Sydney women demand end to femicide
Sydney is a long way from Juárez, the Mexican-US border city that since the early 1990s has become a women’s graveyard. Since 1993, it is estimated that more than 400 women have been murdered in this gritty city where violence and impunity have been normalised.
No perpetrator has ever been found. And the killing continues: last year 88 women were killed.
Sydney Action for Juárez (SAFJ) – a group of activists, academics and students – was formed in 2009 to draw public attention to the unresolved brutal rape, mutilation and murder of “the women of Juárez”.
SAFJ was formed as a response to an international appeal made by Artivism, a group of Mexican-based artists and activists, to keep information about the “femicide” of Juárez in the public sphere.
“We want at least 100 Sydney women marching on International Women’s Day against the killing of Mexican women,” said Pilar Angón, a SAFJ’s member. Angón, a Mexican anthropologist now living in Sydney, said the women killed belonged to the most defenceless sectors in Mexican society. “They are young, indigenous and poor,” she said.
Once a watering hole for Americans, the city of Juárez grew rapidly after Mexico signed the now discredited North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the US in the 1990s. As part of the agreement, in the search for cheap labour, hundreds of US maquiladoras (assembly plants) sprang up in Juárez, a city that grew from 1. 3 million in the mid 1990s to an end and transit point of nearly 40 million people today.
The assembly plants lured hundreds and thousands of destitute residents from all over Mexico, especially young indigenous women from the impoverished southern state of Oaxaca. The assembly plants often paid as little as US 50 cents an hour.
“The women murdered in Juárez represent a part of Mexico,” said Andrea Ballesteros, a Mexican historian. Now a Sydney resident, Ballesteros said the women from Juárez represented a society where violence has been institutionalised and impunity has become the norm. “And when violence is institutionalised there is no way of stopping it,” she said.
Most of the victims of these gruesome murders are women between 12 and 22 years of age. Amnesty International has documented 370 unresolved murders between 1993 and 2005. Many others are still missing, presumed murdered.
“The Mexican government was declared incompetent in terms of resolving and stopping these crimes against women,” said Pilar Angón.
This is one of the reasons, she said, that SAFJ has called on Sydney women to say “no more femicide in Juarez City” on International Women’s Day by joining their contingent in the march. To join, meet at the Sydney Town Hall on March 6 at 11am. Look out for women carrying pink crosses. The march will proceed to Martin Place for a rally at 12.30 pm.
SAFJ is also organising a fundraising “Concert for Juarez”, on March 13 at 7.30 pm at the Paddington Uniting Church, Eastside Arts, 395 Oxford Street, Paddington ($20/$15 Conc.). For more information contact Rosarela (9698 9949) or Liliana (0450 376672).
– By Antonio Castillo
