EL PASO, TEX. -- A professor, writer, and activist from Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, will visit Hanover this Thursday to discuss with the Dartmouth community an issue that has recently exploded in the international media.
Maria Socorro Tabuenca, Dean of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a border research institute in Ciudad Jurez, will present the documentary "Seorita Extraviada" and speak about the murders of women occurring in the city where she lives and works.
The documentary, made by award-winning filmmaker Lourdes Portillo, focuses on the families whose daughters and sisters have been murdered and holds the police accountable for their deaths, Tabuenca said.
Over 340 women and girls have been killed in Ciudad Jurez since 1993. Ninety are sex-murder victims of a serial killer, according to a 2002 investigative report by the El Paso Times.
Four more bodies were found at 2 p.m. on Monday. Those identified thus far are Esmerelda Juarez Alarcon, 16, reported missing on Jan. 7; Juana Sandoval Reina, 17, who disappeared in September 2002; and Violeta Alvidrez Barrio, 18, missing since Feb. 4.
The majority of the sex-crime victims are young, thin, poor Mexican girls with long dark hair.
All this is occurring within miles of the United States border, Tabuenca said. El Paso, Tex., and Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, are sister cities. Together, they constitute the largest community along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Many activists and investigators in Jurez and El Paso blame the impunity of police and state officials for the continuation of the murders.
"Nobody believes that they're actually carrying out a serious investigation of any kind and the record speaks for itself," El Paso Times reporter Diana Washington Valdez said. Valdez has been covering the murders since 1999.
Valdez said the police lose files and destroy evidence; lab work is left undone and key witnesses are not interviewed. Police discourage the families from reporting their daughters as missing and often blame the young girls, Valdez said.
"On both sides of the border, we live in cultures and societies that tolerate too much violence against women and girls, said Kathy Staudt, a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a member of the El Paso Coalition Against Violence Towards Women and Children. "That creates a climate that allows this violence to go on."
Staudt said the challenge is to convince police forces and investigators on both sides of the border to collaborate by sharing information and resources.
Since 1996, several men have been arrested -- but not convicted -- for the murders. The crimes continue.
Tabuenca said theories on the murderer point to someone that crosses the border from El Paso, drug dealers, wealthy businessmen, satanic ritual cults, the police and copycat killers.
FBI profilers were asked to review case reports in 1999 and are helping to train Jurez police officers but the FBI has not been invited to investigate the case.
The Women's and Gender Studies Program will present the film and discussion -- "The Lost Women of Jurez" -- tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the Rockefeller Center.
