June 13, 2005
Where is Edith?
A recent arrival to Ciudad Juarez, 22-year-old Edith Aranda Longorio quickly earned a reputation at the Pablo Neruda Elementary School as an energetic young teacher who instructed first graders how to read and write. Like other Mexican teachers, she faced a money crunch, and had a 14-month old baby girl to support. So one day in early May the single mother set off to downtown Juarez to apply for a part-time job at a music store. None of her family members, co-workers or friends have reported seeing her since then. The disappearance of the Chihuahua City native, together with the brutal, rape murders last month of 7-year-old Airis Estrella Enriquez Pando and 10-year-old Anahi Orozco (who dreamed of being a teacher) sparked perhaps the greatest outbreak of mass indignation and rage against gender violence that Ciudad Juarez has seen.
After her disappearance, Edith’s fellow teachers staged a one-day work stoppage, marching 4,000 strong and closing hundreds of schools. Student demonstrations were held in front of the offices the state attorney general and on the city’s principal streets. Matachine dancers jangled through intersections in opposition to the attacks against women. The predictions of one long-time activist that fed-up people were on the verge of lynching some one, reportedly became almost true last week when enraged residents of one neighborhood nearly lynched a man they accused of spying on young girls.
Still, weeks after her disappearance there is no word from or about Edith.
Perhaps it’s no accident that Edith disappeared in the same zone where dozens of other girls and young women have vanished since at least 1989. And she disappeared in the same manner as did many others: searching for a job, going shopping or leaving school, and at the same time of day and on the same day of the week. Edith’s brother, Pedro Aranda, says he was last able to determine his sister’s whereabouts at about 5 pm on Tuesday, May 3, when she supposedly left the Discorama music store on Avenida Juarez after going there to apply for a job. FBI intelligence leaked to the media in 2003 connected another music store situated just blocks from Discorama to the kidnapping and murder of young women.
Mysterious rumors about Edith’s disappearance have floated in the border press. One seemingly bizarre story in the Tijuana newspaper Frontera suggested that the missing teacher had wound up in Tijuana after being spirited away from a tarot card reading session by gypsies.
“There are many versions, and that’s one of the credible ones,” says Pedro Aranda, adding that his sister had previously told him about seeing a female tarot card reader who had a store near Zaragosa Avenue. Pedro Aranda says it’s odd that the tarot card reader vanished and her store closed up after Edith disappeared.
Another Tijuana-generated rumor suggested that the recovered body of a young woman was Edith’s, but that story turned out to be false too, and authorities haven’t publicly stated whether in fact a young woman was murdered in Tijuana and who it was.
For days Juarez newspapers were full of accounts that Edith might be in an El Paso jail-perhaps under a different identity. Pedro Aranda says the Mexican Consulate in El Paso forwarded pictures of Edith and other information to the jail but turned up nothing. County jail spokesman Rick Glancey and another booking official both confirm there is no Edith Aranda at the women’s facility.
Al Patino of the U.S. Marshall’s Service, which handles Mexican national and foreign prisoners in El Paso, says he has not been contacted by the consulate regarding Edith Aranda. “I haven’t received any phone calls from the Mexican Consulate for a person by that name,” he says. Patino adds that the El Paso County Detention Center is just one lock-up among a dozen that prisoners are farmed out to after coming into the custody of U.S. marshals.
Rumors of Edith’s whereabouts mimic a long pattern that’s confronted relatives of missing young women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. In 2001, for instance, a group of mothers from Chihuahua City were whisked around red-light districts from town to town in Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon states by officers from the Chihuahua State Judicial Police. None of their missing daughters were ever encountered in the table-dance joints or bars in which they were supposedly working. The disappearance of persons of interest like the purported tarot card reader, as well as the abandonment of a storefront possibly connected to the case, also follows an earlier pattern in which potential suspects vanished and businesses closed or changed names.
Since Edith had a visa which allowed her to cross into the United States, Pedro Aranda considers it possible his sister might be on this side of the border. He searched her belongings and found the visa missing, leading him to speculate that Edith had the document on her person when she vanished. The father of Edith’s baby girl lives in Roswell, New Mexico, but the man denies knowing the location of the mother of his daughter, according to Pedro Aranda.
Despite having family in the United States and living in a border city, Edith Aranda has received scant-if any- mention in the U.S. press. Unlike the media barrage surrounding the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, the cameras and microphones have glossed over the story of the missing young Mexican teacher.
Contemplating the possibility that Edith simply decided to run away from a stressful life, Pedro Aranda is inclined to think otherwise, but he prefers that scenario to one which has his sister in the hands of unscrupulous individuals. “I don’t think she’s gone off to have an adventure, to have fun,” says Pedro Aranda. “I hope so, but she wasn’t that kind of person.”
Meantime, Pedro Aranda says the family is experiencing “tremendous anxiety” not knowing Edith’s whereabouts. Under the care of the grandmother, her baby daughter has now spent more than one month without her mother. Edith’s students, who grew used to a young teacher at the beginning of her career, are now approaching the end of the school year without the encouragement of their main mentor.
Most of all, Pedro Aranda appeals to anyone with real information about his sister to contact him or the authorities.
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Reprinted with permission from Frontera NorteSur.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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