Mexico Federal Organized Crime Unit Will Investigate Disappearances and Murders in Ciudad Juárez

Mothers of disappeared young women of Ciudad Juarez
Photo: Eduardo Miranda

Proceso: Proceso: Anaiz Zamora Márquez

Translated by Julie Kawamura

As a result of at least six hours of negotiations, the Secretariat of Government Relations (Segob) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) made a commitment to attend to the demands of the mothers of the missing youths from Ciudad Juárez, after two weeks of protest outside of the Segob headquarters.

The agreement was set on last Tuesday evening, June 18, after the women marched to Los Pinos [The Pines], the official residence of the president, where a civil servant told them that President Enrique Peña could not attend to them up until the year 2015 [because, they said, his schedule was full until then].

Malú García Andrade, legal representative of the civic organization Our Daughters Return Home, announced that after the march to the official residence at Los Pinos, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, head of the Unit for the Defense of Human Rights (UDDH) of the Segob, came to the protestors’ camp to ask them for a meeting and to arrive at an agreement.

At nearly 8 o’ clock at night, Bertha Alicia García, mother of Brenca Berenice Castillo, missing since 2009; Silvia Banda Pedroza, mother of Fabiola Janeth Valenzuela Banda, missing since 2010; Rosa María Apodaca Granados, mother of Patricia Jazmín Ibarra Apodaca, missing since June 2011; and Juana Ibarra Castorena, mother of Gabriela Espinoza Ibarra, entered into the Covián Palace, the site of the Segob, accompanied by García Andrade of Our Daughters Return Home.

“We didn't want to meet with Enrique Peña Nieto; we only wanted him to hear from the voice of the mothers the context of violence and impunity that is life in Ciudad Juárez, to hear the stories of the missing young people, and to know that they have families that miss them,” said the activist.

The meeting – which lasted until after three o’ clock in the morning on Wednesday, June 19 – was held with civil servants and representatives from the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Woman (Conavim), the UDDH, the Deputy Attorney General's Office for Specialized Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO), and the Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Human Rights, Crime Prevention and Community Services, the latter two entities belonging to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR).

The finalized document containing the authorities’ obligations was prepared and ready, however lacking the signatures of the Secretary of Government Affairs, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, and Nelly Montealegre Díaz, the special prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Human Trafficking (of the PGR), the mothers warned that they would not lift the protest.

They had to spend many hours waiting for the civil servants to sign the document. In the end, it was agreed that the SEIDO would take the cases, and correspondingly would facilitate the processing, paperwork and access to information for the family members of the missing persons. SEIDO will also carry out the necessary procedures before the Rewards Committee of the PGR in order to incentivize the collaboration of the public in the search for the youths.

It was also agreed that the international experts that have been assisting in the Campo Algodonero [Cotton Field] case [original case of murdered women] since last February in Juárez are to identify the skeletal remains that are being held in the Medical Examiner’s Office (Semefo) in the major border city.

According to García Andrade, the agreement will also benefit the mothers that already received their daughters’ remains, but that doubt their identity, as they will be able to request the exhumation of the body for a second identification.

It is worth noting that the demands of the mothers remained pending on two issues: the classification of the crime of the disappearance of women in the state of Chihuahua and the creation of a Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Search and Location of Missing Women.

In light of that, García Andrade announced that the mothers would not abandon their demands and that they would search for new paths to achieve the creation of the criminal classification, and afterwards the Special Prosecutor's Office, since

“a unit created out of thin air that does not have the necessary resources is worthless,” she explained.

The civil servants also agreed to hold follow-up meetings regarding the agreements; the first of which will be held on July 8 in Ciudad Juárez.

"We are not 100 percent satisfied, but we believe that the protests and demands were worth the sacrifice, not only for these cases but for all of the cases that remain unpunished,” finalized García Andrade.

The four women ended the protest at around four o’clock in the morning and departed in the direction of Chihuahua. As of yesterday afternoon, on the outer fences of the Segob the photos of the missing youths, whose mothers do not tire searching for them, could still be seen. Spanish