August 13, 2007
A European Showdown Regarding Mexican
Femicide
Frontera NorteSur
An alliance of Spanish, Polish and
German legislators is watering down a resolution in the European Parliament that
proposes tougher actions against femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Central
America. Moving behind the scenes, the lawmakers have introduced more than 100
killing amendments to the strongly worded document.
Sponsored by
Green/European Free Alliance Deputy Raul Romeva Rueda, the original resolution
would create a femicide coordinator; elevate women's murders to a priority
status between governments; monitor the treatment of women employees of
transnational companies in Latin America; require an annual report to the gender
commission of the European Parliament; and carry out a review of femicide cases
prior to the 2008 Euro-Latin American summit scheduled for Lima, Peru.
"This has more weight than any other international recommendation," said
Humberto Guerrero of the Mexico City-based Mexican Commission for the Defense
and Promotion of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization that has been
active in raising the profile of the women’s murders on the world stage.
In addition to the credibility of international treaties, the growing
commercial relationships between Mexico and the European Union (EU) are at stake
in the femicide resolution debate. Unlike the North American Free Trade
Agreement, the 1997 EU-Mexico Agreement contains democracy and human rights
provisions. Conceivably, Mexico could lose out on new European investments and
trade if the women's murders and other human rights violations remain
unpunished.
According to the Mexican Senate, economic transactions
between Mexico and the EU jumped 103 percent from 1999 to 2005, reaching at
least $37 billion. In the six-year period studied, Mexican exports to the EU
soared by 123 percent. Currently, about 25 percent of foreign investment monies
in Mexico come from Europe.
While Romeva's resolution awaits action, new
economic initiatives like the Latin American Institute of Biotechnology planned
for the state of Nuevo Leon are in the works between Mexico and the EU. The
project also involves the Nuevo Leon state government, the privately owned
Technological University of Monterrey, the Monsanto Company, and other
organizations.
The Murder of a Dutch Woman
Although some EU
legislators have condemned all the femicides, the 1998 killing of Dutch citizen
Hester van Nierop, in Ciudad Juarez, helped place the issue on the
inter-continental political agenda. The 28-year-old victim was found semi-nude,
strangled and stuffed underneath a bed in a seedy downtown Ciudad Juarez hotel.
Van Nierop was traveling alone to the United States after a long vacation with
her family in Mexico when she was slain.
A squad of state police
officers from the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE), headed
by Antonio Navarrete, was assigned to investigate van Nierop's murder. Navarrete
was earlier involved in the controversial arrest of the late Egyptian national
Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, who was accused of multiple women's murders but
widely regarded as the first scapegoat in a long line of slayings.
Navarrete and other agents involved in the van Nierop case were among
officers named for possible crimes of negligence and omission in a 2004 report
by former federal Special Prosecutor Maria Lopez Urbina. Several possible
suspects in the van Nierop slaying emerged, including an escaped serial killer,
Pedro Padilla Flores, but no arrests were ever made.
While on a trip to
Ciudad Juarez and El Paso in 2004, van Nierop's outraged parents discovered that
the investigation of their daughter's murder was paralyzed. Meeting in late
2005, European non-governmental organizations vowed to escalate their campaign
against the Ciudad Juarez femicides by pressuring the transnational Philips
Company, which operated maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juarez where several
victims had once worked, and by lobbying for the triggering of the democratic
and human rights clause of the EU-Mexico Agreement. In this context, Romeva's
resolution set off alarm bells in Mexico.
Meet Mexico's New Crisis
Manager
Last April, Romeva traveled to Mexico City for meetings with
Special Prosecutor for Women's Homicides Alicia Perez Duarte, Chihuahua State
Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and other officials. According to Romeva,
Mexican officials expressed concern that his resolution "would damage the image
of Mexico."
The day before Romeva's trip, the Mexican Senate gave
approval to the Calderon administration's appointment of Sandra Fuentes-Berain
as Mexico's new ambassador to the European Union. In her new position,
Fuentes-Berain would be the chief troubleshooter in charge of smoothing over
thorny matters like the femicide resolution.
A 57-year-old native of
Mexico City, Fuentes-Berain began her career with the Ministry of Foreign
Relations (SRE) as a young woman in 1971, the same year government-supported
paramilitaries mowed down students in Mexico City in the infamous Jueves de
Corpus massacre.
Fuentes-Berain has served as Mexican ambassador in
several countries, including a stint in Holland during the Hester van Nierop
controversy. The career diplomat is credited with negotiating the North American
Free Trade Agreement with Canada, and with greasing the wheels of Mexico's entry
into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation pact. Ratifying the seasoned
dealmaker as EU ambassador, the Mexican Senate noted Fuentes-Berain’s talent at
encouraging "strategic alliances between foreign and Mexican companies,
especially in the automotive, energy, banking and agro-industrial sectors."
Holding an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, Fuentes-Berain
has generally enjoyed a non-controversial record of service. An exception came
during the 2000 presidential election when she was criticized for allegedly
using her government position to promote the candidate of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, Francisco Labastida, whose campaign later came under fire
for receiving millions of dollars in public money from the Pemex state oil
company.
Fire and Brimstone in the European Parliament
On June
25, European legislators gathered for a lively debate of Romeva's femicide
resolution. Ambassador Fuentes-Berain and Chihuahua State Attorney General
Patricia Gonzalez were on hand for the session. Chihuahua's top cop assured the
lawmakers that the administration of Governor Jose Reyes Baeza was making steady
progress in chipping away at impunity.
According to Gonzalez's data, of
413 female homicide cases opened from January 21, 1993 to May 18, 2007, fully
264 were in some process of resolution; eight of the cases were determined to
have been suicides. According to the PGJE's statistics, only 139 cases were
still under investigation.
Spanish parliamentarian Ignacio Salafranca of
the conservative Popular European Party was among the deputies who spoke out
against Romeva's resolution. In 2006, Deputy Salafranca headed a controversial
EU observer delegation that gave a quick stamp of approval to the Mexican
presidential election even as doubts about the official results mushroomed amid
accusations of fraud, widespread irregularities and massive street protests.
Mexican SRE official Lorena Larios, who collaborated with Salafranca while she
was assigned to the European Parliament, coordinated Deputy Romeva's April 2007
official meetings in Mexico.
In the debate, Salafranca emphasized that
violence against women was a "planetary" and "universal" phenomenon, and that it
was unfair to single out Mexico. Turning to Romeva, he said, "Before you set out
to save the world you should first look at your own house." Salafranca compared
the Ciudad Juarez femicides to gender violence in Spain, where "150,000
complaints of physical mistreatment of women" were registered this year alone.
Declaring that the European Parliament is not a tribunal to judge others,
Salafranca urged a spirit of cooperation with Mexico.
Left Deputy
Eva-Britt Svenson responded: "The fact that this is a world problem doesn't mean
that one is not going to investigate in a certain region or country. We are not
a tribunal, of course, but our responsibility is to investigate what goes on (in
Mexico), a country with which we have signed a democratic clause, but it doesn't
seem to be enough in this case."
Introduced by Salafranca, German
socialist Deputy Erika Mann, Polish Deputy Ana Zaborska and other deputies,
amendments to Romeva's resolution propose nixing a femicide coordinator;
foregoing any monitoring of transnational companies; eschewing the reform of
Mexico's legal system; and not requiring a review of the van Nierop murder and
other femicides before the 2008 Peruvian summit. Another amendment praises
Mexico's federal government for its "efforts realized in terms of (achieving)
nondiscrimination between men and women."
The amendments, which can be
voted up or down, are expected to be considered by the European Parliament's
gender commission next month; the femicide resolution will likely be heard by
the political institution's plenary in October. Mexican human rights activist
Humberto Guerrero is dismayed by the latest developments. "One cannot be very
optimistic,” he said.
Despite the existence of the democratic clause in
the EU-Mexico accord, some critics have long accused the EU of practicing a
double standard when it comes to human rights. In a 2005 article, Tobias
Pfluger, a deputy for the United Left/Norwegian Greens, criticized the president
of the European Parliament's Mexico delegation, Erika Mann, for allegedly being
more interested in free trade than in human rights.
While Mexican human
rights violations languished in impunity, Pfluger contended that the EU was
abandoning principled action for economic gain. The EU was most interested in
pressuring Mexico to open up 14 additional investment opportunities in the
electricity, education, water and other sectors, Pfluger charged.
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Sources: Cimacnoticias.com, August 3, 2007. Article
by Lourdes Godinez Leal. Proceso/Apro, December 25, 2005 and August 2, 2007.
Articles by Marco Appel and Tobias Pfluger. La Jornada, November 25, 2006.
Article by Claudia Herrera Beltran. Senado.gob.mx. Conocimientoenlinea.com.
Bones in the Desert, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez. Editoral Anagrama, 2002. Harvest
of Women, Diana Washington Valdez. Oceana, 2005.
