El Norte.
"We don't believe the official version of events. It was bad enough that they kidnapped him from his home, arbitrarily jailed him and continued torturing him until they injured him and then the authorities still decided to end his life." Still, authorities were standing by the official determination of the state's medical examiner, ruling the death to have been from natural causes.
In an interview following La Foca's death, Sergio Dante Almaraz, the attorney representing the surviving bus driver, contended that state officials "are eliminating us one by one." He pointed to the suspicious shooting death of his colleague, criminal lawyer Mario Escobedo Jr., by members of the state police that previous February.
One administrator with intimate knowledge of the postmortem examination disclosed that authorities had changed the "official" cause of death listed on the death certificate of Gustavo González three times before finally agreeing on a determination. The official also maintained that authorities were struggling to find someone in the department willing to sign the document: at one point, it looked as though it would be released without an official signature.
Miriam García, the wife of bus driver Víctor García, the dead man's supposed accomplice, was meanwhile insisting that González's death was no accident. García claimed that two state police officers had broken into her home several days before González's death and threatened her life. She said the men told her they would track her down and kill her if she attended a demonstration scheduled for that Friday at which Eve Ensler, author of
The Vagina Monologues,
was to address protestors rallying against the ongoing violence directed at the city's women. During the men's visit, García contended, they warned that they would kill her, her jailed husband, and Gustavo González if she dared to show up to the demonstration.
It wasn't the first time that members of the bus driver's family were targeted. Ever since police had detained the two drivers, members of both their families claimed they had been harassed and threatened. Miriam maintained that on the day that the attorney Mario Escobedo Jr. was gunned down by officers of the state police, she had received a threatening phone call from someone claiming that she too would die if she continued to speak out.
Amnesty International confirmed that it had received several reports of unknown persons surveiling the residences of the relatives of the detainees, even after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the human rights arm of the Organization of American States based in Washington, D.C., issued protection measures in 2002 on behalf of Miriam García and Blanca Guadalupe López (the wives of the accused bus drivers) and the lawyer Sergio Dante Almaraz. In addition, the commission had also granted "precautionary measures
in favor of Esther Chávez, a human rights defender who has been deeply involved in pursuing justice for these crimes, who had received a series of threats in evident connection with that work." Following the death of Gustavo González in his cell on February 8, 2003, "under circumstances that remain under investigation," the IACHR extended the protection to include Víctor García, who was still incarcerated at the state-run prison.
The IACHR had received a formal request in late 2001 signed by hundreds of organizations and individuals, asking that the commission's special rapporteur visit Mexico to examine the situation. Noting that more than two hundred women had been murdered in the state of Chihuahua since 1993, the signers suggested that inefficacy on the part of law enforcement was responsible for the ongoing murders.
The three-day visit commenced in Ciudad Juárez on February 11, continued with meetings in Mexico City on February 12, and concluded with a press conference on February 13,2002. During her visit, the special rapporteur, Dr. Marta Altolaguirre, met with nearly two dozen prominent federal authorities and conducted interviews with officials of the state of Chihuahua and of Ciudad Juárez, who presented information about the killing of 268 women and girls since 1993.
Among those interviewed were Suly Ponce, now the regional coordinator of the North Zone, and Zulema Bolívar, special prosecutor for the investigation of the women's murders. Information and testimony from victims' relatives and from representatives of nongovernmental human rights organizations and other representatives at the local and national level were also solicited. Pioneer activist Esther Chávez was among those who spoke.
In her 24-page report, Dr. Altolaguirre noted that the homicide rates for women had "experienced an unusually sharp rise in Ciudad Juárez in 1993" and had remained elevated since that time. It also suggested that the rate of homicide for women compared to that of men "was significantly higher than other similarly situated cities" and that the "brutal circumstances" of the murders and the "possible character as serial killings" had focused attention on the ongoing situation.
The report noted that based on the information provided by those interviewed, the root of the violence was "integrally related to a larger situation of gender-based violence that includes disappearances, other sexual crimes and domestic violence."
Among the deficiencies noted was an inability on the part of the victims or their families to obtain "prompt access to effective judicial protection and guarantees," and a common denominator in a majority of the cases was identified as a pattern of "historical gender-based discrimination.
"The denial of an effective response both springs from and feeds back into the perception that violence against women most illustratively domestic violence is not a serious crime," Dr. Altolaguirre wrote. "The lack of an effective official response is part and parcel of the larger context of discrimination."
Dr. Altolaguirre suggested "the lack of basic information" from authorities had led to "a profound lack of confidence" on the part of family members of the missing and murdered girls, as well as the community as a whole.
"Family members in these and other cases reported having received conflicting or confusing information from the authorities, and having been treated dismissively or even disrespectfully or aggressively when they sought information about the investigations."
The report cited one instance in which a family member had reportedly been denied the possibility to see the remains "for her own protection," and other cases in which the remains "had not yet been returned to the presumed families."
In addition, it noted that certain families "expressed grave doubts as to whether the body of their loved one had really been found, or whether they might keep hoping that the person reported missing was still alive."
In the case of the cotton field killings, the report explained that while DNA tests had been ordered, months had passed with "no answers." "As of October of 2002, authorities of the PGJE [state prosecutor's office] indicated to the Commission that the results of these tests had not yet been received."
While authorities pointed to the detention of bus drivers Gustavo González Meza and Javier "Víctor" García Uribe in connection with these crimes as evidence of its "prompt response," the report noted that "numerous individuals, including some Mexican state officials," had voiced concerns about allegations "that these detainees had been tortured to coerce confessions."
In fact, Dr. Altolaguirre had received "two distinct sets of medical certificates" during her visit documenting the suspects' injuries once in custody.
"The set provided by the PGJE [the state's prosecutor's office] was prepared by the Department of Legal Medicine on November 11, 2001, at 02:40 and 02:45 hours, respectively," the report stated. "The certificate relative to González indicates no external signs of violence, while that relative to García refers to a small zone of equimosis [bruise] on his right arm that would heal in less than 15 days.
"The other set of certificates, prepared by the Medical Unit of the detention center at 21:00 hours on November 11, 2001, attested in the case of González to 'multiple quemaduras en genitales' [multiples burns to the genitals] and areas of equimosis in the area of the thorax and edema.
"In the case of García, it refers to 'multiples quemaduras de 1
er
grado en genitales' [multiple first-degree burns to the genitals] and
marks on his right arm."
Despite public allegations of torture and complaints to state officials that the confessions were coerced, "the judiciary rejected the claims with respect to coercion as unsubstantiated," the report stated.
It was further noted that information obtained during the visit suggested that "only a small number of files (fewer than 10) were transferred from the prosecutor in charge of missing persons to the prosecutor for homicides" and "a delay on the part of authorities in initiating investigations
.
"On the one hand
family members who went to police to report a missing person might be told to return in 48 hours, with the explanation that the missing woman or girl must have gone off with a boyfriend and would soon return. On the other hand, they indicated that even with a missing person's report, the response was neither rapid nor comprehensive."
Authorities acknowledged that, in the past, the police tended to require such a lapse of time before taking a missing persons report, but claimed "this had been remedied through changes in policy."
Still, Dr. Altolaguirre found that "while there have been some important advances, the response of the Mexican State to the killings and other forms of violence against women has been, and remains, seriously deficient."
Remarkably, even after the visit by the special rapporteur for the IAHRC and the release of her highly critical report, similar accusations of police brutality and torture continued coming out of the state capital.
In 1999, authorities in Chihuahua City began noticing the bodies of young women turning up murdered in the state's capital city, just as in Ciudad Juárez. The numbers had risen even higher by March 2003. One case in particular was drawing international attention, first because the sixteen-year-old victim was the daughter of a powerful Chihuahua family, and also because authorities had arrested an American woman and her Mexican-born husband for the murder. The couple was alleging tortured at the hands of police officers who forced them to sign confessions to the murder of the sixteen-year-old, Viviana Rayas. Their accounts of torture while in police custody were eerily similar to those of bus drivers Gustavo González and Víctor García.
While the story of what happened to Viviana Rayas is long and convoluted, her case gained international attention after it was learned that police had allegedly used underhanded tactics to make an arrest in the young girl's homicide. According to authorities, the teen disappeared on March 16. She was last seen at a city park, where her father had dropped her to do homework with some schoolmates.
It was nearing four o'clock when José Rayas, a powerful union leader, let the child out of the car that afternoon, with the understanding that he would see her at home later that evening. The slender teen with the flowing hair and cocoa brown eyes had spent nearly an hour and a half studying with her peers before waving good-bye at a nearby bus stop, from which Viviana would make her way back to her upper-class enclave.
It was after 8 p.m. when her parents arrived home that night to find that their daughter was not there.
Frantic, José Rayas grabbed the phone and mobilized his entire union chapter to search for his daughter. For months, police followed every lead the powerful union leader brought to their attention. While officers appeared to be doing little investigating of their own, they continued to diligently research the countless tips being delivered by Rayas all of which led nowhere.
Viviana Rayas was the eighth young woman to disappear in the city of Chihuahua since December 2002. The first victim, Paloma Angélica Escobar Ledezma, had turned up dead nearly a month after she vanished. Her raped and tortured body had been tossed near the main road to Ciudad Juárez.
Word of Rayas's disappearance prompted members of Amnesty International to call for an immediate investigation, with full cooperation from state and federal authorities. Yet only after the child's father threatened to shut down the city's transportation system by calling for a strike did a lead surface in the case.
The angry ultimatum came on May 26, when José Rayas led demonstrators to the private home of then Attorney General Jesús Solís Silva. A megaphone in hand, he shouted his message directly into the politician's window: "Either my daughter is found and those responsible for her fate are arrested, or I will see to it that all the road workers in the state walk off the job, including the toll takers."
Not surprisingly, two days later there was movement in the case. The head of the attorney general's office telephoned Rayas on May 28, alerting him to a body that had been recovered about five kilometers off a desert highway. Two women en route to a pilgrimage site had reportedly spotted the decomposing corpse and run to alert police.
The following evening, police detained American Cynthia Kiecker and her Mexican husband, Ulises Perzábal. The couple's arrest and subsequent interrogation came after a tipster contacted the victim's father from a public phone booth and urged Rayas to check out the owners of a local jewelry shop Kiecker and Perzábal. The caller claimed the couple were odd, with long hair and tattoos, and that strange things took place at their boutique, which stayed open late into the evening. One of the allegations was that the male owner liked to photograph young girls who frequented his shop, an accusation that has never been substantiated. Another was that the couple hosted parties where sex and drugs were free-flowing.
