{"id":1425,"date":"2012-12-09T13:32:01","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T21:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcs.org\/archive-2017\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2012-12-09T13:32:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T21:32:01","slug":"for-the-women-of-ciudad-juarez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2012\/12\/09\/for-the-women-of-ciudad-juarez\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Women of Ciudad Juarez"},"content":{"rendered":"

MALCS Member Rosa-Linda Fregoso read the December 3, 2012 Mujeres Talk essay on Human Trafficking<\/a> legislation and wanted to share her own essay “For the Women of Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez” from FeministWire<\/a> on memorials to the murdered and disappeared women of Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez:\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

By Rosalinda Fregoso
\nCrossposted from The Feminist Wire,<\/em> 12\/3\/12<\/a><\/p>\n

In late September of 2012, we gathered at the site where the remains of eight murdered women and girls were found in an open field known as el Campo Algodonero (The Cottonwood Field), located across from the maquiladora industry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s headquarters in Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez. Since the discovery of their bodies eleven years ago this November, Campo Algodonero has been an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unofficial memorial,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a gathering site for public art installations, performances, and protests denouncing the ongoing terror of feminicide in the border region. This year, the site became an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153official memorial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d funded by the government after an international court found Mexico guilty of negligence in the Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez feminicides.<\/p>\n

Claudia Yvette Gonz\u00c3\u00a1lez, Laura Berenice Ramos Mon\u00c3\u00a1rrez, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Mar\u00c3\u00ada de los Angeles Acosta Ram\u00c3\u00adrez, Mayra Juliana Reyes Sol\u00c3\u00ads, Ver\u00c3\u00b3nica Mart\u00c3\u00adnez Hern\u00c3\u00a1ndez, Merl\u00c3\u00adn Elizabeth Rodr\u00c3\u00adguez S\u00c3\u00a1enz, Mar\u00c3\u00ada Rocina Galicia<\/div>\n

The last time I stood here, Campo Algodonero was a barren field, the only objects on its grounds were eight crosses painted in the iconic pink, each bearing a slain woman or girl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name. The crosses are still standing although now encircled by the walls of the newly configured memorial site, a small urban park bordered to one side by a heavily-trafficked boulevard, to the other by two newly-built apartment complexes which overlook the park\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interior space. Our tour guide to the Campo Algodonero memorial site is Dr. Julia Mon\u00c3\u00a1rrez, lead expert on feminicide and researcher at the COLEF (Colegio de la Frontera-Norte), where a two-day international seminar on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bodies and Borders\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had just taken place. When the eight of us arrived in the late afternoon the memorial site was empty, despite the bustling sounds of street traffic, police sirens, dogs barking, children playing.<\/p>\n

The Campo Algodonero memorial is clean and unassuming, three undulating walls mark its perimeters, separating the park from the exterior urban scape, its sandstone colored walls, paths, blue-mosaic waterways and curving walkway leading to polished marble-top stone benches appear to be designed as spaces for public and private reflection. The park\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s architecture draws visitors to four major focal points.<\/p>\n

To the right of the entrance, a plaque dedicates the memorial \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To the memory of the women and girl victims of gender violence in Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d At our next stop, the names of the women found at Campo Algodonero (Claudia Yvette Gonz\u00c3\u00a1lez, Laura Berenice Ramos Mon\u00c3\u00a1rrez, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Mar\u00c3\u00ada de los Angeles Acosta Ram\u00c3\u00adrez, Mayra Juliana Reyes Sol\u00c3\u00ads, Ver\u00c3\u00b3nica Mart\u00c3\u00adnez Hern\u00c3\u00a1ndez, Merl\u00c3\u00adn Elizabeth Rodr\u00c3\u00adguez S\u00c3\u00a1enz, Mar\u00c3\u00ada Rocina Galicia) are engraved on a wall, in a marble-encased panel. The adjacent memory wall is partially filled with names of additional women who were murdered in the city. Next we faced the shrine bearing a large cross, painted in the iconic pink, a tribute to and recognition of the mothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 cross campaign for justice. Finally, at the far side of the memorial site, we reached the large bronze scupture, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flor de Arena,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d designed by Chilean artist Veronica Leiton.<\/p>\n

Like other national memorial sites, Campo Algodonero recognizes the victims of feminicide and their survivors. The engraving of names on the memory wall is a way of making visible the women and girls whom the government attempted erase and disappear from public memory. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Naming,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as a common form of remembering and memorializing, also transforms the memorial site into a place for mourning the women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deaths, honoring their lives and reflecting on atrocities that profoundly affected the community.<\/p>\n

In countries undergoing transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy, it is common for repentant governments to erect a national monument to human rights atrocities as a form of reckoning with a violent past and truth-telling about their transgression of human rights norms. Often times, governments resist demands for a public memorial to traumatic event in the history of the nation, refusing to take full responsibility for human rights abuses, preferring instead to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forget,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153move on\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153put the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past behind,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in Argentina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s initial \u00e2\u20ac\u0153punto final\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (final point) doctrine of the 1980s. Governments that erect official monuments to atrocities often do so reluctantly, acquiescing to collective demands for public accountability, justice, and truth, to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nunca m\u00c3\u00a1s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Never Again) campaigns. In Mexico\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, to a court-ordered mandate against a negligent state.<\/p>\n

In April 2009, the Inter-American Human Rights Court issued a landmark ruling in the case of Gonz\u00c3\u00a1lez and Others (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Campo Algodonero) v. Mexico, declaring Mexico responsible for the murders of Claudia Yvette Gonz\u00c3\u00a1lez, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, and Laura Berenice, three of the eight women found in el Campo Algodonero. At its 39th session in Santiago, Chile, the international tribunal set a precedent throughout the Am\u00c3\u00a9ricas, affirming the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obligations to respond to violence against women by private actors; examining the Campo Algodonero case in the context of mass violence against women and structural discrimination; and finding that gender based violence constitutes a form of gender discrimination.<\/p>\n

For Karla Micheel Salas, lawyer for the families of the slain women, the Court\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision was equally notable for its unprecedented \u00e2\u20ac\u0153recognition of the term, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfeminicide.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Similar to the term, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genocide,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d first coined by Polish international lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to describe what the Turks did to the Armenians in Turkey, feminicide provides an analytic and legal framework for locating state accountability around \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crimes against women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life and liberty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

At Mujeres Talk<\/a>: “…the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 [is] the first federal law to address comprehensively trafficking as a crime on both the international and domestic fronts.”<\/div>\n

In its historic decision, the IAHRC declared Mexico in violation of its human rights obligations as specified in the 1994 Bel\u00c3\u00a9m do Par\u00c3\u00a1 Convention and the 1978 American Convention of Human Rights, for failing to effectively investigate, prosecute, and prevent crimes against women, thereby denying the families of the women and girls due access to justice. In a 167-page ruling the international tribunal ordered Mexico to comply with sixteen remedial measures, including reparations to family member, legal costs, renewed investigations into the murders, investigations of law enforcement officials responsible for the obstruction of justice, and building a national monument to the three murdered women. Three years after the tribunal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ruling, the government inaugurated the national monument at Campo Algodonero.<\/p>\n

Flor de Arena sculpture
\nNamed for the region\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s topography, Veronica Leiton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Flor de Arena is the centerpiece of the national monument. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The inspiration for Flor de Arena comes from fossils native to desert zones,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Leiton explains, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fossils made of sand and shaped in the form of roses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Several years ago, Leiton came to the region from Chile via Cuba, to conduct theater workshops in Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez. A member of the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arts collective, Antigona, Leiton competed with ten other artists in the design of a sculpture for the national monument. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The concept came to me in forty minutes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she told me recently. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Conceptually, I aimed for something delicate and very dignified, not grotesque. I envisioned an homage to 1,500 women and girls, which would convey the idea of transformation and transmutation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

There is alchemy to the sculpture. Its pedestal, shaped like a desert rose, transforms into a female figure, fifteen roses strewn across her full-length gown, each rose symbolizing 100 women; a petal from the desert rose turns into a swirling mantle which bears the reoccurring given-name of fifteen hundred women and girls; the woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart becomes a fountain whose water trickles down towards the fifteen roses. For Leiton, every detail bears deep symbolism.<\/p>\n

Each of the sculpture\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roses is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153distinctly unique, like the girls and women, each one is different,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Leiton tells me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The statue represents a strong and young woman, a female image who projects calm and reflection, wearing the gaze of liberation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The heart contains memory, according to Leiton, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the memory of the women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pain and suffering, which the water flowing onto the fifteen roses is meant to soothe and cleanse.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For Leiton, the water fountain symbolizes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the transmutation of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weeping into a commemorative elegy for the victims of our city.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The memorial generated some controversy. At the memorial\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dedication in August, twenty members of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mothers and Families of Disappeared Women,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who were not on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153official\u00e2\u20ac\u009d invitation list, showed up anyway, demanding justice. If government officials anticipated closing a chapter on the past with this event, they seemed stunned by mothers challenging the official version of the past. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No queremos un monumento, las queremos a ellas. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Vivas las llevaron, vivas las queremos,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the mothers chanted. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want a monument, we want our daughters. They were taken alive, we want them back alive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).<\/p>\n

As Mexico\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Alejandro Poir\u00c3\u00a9 and Chihuahua Governor C\u00c3\u00a9sar Duarte officiated the dedication of Leiton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bronze sculpture, the mothers chided the authorities for wasteful spending on the memorial and expressed their heightened disillusion and outrage with the second generation of feminicides, ongoing impunity, and lack of justice. As the government officials stood up to leave, one of the mothers interjected, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the apology is missing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Secretary of State Poir\u00c3\u00a9 apologized, telling the mothers \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI have a daughter and cannot imagine your suffering.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 One mother responded, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOf course not, you cannot imagine what we are suffering because your daughter will never experience what ours have.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I asked Leiton if she lamented the abrupt ending to the ceremony, after all, it was the official unveiling of Flor de Arena. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not at all,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she replied. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always felt close to the mothers. They apologized afterwards and I said to them, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fine, I would have done even worse things.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I told the group of thirty mothers who remained after the ceremony that the sculpture was dedicated to the families with all my love and I explained the meanings behind every detail. They were very attentive and emotional. I shared the experience of Chile, where the government also erected an official memorial, which the Chilean people later re-appropriated as their own space.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

This is what Leiton envisions will happen in Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez. For the culture of fear continues to be palpable in a city traumatized by two decades of feminicides, impunity, and lack of justice. Leiton hopes the people will recapture public spaces like the Campo Algodonero memorial, transform them into sites of alternative truth-telling and memory, empowering and unifying the community in the struggle for justice and social change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MALCS Member Rosa-Linda Fregoso read the December 3, 2012 Mujeres Talk essay on Human Trafficking legislation and wanted to share her own essay “For the Women of Ciudad Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez” from FeministWire on memorials to the murdered and disappeared women of Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez:\u00c2\u00a0 By Rosalinda Fregoso Crossposted from The Feminist Wire, 12\/3\/12 In late September of 2012, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general-news","7":"category-mujeres-talk","8":"entry","9":"override"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":417,"url":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2010\/07\/27\/more-violence-against-the-women-of-juarez\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":0},"title":"More Violence Against the Women of Juarez","author":"la Webjefa","date":"July 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"By Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez, from the blog of Ms. Magazine ... Before I finished my Ph.D., I worked in the cosmetics industry for ten years as a makeup artist for Lauder Corp, which owns such prestige brands as Clinique, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown and MAC. The cosmetics industry is often a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Members in the news"","block_context":{"text":"Members in the news","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/category\/members-in-the-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2007\/04\/06\/congrats-to-ana-juarez-for-nsf-ug-research-grant\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":1},"title":"Congrats to Ana Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez for NSF UG Research grant","author":"la Webjefa","date":"April 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Congratulations to Texas State University Anthropology professor Ana Ju\u00c3\u00a1rez for receiving NSF funding for the \"Research Experience for Undergraduate Site on Culture and Globalization in Highland Guatemala\" program. 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She was watching television on the morning her uncles appeared with news of his death, and much later she would be tormented by the day of his return. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corpse arrived in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":781,"url":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2011\/09\/23\/mujeres-talk-pensamientos-from-the-field-on-mexican-women-caring-for-north-americans\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":3},"title":"MUJERES TALK Pensamientos from the “Field”: On Mexican Women Caring for North Americans","author":"la Webjefa","date":"September 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"We have renovated the page for Mujeres Talk, the new MALCS web project featuring blog essays by members and allies on current issues and research. \u00c2\u00a0This\u00c2\u00a0latest post is by Professor Mar\u00c3\u00ada Ibarra. \u00c2\u00a0We invite all members and allies to write for Mujeres Talk.\u00c2\u00a0 Send entries of 500 - 1000 words\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General News"","block_context":{"text":"General News","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/category\/general-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":75,"url":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2007\/01\/07\/new-pub-the-color-of-violence\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":4},"title":"New pub: The Color of Violence","author":"la Webjefa","date":"January 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Estimad@s Colegas, Please take a look and consider using this in your courses, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 Renee Saucedo's piece on immigration enforcement violence against migrant women, Sylvanna Falcon's piece on border violence against women (she introduces the term \"militarized border rape,\") and Rosa Linda Fregoso's piece on Juarez would add substantially to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Publications"","block_context":{"text":"New Publications","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/category\/new-publications\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1258,"url":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/2012\/08\/09\/special-issue-chicanalatina-testimonios-mapping-the-methodological-pedagogical-and-political\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":5},"title":"Special issue: “Chicana\/Latina Testimonios: Mapping the Methodological, Pedagogical, and Political","author":"la Webjefa","date":"August 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Equity & Excellence in Education 45:3, 363-72 (2012) Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebeca Burciaga & Judith Flores Carmona, While the genre of testimonio has deep roots in oral cultures and in Latin American human rights struggles, the publication and subsequent adoption of This Bridge called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1983)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Congratulations!"","block_context":{"text":"Congratulations!","link":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/category\/congratulations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malcs.org\/archive-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}