Crimes of the Valley
In a context of extreme violence and political corruption, human rights defenders in Ciudad Juárez are supporting victims and advocating for the changes needed to stem the tide of disappearances - by Sydney Martinez
Behind the barren geography of Chihuahua lies a hidden world filled with crime and corruption. “The Valley” which includes part of Ciudad Juárez and the municipalities of Praxedis G. Guerrero and Guadalupe was once a thriving agricultural area throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Practices rooted in the ejido tradition where farmers who grew alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum enhanced the region’s population and industry. However, as costs of living started to rise in this part of Mexico, so did the maquiladoras which became a main source of employment because of their practicality and cheap labour practices.
The valley soon became subjected to a lack of industry and, in the present day, has become associated with criminal dynamics and violence. Then President Calderón’s “War on Drugs” (2006-2012) led to the horrific murders of entire families and ultimately drove two-thirds of the population out of the area. The Municipality of Guadalupe, which held more than 12,000 residents in 2006, has just over 4,200 today.
However, the most concerning issue that the valley faces are the various disappearances across the valley that are thought to be perpetrated by organised crime groups and the negligence by government officials.
Crimes of the Valley
Despite the call for effective government regulation, organised crime groups and the disappearances associated with them remain rampant. Human and drug trafficking resulting in disappearances between the frontier of Chihuahua and the United States are widely ignored on each side of the border - statistics show that there are 116 ongoing missing person cases across the municipalities of the Valley, 62 clandestine graves of unidentified individuals in the municipalities of Praxedis and Guadalupe, and 280 individuals whose remains have not been identified.
There are numerous motivations for individuals to cross the border into the United States, with many deciding to take the risk in search of better working conditions and higher salaries. This was the case for 29 year old Israel Chávez Lozano and José Luis Lozano Mendoza who accepted the offer from a close family friend to take them across the border into the United States. Their disappearance offers an example of the increasing crimes taking place in relation to mass migration. Many of the unsolved cases have a common thread - the participation of individuals who had dedicated themselves to taking people across the US border but who are not associated with any particular criminal organisation. This gives them the ability to circumvent the collection of cartels and go unnoticed unless individually targeted.
So where do these problems stem from?
The biggest problem associated with all of the cases presented in the Valley is the government’s lack of accountability and its excessive use of militarisation. The start of the “War on Drugs” waged by the President in 2006 was met with violence and subsequent silence by the government. From multiple murder reports to personal vendettas, the crimes taking place during this period of the valley’s history were leveraged for political gain rather than being treated as injustices against the people that the government needed to end. The final months of 2010 brought multiple murders of key officials such as Irma Érika Gandara.
Archuleta, the first commander of the Guadalupe Municipal Police, which was followed by a string of murders of Archuleta family members, as well w the seven murders within the Reyes Salazar family from 2008-2011. While the “War on Drugs” has been more recent, accusations of government complicity in violence in the Valley, and of corruption within the armed forces, have been around since at least the 1990s.
As elements of the National Guard and the Secretary of National Defence take a greater presence in the region, accusations of state complicity in disappearances and other human rights abuses continue. Checkpoints across the Valley serve as extortion points for migrants, often charging sums of 2,000 pesos in order to pass. As Valley refugee Elvira García Archuleta expresses, “More than the lack of authority, the authority is corrupt…”
The Importance of Awareness
As residents of the Valley express their concern over the stigmatisation of the region of Paso del Norte, it becomes of increasing importance to draw attention to the reality of the issues causing the region to become synonymous with violence. Human rights organisations like Paso del Norte Human Rights Centre, which promotes and defends the human rights of the local community through awareness and advocacy programmes, are working day in day out to ensure a comprehensive respect for the rule of law and human rights in Ciudad Juárez.
The organisation has more recently been investigating five instances of disappearance in the Valley where four out of five cases are related to the issue of migration. For years, PBI’s field team in Mexico has provided protective accompaniment to the Paso del Norte Human Rights Centre as it searches for remains of disappeared persons in the area. Due to their work in defence of human rights, the Centre has been harassed and received threats from the state and federal authorities. On 5 June 2011, the Centre was raided by the Federal Police, when 20 police officers forcibly entered their offices, went through their documents and damaged the premises. The incident resulted in a recommendation from the national ombudsman. The raid took place a week after a judicial hearing on the emblematic “car bomb” case, that the Paso Del Norte Centre had been involved in seeking justice for. In 2010, five detained individuals “were tortured in various ways in order to be forced to accept the charges of the explosion of a car bomb, organised crime, and drug and arms trafficking”.
PBI is constantly activating its network of contacts to assist in the call for more human rights support to be sent to the area of Paso del Norte and for the international community to amplify these stories that are often disregarded. Although efforts are being made to end human rights abuses, more substantial action must be made by the Mexican State. This would include an institutional and sustainable response to the phenomenon of disappearances, a recognition of the risks facing human rights defenders in the region, and effective public protection policies for those at risk, so that - eventually - the protective accompaniment of PBI is not needed to help organisations like Paso del Norte carry out their crucial work.
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