Juarez Part I
For once I am actually going to follow through on a promise related to LJ and update about my Juarez trip. So brace yourselves, this could get long and ugly.
I'm not sure everyone followed the major, major amounts of drama that led up to the delegation, but let's suffice it to say that I was definitely ready to be away from Amherst for awhile, but not so much looking forward to spending a week with Scout and Emily together. Tia dropped out literally the night before I left, so that was just another issue we had to deal with.
Anyway, Em and I arrive in El Paso close to the same time, and we go to our hotel for the evening/night. Saturday night wasn't too exciting, we had a brief "orientation" which basically involved going over the schedule again with only about half the group (since the other half hadn't arrived yet). There really should have been a more thorough orientation like last years (which was basically an overview of the whole situation, given by a professor of women's studies from the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez). Em and I had dinner at this crazy Mexican bar place, so that was kind of fun. There were a bunch of army guys there from Ft Bliss, they were on their weekend off and staying in our hotel. At 3am, they banged on our door, piss drunk, screaming things like "this is where the chicks are, I saw them!" and "There's only 2 of them, but 5 of us... it'll be like an orgy!" That was kind of scary. So didn't get too much sleep that night.
We got up and were supposed to cross the border into Juarez around 9am, but there was a problem with our transportation (we couldn't contact our driver or something), so we didn't leave on time. The first day, we were meeting with two groups whose goals were to lessen the women's reliance on the maquilas for work. The first was called La Colectiva de las Hormigas (the Ant Collective) and it was run by two ex-nuns who gave psychological and career help to the women. They used to run buses back and forth between the colonias and the maquilas, but the transportation cartel ran a couple of their buses off the road, so they stopped. That meeting was an absolute disaster because the girl (Abby) who was supposed to be translating had never done it before and she was not good at it. Her Spanish just wasn't that good, frankly. So everyone was getting really frustrated. I should explain, the delegation was the 3 of us from Amherst, 1 law student from the University of Toledo (in Ohio, not Spain), and 12 law students from American University who originally wanted it to be just them. The American students by this point, after the transportation problems and the translation, were really fed up with MSN (the organization leading the trip, of whom Abby and Macrina were with us). We left our luggage at Las Hormigas and walked through the colonia to the Grupo Esperanza, which is a group of women who have escaped working the maquilas by starting a business that installs ecological toilets all over the colonias. After that meeting, we walked back to Las Hormigas, thinking a bus would get us from there. But after an hour, there was no bus, so 5 cars came and we put all our stuff in them (not really understanding where we were going) and rode to a different colonia across town (a slightly richer one with actual water and electical services) where we would be staying with families. We figured out who would be staying where, and then Em and Macrina went to go pick up Scout from the El Paso airport. Well, there was a problem with Macrina's visa and they wouldn't let her cross, so Em had to go by herself and it was this huge ordeal, and I don't know why they wouldn't let me go too, but everyone got back and we went to our house with our adorable 6 year old "sister" and they took us to this back "guest house" which was basically a shack insulated in cardboard. It was FREEZING cold that night, so once again, not too much sleep.
Monday, we went to the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez for an International Women's Day event. It was supposed to be a lecture on feminism, the premier of a documentary about the murders, and then workshops. But the problem was, everything was in Spanish, so only about half of us understood, and the format made translation (already a big problem) practically impossible. So the American students staged a coup and pulled us all outside during the first lecture, SCREAMED at Abby and Macrina about all the issues and frustrations they'd been having, and basically decided to just sit outside and be irritated all day. So Em, Scout, and I take advantage of the fact that just about everyone important in activism in Juarez is at this event, and we start asking random people questions and videotaping it, we get interviews with Cynthia Bejerano (co-founder of Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez and prof of criminal justice at NMSC) and Ester Chavez (amazing woman, founder of Casa Amiga, Juarez's only rape crisis center). So basically, we made it a good day for our project. Too bad for those other suckers. Macrina spent all day trying to figure out what to do about transport, since we were still supposed to go to Chihuahua that night, but the bus driver still couldn't be found. Instead we stayed in a very nice hotel in Juarez. I tried to transcribe Ester's interview, but the tape quality was so bad I was getting very frustrated. Bed late, up at 5:45am, still no sleep. We also had a meeting with Lucha Castro (a truly wonderful human rights lawyer, and my absolute hero of life. plus, she remembered us!!! the best moment of the trip, seriously).
We left at 6am for the 5 hour bus ride to Chihuahua, having finally located our driver. We make it only for the absolute end of the World March for Women, right as the ceremony is over and breaking up. Still, Em and I grab Graciela Ramos to interview her. We then have 2 hours to wander Chihuahua Center, so we start looking for food and internet. Most of it's fast food (unacceptable to me) or taco stands (unacceptable to Em) so we (Scout's with us too) settle for Dip n' Dots. We find an internet cafe, and check email, Scout and I leave Em there to finish, and Scout gets mad about Em wanting to check her email, and about her pushing me to transcribe, and causes a big scene while we're waiting for the bus to come. Emily waits until she leaves, makes sure that I'm still okay, and we resolve things, but it was still a mess with Scout. We spent the rest of the day dealing with that mess. Then we had meetings at night with Gabino Gomez (a huge anti-NAFTA activist), Alma Gomez (Gabino's wife, and a co-director of Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas), Patricia Cervantes (mother of Neyra Azucena Cervanted who was killed), and Carmenita Arguate (mother of David Meza, accused of killing his cousin, Neyra, and imprisoned). We finally get to the hotel after a really intense day, in which there was basically no food, and then there's more drama because the American kids are all upset that they have to pay for this book MSN made about the situation. Ugh.
I'm going to take a break from my account now to tell you the story of Neyra and David. And then I'll finish this in another entry, because this is taking forever. If you've read this far you must be really interested :)
Neyra Cervantes disappeared in May of 2003. Her cousin, David, was in Chiapas where he lived at the time of her disappearance. Three days after her disappearance, the families consulted and decided that David, the only single adult in the family, should fly up to Chihuahua to help search for his cousin. Every day, David and Neyra's parents (Patricia and Jesus) went to the police to check up on the report. One day, the state prosecutor threatened David that if he didn't shut up and stop asking questions, they'd shup him up in three days. Three days later, they suddenly found Neyra's body in the Cuernas de la Luna outside the City. They called the family to look at her bones and detained Jesus and David for questioning. After 3 days of intense torture, they released Jesus and indicted David for the murder of Neyra using his confession (extorted under torture) as the only evidence. They claim he hired someone to kidnap her while he was in Chiapas, then when he arrived, he collected her, took her at gunpoint up the hill, then raped her and shot her in the head. The skull they had with the body had no bullet hole in it. When the family pointed it out to the authorities, the next day there was a new skull with a bullet hole instead. David's trial is over, he is waiting to be sentenced, but recently the family sent a picture of the skull and a small bone to a forensics lab in CA. The DNA results on the bone were contradictory with the ones from the Mexican forensics lab, and the skull was, in their determination, a man's skull, clearly not Neyra's. His sentence should come soon. More on that in the next update.
I'm not sure everyone followed the major, major amounts of drama that led up to the delegation, but let's suffice it to say that I was definitely ready to be away from Amherst for awhile, but not so much looking forward to spending a week with Scout and Emily together. Tia dropped out literally the night before I left, so that was just another issue we had to deal with.
Anyway, Em and I arrive in El Paso close to the same time, and we go to our hotel for the evening/night. Saturday night wasn't too exciting, we had a brief "orientation" which basically involved going over the schedule again with only about half the group (since the other half hadn't arrived yet). There really should have been a more thorough orientation like last years (which was basically an overview of the whole situation, given by a professor of women's studies from the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez). Em and I had dinner at this crazy Mexican bar place, so that was kind of fun. There were a bunch of army guys there from Ft Bliss, they were on their weekend off and staying in our hotel. At 3am, they banged on our door, piss drunk, screaming things like "this is where the chicks are, I saw them!" and "There's only 2 of them, but 5 of us... it'll be like an orgy!" That was kind of scary. So didn't get too much sleep that night.
We got up and were supposed to cross the border into Juarez around 9am, but there was a problem with our transportation (we couldn't contact our driver or something), so we didn't leave on time. The first day, we were meeting with two groups whose goals were to lessen the women's reliance on the maquilas for work. The first was called La Colectiva de las Hormigas (the Ant Collective) and it was run by two ex-nuns who gave psychological and career help to the women. They used to run buses back and forth between the colonias and the maquilas, but the transportation cartel ran a couple of their buses off the road, so they stopped. That meeting was an absolute disaster because the girl (Abby) who was supposed to be translating had never done it before and she was not good at it. Her Spanish just wasn't that good, frankly. So everyone was getting really frustrated. I should explain, the delegation was the 3 of us from Amherst, 1 law student from the University of Toledo (in Ohio, not Spain), and 12 law students from American University who originally wanted it to be just them. The American students by this point, after the transportation problems and the translation, were really fed up with MSN (the organization leading the trip, of whom Abby and Macrina were with us). We left our luggage at Las Hormigas and walked through the colonia to the Grupo Esperanza, which is a group of women who have escaped working the maquilas by starting a business that installs ecological toilets all over the colonias. After that meeting, we walked back to Las Hormigas, thinking a bus would get us from there. But after an hour, there was no bus, so 5 cars came and we put all our stuff in them (not really understanding where we were going) and rode to a different colonia across town (a slightly richer one with actual water and electical services) where we would be staying with families. We figured out who would be staying where, and then Em and Macrina went to go pick up Scout from the El Paso airport. Well, there was a problem with Macrina's visa and they wouldn't let her cross, so Em had to go by herself and it was this huge ordeal, and I don't know why they wouldn't let me go too, but everyone got back and we went to our house with our adorable 6 year old "sister" and they took us to this back "guest house" which was basically a shack insulated in cardboard. It was FREEZING cold that night, so once again, not too much sleep.
Monday, we went to the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez for an International Women's Day event. It was supposed to be a lecture on feminism, the premier of a documentary about the murders, and then workshops. But the problem was, everything was in Spanish, so only about half of us understood, and the format made translation (already a big problem) practically impossible. So the American students staged a coup and pulled us all outside during the first lecture, SCREAMED at Abby and Macrina about all the issues and frustrations they'd been having, and basically decided to just sit outside and be irritated all day. So Em, Scout, and I take advantage of the fact that just about everyone important in activism in Juarez is at this event, and we start asking random people questions and videotaping it, we get interviews with Cynthia Bejerano (co-founder of Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez and prof of criminal justice at NMSC) and Ester Chavez (amazing woman, founder of Casa Amiga, Juarez's only rape crisis center). So basically, we made it a good day for our project. Too bad for those other suckers. Macrina spent all day trying to figure out what to do about transport, since we were still supposed to go to Chihuahua that night, but the bus driver still couldn't be found. Instead we stayed in a very nice hotel in Juarez. I tried to transcribe Ester's interview, but the tape quality was so bad I was getting very frustrated. Bed late, up at 5:45am, still no sleep. We also had a meeting with Lucha Castro (a truly wonderful human rights lawyer, and my absolute hero of life. plus, she remembered us!!! the best moment of the trip, seriously).
We left at 6am for the 5 hour bus ride to Chihuahua, having finally located our driver. We make it only for the absolute end of the World March for Women, right as the ceremony is over and breaking up. Still, Em and I grab Graciela Ramos to interview her. We then have 2 hours to wander Chihuahua Center, so we start looking for food and internet. Most of it's fast food (unacceptable to me) or taco stands (unacceptable to Em) so we (Scout's with us too) settle for Dip n' Dots. We find an internet cafe, and check email, Scout and I leave Em there to finish, and Scout gets mad about Em wanting to check her email, and about her pushing me to transcribe, and causes a big scene while we're waiting for the bus to come. Emily waits until she leaves, makes sure that I'm still okay, and we resolve things, but it was still a mess with Scout. We spent the rest of the day dealing with that mess. Then we had meetings at night with Gabino Gomez (a huge anti-NAFTA activist), Alma Gomez (Gabino's wife, and a co-director of Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas), Patricia Cervantes (mother of Neyra Azucena Cervanted who was killed), and Carmenita Arguate (mother of David Meza, accused of killing his cousin, Neyra, and imprisoned). We finally get to the hotel after a really intense day, in which there was basically no food, and then there's more drama because the American kids are all upset that they have to pay for this book MSN made about the situation. Ugh.
I'm going to take a break from my account now to tell you the story of Neyra and David. And then I'll finish this in another entry, because this is taking forever. If you've read this far you must be really interested :)
Neyra Cervantes disappeared in May of 2003. Her cousin, David, was in Chiapas where he lived at the time of her disappearance. Three days after her disappearance, the families consulted and decided that David, the only single adult in the family, should fly up to Chihuahua to help search for his cousin. Every day, David and Neyra's parents (Patricia and Jesus) went to the police to check up on the report. One day, the state prosecutor threatened David that if he didn't shut up and stop asking questions, they'd shup him up in three days. Three days later, they suddenly found Neyra's body in the Cuernas de la Luna outside the City. They called the family to look at her bones and detained Jesus and David for questioning. After 3 days of intense torture, they released Jesus and indicted David for the murder of Neyra using his confession (extorted under torture) as the only evidence. They claim he hired someone to kidnap her while he was in Chiapas, then when he arrived, he collected her, took her at gunpoint up the hill, then raped her and shot her in the head. The skull they had with the body had no bullet hole in it. When the family pointed it out to the authorities, the next day there was a new skull with a bullet hole instead. David's trial is over, he is waiting to be sentenced, but recently the family sent a picture of the skull and a small bone to a forensics lab in CA. The DNA results on the bone were contradictory with the ones from the Mexican forensics lab, and the skull was, in their determination, a man's skull, clearly not Neyra's. His sentence should come soon. More on that in the next update.