Friday, August 24, 2012

Seeking justice for Mexico state's female victims

Seeking justice for Mexico state's female victims

Hundreds of women and girls are killed every year in Mexico state, known as Edomex. One woman who lost her daughter, 14, puts her life at risk to press her case.

In Mexico state, violence against women
Political activist David Mancera reads to reporters in Ecatepec, Mexico, the names of women slain in Mexico state. (Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times / July 31, 2012)
ECATEPEC, Mexico — At 14, Jessica Lucero had already lived a hard life. A stint in rehab, dropping out of school, making her way, day in, day out, in a terribly violent, desperately poor neighborhood.
But things were looking up. She had stayed clean and was planning to resume studies. She dreamed of becoming a forensic pathologist.
Then, in June, Jessica was raped by a man she later identified as a notorious neighbor, a known drug pusher. Jessica's reaction was to do something that few people twice her age have ever dared. She went to the authorities and denounced the crime.

Not 30 days later, she was killed, beaten to death with a small boulder. The force of the blow was so strong that her skull left a dint in the ground that would remain for days.
And with that, Jessica became one of hundreds of women and girls killed every year in Mexico state, a region of 15 million people governed until recently by the man who will be the next president of Mexico.
Authorities handling of the cases in this state with one of the country's highest female homicide rates has raised questions about their commitment to law and order, especially when the victims are women.
The killings have been criticized recently by several human rights groups. In a new report, Amnesty International complained that "gender-based violence in the country continues to be widespread," and singled out Mexico state and two other states, saying "state-level authorities that have failed to prevent or punish documented cases of grave gender-based violence, including rape and killings, have not faced additional pressure or oversight."
In Jessica's case, a top state prosecutor went on national radio to suggest that the girl had been drinking when she was killed by young men who also raped her — again. He insisted that Jessica's death had nothing to do with her reporting of the original attack. Soon afterward, he stepped down to join Enrique Peña Nieto's presidential transition team.
***
The dead women and girls of the state of Mexico, which abuts Mexico City, have as their voice and champion a fireplug of a man named David Mancera.
Part political activist, part social worker, and a bit of a gadfly, Mancera carries a spiral notebook filled with the scrawled names and circumstances of recent slayings of women.
"Just last week," he starts.
Yuridia Valente, 22. Raped, strangled, single shot to the head.
Fernanda Esparza, 19. Killed, allegedly by a boyfriend who killed his previous girlfriend three years earlier.
Sonia Neleya, 25. Raped and found dead, naked, strangled.
Name unknown. Stuffed into a suitcase.
Mancera, who cites statistics saying that 200 to 300 women were killed during each of the last five years in the state, has a flair for the dramatic. The other day, to demand an audience with authorities, he chained himself to the front door of the local attorney general's office. Then he led a protest march that tied up one of this city's main thoroughfares for hours.
He also rallied the social media networks; in Jessica's case, someone tweeted a photo of the dark-haired, full-cheeked girl to Gov. Eruviel Avila. That, apparently, did the trick: The governor ordered prosecutors to look into the case.
But the cases of many of the women who are killed or who disappear don't get such attention.
A Mexican watchdog group, the National Citizens' Observatory of Female Murders, said in a report this year that "a lack of investigation, prosecution and punishment" in Mexico state has led to a climate of impunity. It estimated that of 1,003 slayings of women during the Peña Nieto term, roughly half were unsolved and largely uninvestigated.

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