On a recent trip home to visit my relatives in Kansas, I made a point of asking every relative—man and woman—if they had ever heard of the Juarez murders. Not a single one had. A couple mentioned having heard of some violence down there, knowing that it was a “rough city,” but nobody knew the details. And these were intelligent, well-educated persons, ranging in profession from accountants to lawyers to stay-at-home mothers. These people read the news; they were, supposedly, informed.
Just why has a massacre of women on a such a large scale gone mostly unnoticed? Is it because our media isn’t covering the issue? In short, no. The media has probably not granted this situation as much coverage as would be desirable, that’s true, but there have been attempts to raise awareness. V-Day, an organization dedicated to stopping violence against women that originated in response to Eve Ensler’s play Vagina Monologues, sparked interest by making its 2004 focus the missing women of Juarez. Media in the United States and abroad have run special reports addressing the problem. The United States Congress recently passed a resolution conveying the sympathy of Congress to the families of the young women murdered in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico, and encouraging increased United States involvement in bringing an end to these crimes. However, the fact remains that these murders are continuing today, and the average woman in America is not cognizant of them.
So why aren’t we talking about the women of Juarez and Chihuahua? Is it because their murders are occurring, just barely, across our borders? Is it because the women being murdered are mostly Mexican, and almost uniformly poor? Or is it because of a large-scale Mexican government cover-up conspiracy?
These are all theories that advocates to stop the violence posit to suggest the lack of public interest in the United States that these atrocities have received. But whatever the cause or causes, this violence towards women should no longer be ignored.
Here are the facts as we know them, though because of the large number of women murdered who aren’t reported, as well as the alleged cover-ups of theses crimes, these numbers are at best, estimates. According to MSN, within the last decade, over four hundred women in the cities of Chihuahua and Juarez have been killed. A significant number of these women are young and work in the maquiladora sector in sweatshops for poverty level wages.
