Congressional Delegation to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
October 11-13, 2003

The Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, separated from El Paso, Texas only by a 15-foot wall, is one of the most violent cities in the Americas. Plagued by drug cartels, people-smuggling rings, sweatshops, police corruption and brutality, severe underdevelopment and a ballooning population, these factors easily combine to make Ciudad Juárez an urban experiment gone wrong.

For the past ten years, the difficulties of living in Juárez have been exacerbated by an epidemic of rape, torture, and murder aimed at the city’s young, poor women. Since 1993, over 300 women have been killed and dumped in the desert, many after suffering sexual abuse and torture. There have been no proper police investigations to identify suspects, nor serious efforts to prosecute them. The authorities have yet to put forth a credible theory as to who is killing women in Juárez. Of the evidence that has been collected, ninety-three cases are suspected to be the work of one or more serial murderers – the rest are most likely murders that flourish in a city where everyone knows that you can kill a woman with impunity.

Young women are easy targets in Ciudad Juárez. Since the advent of the maquiladora industry –assembly plants that take advantage of cheap labor – in the 1980s, poor Mexicans have flocked to this border town in search of jobs. Many maquiladoras have an explicit policy of hiring only young women, with the belief that they are fast workers with nimble fingers who are less apt to organize than men. The majority of women who have been killed in the past ten years disappear on their way to and from work, when it is dark and they are alone and tired.

The historic election of President Vicente Fox in 2000 promised a new era for human rights in Mexico. Fox has called the Juárez murders a national shame and has expressed his commitment to resolving them. Yet he is reluctant to involve federal authorities in the investigations, and has had little success in pressuring the state authorities to undertake comprehensive investigations or provide better security in the city. The one tool that is likely to drive all responsible authorities into taking action is growing international pressure and outrage around this tragedy. Fox has demonstrated his willingness to respond to international concerns in the past, as he did with the release of three political prisoners.

In a move to raise the international profile of the Juárez murders and encourage U.S. officials to become involved in the issue, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Latin America Working Group, and the Mexico Solidarity Network, in coordination with the office of Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA), are planning a delegation in October 2003 for members of U.S. Congress to investigate the current state of the Juárez murders and to call for an end to the endemic impunity that plagues the investigations. This will be the highest-level U.S. delegation to Mexico with the explicit purpose of addressing the Juárez murders.

The delegation will spend time meeting the families of the victims, touring the neighborhoods where the victims lived and the areas where dozens of bodies have been found, and meeting with the organizations that represent the victims’ interests. They will also meet with experts in the case from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the El Paso Times. The delegates will also familiarize themselves with the maquiladora industry and understand the role it plays in the lives of the women of Juárez. Finally, they will meet with Mexican officials directly responsible for investigating the Juárez murders.

Upon their return to the United States, the delegates will work to raise the profile of the Juárez murders in the U.S. Congress and with the appropriate Administration agencies in an effort to make widespread impunity and violence against women part of the regular binational discussion between U.S. and Mexican officials. For almost a decade, the Mexican authorities did little to address the tragedy of the Juárez murders. International pressure has helped make the Juárez murders a daily topic of debate in Mexico and recently prompted President Fox to take action by providing federal cooperation in the murder investigations and ordering federal investigators to claim jurisdiction over 14 cases. These actions, while welcome, are far from sufficient. Further U.S. pressure can play an especially important role in encouraging Mexico to resolve one of the longest running and most violent human rights tragedies in its history.