Abstract

Letter From Juárez

The author reports on efforts by human rights activists to put an end to a series of brutal rapes and murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Rosaisela Lascano is only 16. She was attacked and raped on December 30 by a man who left her for dead in the desert. Like thousands of others, she came from the poverty of the south to look for a better life in Ciudad Juárez with its 380 maquilas (US-and European-owned plants, using Mexico's cheap labor and paying young women less than $5 a day) built along the US border. The police were barely interested. The only one who offered to help Rosaisela was Esther Chavez--a beautiful, ever energetic and always elegant 70-year-old woman who established Casa Amiga about ten years ago as the first and only crisis center in Ju& aacute; rez to provide help to the victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. According to the authorities, some 370 young women have been found murdered since 1993, and a further seventy are still missing, although Mexican women's groups say the figure is over 400. It is Valentine's Day and a big protest march, organized by Eve Ensler and the V-Day movement and supported by Amnesty International, has brought between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Ciudad Juárez and El Paso to march through the streets of Juárez. For the past several years Ensler has called Valentine's Day "V-Day" and used her award-winning play "The Vagina Monologues" to organize actions, raise funds and create awareness of antiviolence causes around the world.