For women Ciudad Juarez is hell onEarth. Since the early 90s, as many as 600 murders and 3000 missing reports of young women and girls between the ages of 10 and 35 years have been reported, unofficially. The most outrageous part of it isthe meek response from the Mexican authorities, the lack of a professional investigation to identify the serial killers and stop this massacre. There is total apathy and negligence from theauthorities in solving these crimes, in spite of the evident pattern of gender crimes. There is no real commitment to provide a sense of safety in the community, there is no justice for the victims and theindividuals who dare to challenge the official ‘response’ receive threats to back-off, or end up killed or disappear. The American government has not taken any measures either, in spite of the fact thatmost if not all of the female employees of the ‘maquiladoras’ (factories taken abroad by American companies due to cheap labor costs and favoring Ciudad Juarez for its geographical location right onthe Mexican-American border) live in Ciudad Juarez and fit the profile of the victims.
The murders are extremely violent, they are hate crimes against. The killers choose their victims within therange of 13 to 18 years, with the following physical characteristics: dark skinned, thin, long black hair and most of them work at ‘maquiladoras’; there are also students, typists, secretaries. They allare poor or come from humble roots. They victims are tortured before being killed; all of them are sexually abused by more than one individual, mutilated and strangled or burned and their bodies aredisposed of in landfills. There is evidence that all of them died after great pain and terror were inflicted. This case presents the highest number of murdered employees ever recorded in the...