February 7, 2008


Women's/Human Rights News


Cotton Field Murder Prosecution Falters as Violence Escalates


In a sharp blow to the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General
(PGJE), state Judge Catalina Ochoa Contreras declared innocent on February
6 a suspect charged with killing one of the eight women found murdered in
a Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001. The defense of Edgar Alvarez Cruz
had long contended that the charges against the young man were based on
lies, pressured statements and questionable or non-existent evidence.


Alvarez’s defense also presented proof that their client was in the United
States at the time of many of the disappearances and slayings of the
victims found in the cotton field. Another inconsistency was the single
murder charge against Alvarez, who was formally accused of killing
17-year-old Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis, but not tried for the murders of
the other victims who were discovered on the same site and at the same
time as Reyes.


The PGJE appealed Judge Ochoa’s verdict, but made no immediate public
comment on the ruling.


"The exoneration of the innocent man adds to the list of scapegoats
detained by the state prosecutor as serial killers and then freed for lack
of proof to incriminate them," editorialized Ciudad Juarez's Lapolaka news
site. Upon hearing news of the sentence, Alvarez thanked the court for
absolving him of the Reyes slaying but added, “it should’ve been done
within the first 72 hours.”


Alvarez still faces charges in the 1998 killing of teenager Silvia Garbiela
Laguna Cruz, a murder he also vehemently denies committing.


If Alvarez’s legal victory is upheld, it would mark the third time
Chihuahua state and federal cases against suspected cotton field killers
have wound up in tatters. Previous investigations unraveled amid
revelations of tortured suspects, extracted confessions, wild stories,
mismatched bodies and other irregularities.


Although questions swirled around Alvarez’s August 2006 detention from the
very beginning, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and
representatives her office repeatedly told the press that additional
evidence against Alvarez and two other accused men would be forthcoming.
In the end, however, none materialized.


What distinguished the Alvarez affair against the prior cotton field cases
was the key role played by the United States. Alvarez was living as an
undocumented worker in Denver, Colorado, when he was arrested based on a
confession made by Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz to the Texas Rangers.
Held on an unrelated charge, Granados tied Alvarez to the cotton field
killings. Later revelations seriously questioned Granados' credibility as
a witness, painting instead a picture of a disturbed, drug-abusing
individual who was prone to delusions.


Despite the flimsiness of the Alvarez case, as well as the previous use of
torture in the cotton field investigations, the US government quickly
deported Alvarez to Mexico to face trial. He has sat in jail ever since.
At the time of Alvarez's arrest, US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza hailed
a major breakthrough in solving the Ciudad Juarez femicides.


While the US-Mexico investigation of the cotton field killings verges on
collapse, three of the victims' mothers are taking their quest for justice
to an international legal body. Last December, the Costa Rica-based
Inter-American Court of Human Rights notified lawyers for the women that
it has accepted their case for review.


The cases were originally pursued in the Washington-based Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by the mothers of victims Esmeralda
Herrera Monreal, Laura Berenice Ramos Monarrez and Claudia Ivete
Gonzalez. Transfer of the case to the Inter-American Court means that the
Mexican government did not follow the IACHR’s recommendations it earlier
issued to ensure justice for victims' relatives. In a separate report late
last month, Mexico’s official National Human Rights Commission criticized
all three levels of the Mexican government for not following its own
justice recommendations related to the Ciudad Juarez women’s murders.


Karla Michel Salas Ramirez, an attorney for the three mothers and a member
of Mexico's National Association of Democratic Lawyers, said the Costa
Rica case could set a legal precedent for other femicide cases. The
Mothers' lawyers will argue that Mexico is in violation of the Belen Do
Para Convention, an international agreement which obliges states to
protect women from gender violence. The plaintiffs also seek sanctions
against Chihuahua state government officials who were responsible for
handling the cotton field investigation. Unlike the advisory nature of
the IACHR’S recommendations, rulings from the Costa Rica court are
obligatory for member states.


On another international note, the Ciudad Juarez femicides drew a sharp
comment from United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise
Arbour, who was on an official visit to Mexico this week.


"In Mexico, the issue of impunity is the greatest challenge that has to be
confronted and overcome," Arbour said. "The case of the femicides, in
which the justice system doesn't protect women, is worrisome."


In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, media outlets, business groups, human rights
organizations and just plain ordinary citizens are all alarmed at the
escalating homicide rates for both men and women since the beginning of
the year. Nine women and girls have been killed for different reasons
since January 1. Also last month, a woman's skeleton was recovered from an
area frequently used as a dumping ground for both male and female murder
victims.


Additionally, a 15-year-old high school student, Adriana Enriquez
Sarmiento, was reported missing from downtown Ciudad Juarez on January 18.
The young girl had attended the private Ignacio Allende Preparatory, the
same institution three previous femicide victims, including Laura Berenice
Ramos, had also attended,


In a blog entry this week, El Paso author and longtime femicide researcher
Diana Washington Valdez reported that a female Allende Prep student was
accosted outside the school January 31 by a man who exposed himself to the
girl. According to the journalist, an intervention by prominent Ciudad
Juarez labor rights activist Cipriana Jurado, who just happened to be in
the vicinity of the school at the time of the attack, prompted the man to
run away before police could detain him.

 

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