Thousands of miles and a continent away, it’s a long haul from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to Santiago, Chile. But that’s where the road to justice led Benita Monarrez, Irma Monreal and Josefina Gonzalez. Mothers of murder victims, the three women from the Mexican border city pressed their case last week against the Mexican government as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights opened a milestone trial in Santiago, Chile.

Marking the first time the Organization of American States’ court has heard a Mexican femicide case, the historic legal proceeding centers on the slayings of three young women who were found with five other female victims in a Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001. The three victims, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, 14, Laura Berenice Ramos Monarrez, 17, and Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 20, all went missing between September 25 and October 29, 2001.

Counting only two months in Ciudad Juarez at the time of her disappearance, Herrera was a domestic worker employed by Mitla Caballero.

A high school student, Ramos also worked for the Fogueiras restaurant. An assembly-line worker for the US-owned Lear Corporation, Gonzalez was turned away at the plant gate because she was a few minutes late and then vanished. Relatives contend the disappearances and subsequent murders of their loved ones were never truly investigated or punished by the Mexican government.

For example, Benita Monarrez has stated that two investigators from the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office (PGJE), Ramirez and Miramontes, personally knew two young men, “El Gato” and “El Perico” who appeared in a previous photo taken with Laura Berenice Ramos. When pressed to explain their relationship to the mysterious pair, the law enforcement officials clammed up, Monarrez has asserted.

“This is the case to show the many failings there have been by the Mexican government,” said Maureen Meyer, program associate for the non-profit Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a group which supports victims’ relatives. Meyer told Frontera NorteSur that the Inter-American Court case could set a precedent for other femicide cases, including sex-related homicide cases from 1993 or 1994 that are now falling into legal oblivion because of Mexican statutes of limitations.

Mexican, US and European human rights activists are throwing their support behind the mothers involved in the Santiago trial. Together with other organizations, Ciudad Juarez’s Citizens Network for Non-Violence and Human Dignity called the Inter-American Court case a “historic opportunity” for femicide victims not only in Ciudad Juarez but in the rest of Mexico and the Americas as well.

The Long Road to Chile

Many irregularities marked the Mexican government’s response to the disappearance of the three young women, who vanished along with numerous others in both Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City during 2001. The disappearances followed a pattern of young, low-income women suddenly disappearing in the northern Mexican state since at least the early 1990s.
Several suspects were investigated or arrested in the cotton field slayings, but human rights activists and other observers widely criticized government legal cases as lacking any shred of credibility.

The grisly discoveries of the eight cotton field victims on November 6 and 7, 2001, set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the Inter-American Court trial. In 2002, the mothers of Herrera, Ramos and Gonzalez filed a complaint with the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that charged the Mexican government with committing human rights violations and denying justice in the cases of their daughters.

After finally determining that the Mexican government never provided an adequate response to the petitioners, the IACHR pursued the next step in the OAS human rights system and referred the case to the Inter-American Court in late 2007. The international legal institution is considering the cotton field case based on the Mexican government’s alleged violations of the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belem Do Para), international agreements that uphold popular access to the justice system and the right of women to live without violence. Under the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court, Mexico is obliged to follow any rulings the legal body will issue.

Last year, Mexico filed a preliminary defense but did not submit all the documents requested by the Inter-American Court, according to a statement from the legal body.

The mothers seek reparations of damages from the Mexican government, the launching of a serious murder investigation and the dismissal and sanctioning of officials involved in allegedly botching their daughters’
cases, among other remedies.

Showdown in Santiago

On April 28 and 29, 2009, the mothers and Mexican government mustered their respective forces in Santiago, Chile, for a legal battle that will be heard around the world. Supported by Mexican and international lawyers and human rights activists, the mothers from Ciudad Juarez spent several hours retelling their stories to the judges.

In her testimony, Benita Monarrez accused Mexican government officials of covering-up the murders for other officials involved in the crimes.

“This trial proves we are right. The state has never approached us, always acting with a lot of hypocrisy and nothing has changed,” Josefina Gonzalez testified. “I don’t believe anything is going to change if the court doesn’t help us in the name of all the women of Mexico.”

For its defense, the Mexican government flew in a team from the Foreign Relations Ministry and the PGJE, including Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez. Chihuahua’s top law enforcement official said she was satisfied to represent the Mexican state and its “tireless work of changing the logic of gender themes and the murder of women in my country.”

Gonzalez admitted that numerous irregularities characterized the cotton field investigations during 2001-2004, but insisted authorities cleaned up their act afterward, reordered the investigation and moved forward with a statewide legal reform- a project supported by the United States Agency for International Development. The PGJE stands ready and willing to provide additional reparations and assistance to the mothers, Gonzalez said.

“There were omissions and irregularities before my service,” Gonzalez, said, “not only in these cases but other ones too that have since been resolved and the mothers left totally satisfied.”

Gonzalez’s comments were reminiscent of statements made by previous PGJE personnel, including former Ciudad Juarez special prosecutor Suly Ponce (1998-2001), who frequently accused predecessors for widespread disarray in the femicide investigations only to be later blamed themselves by successors.

Rodrigo Caballero, a special homicide investigator for the PGJE told the Santiago courtroom that Chihuahua legal authorities know of two men involved in the women’s murders.

Currently, the state’s prime suspect is Edgar Alvarez Cruz, who was fingered by an old friend, Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz. The two young men came to public light in 2006 when Tony Garza, then the US ambassador in Mexico, made a sensational announcement that US authorities were cooperating with Mexican officials in what could be a major break in the cotton field case.

A former Ciudad Juarez resident who had been living in Denver, Colorado, Cruz was deported to Mexico to face charges based on a “confession” made by Granados to the Texas Rangers.

Alvarez has since been convicted of the murder of another cotton field victim, Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis, whose slaying is not part of the Inter-American Court case. Alvarez lost an appeal in a Mexican court last month, and is serving a 26-year sentence.

Alvarez and his family vehemently deny the murder charges, pointing to contradictions and irregularities in the state’s most recent cotton field case.

In past statements to Ciudad Juarez media, members of Granados' own family questioned the credibility of their relative. Reportedly prone to abusing drugs and alcohol, Granados was emotionally disturbed and overcome with hallucinatory flights of fancy, according to relatives.

Abraham Hinojos, defense attorney for Alvarez, said his client’s rejected appeal was also a loss to society since “we continue in the same (legal) practices.”

David Pena, attorney for Irma Monreal, ridiculed the Mexican state’s defense in Chile as simulation designed to “make it appear they are doing something.”

With oral testimony completed in Chile last week, the Inter-American Court will review legal documents and deliberate the merits of the case. A decision is expected later this year or early next year. Typically, the OAS court conducts proceedings in countries not involved in a legal complaint. Hence the trail setting of Santiago, Chile, another continent and an entire season removed from Ciudad Juarez.

Local Fall-Out from the OAS Case

In Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua, the Inter-American Court case reopened a huge can of worms. Purported PGJE documents leaked to El Diario newspaper, contended the Mexican government had provided generous compensation to the families of the three cotton field murder victims involved in the OAS case.

In a detailed piece published on the second day of the Santiago trial, El Diario said the mothers and other named relatives of Hererra, Ramos and Gonzalez, received money for funeral expenses, educational grants, homes, and businesses including a tortilla shop and small grocery store. The state support surpassed more than one million dollars, according to El Diario. State government assistance also consisted of providing medical and psychological services for surviving family members, El Diario reported.

Besides the very personal details reported in the El Diario story, the newspaper account was unusual in that it included information that reportedly will be used in the Inter-American Court proceedings. Mexican officials routinely deny reporters access to sensitive legal documents which are part of ongoing cases.

Whether the story is accurate or not, it could refuel disagreements between different groups of victims’ mothers.

Before it was quickly yanked from El Diario’s website, the story drew sharp comments from several readers. An individual identified as Tararecua questioned when Guatemala (scene of thousands of femicides) and the US would be tried internationally for murders of women, including the 11 bodies discovered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last February. Another writer identified as Esperanza applauded the Inter-American Court’s action, but urged the OAS legal authorities to hold Mexican officials accountable for allowing a violent criminal gang to run amok in the Juarez Valley.

Two other documents related to the cotton field case also grabbed media and public attention in recent days. Portions of a PGJE report submitted to the Inter-American court were challenged by a separate report from the Argentine Anthropological Forensic Team, a group of investigators contracted several years ago by the PGJE under pressure from activists and relatives of disappeared women to identify the remains of unknown female murder victims in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City.

The PGJE report contended the majority of 447 women’s murders in Ciudad Juarez between 1993 and December 2008 have been duly prosecuted, with more than 60 percent of the cases solved and scores of murderers brought to justice. The Argentine forensic experts, however, questioned several aspects of the report. Media reports indicate the true number of female murder victims during the time covered by the PGJE report is more than 600.

Chilean Judge Cecilia Medina Quiroga, president of the Inter-American Court, requested the Mexican government turn over an accounting of all the women’s murder cases supposedly resolved in the 1993-2008 period.

Ticked off by the contradictory reports, Chihuahua state lawmaker Antonio Sandoval proposed last week that the Chihuahua State Congress pass a resolution demanding the PGJE provide a report on its femicide report and explain how much money the state agency has spent publicizing the information.

While new battles brew over old but unresolved issues, three mothers of Ciudad Juarez murder victims await a verdict from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

“There was no justice done in Mexico, and this the last opportunity the mothers have,” said WOLA’s Maureen Meyer.

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Additional sources:
-- Norte, May 3, 2009. Article by Nohemi Barraza and Guadalupe Salcido.
-- Lapolaka.com, April 29 and May 1, 2009.
-- El Paso Times, May 1, 2009. Article by Diana Washington Valdez.
-- El Universal, April 25 and 30, 2009. Articles by Silvia Otero and Notimex.
-- El Diario de Juarez, April 25 and 29, 2009. Articles by Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, Gabriela Minjares and Alejandro Salmon.
-- Cimacnoticias.com, April 28 and 29, 2009. Articles by Sandra Torres Pastrana, Nancy Betan, and editorial staff.
-- Wola.org

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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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